Here is our latest collection of links and tips for life science marketing and social media:

1. Cool online biotech stuff.

   We can’t help but notice how many people are starting cool biotech websites. Check out BetterBio, a community-run organization that promises better biotech communication. I love this new spirit of the web where asking for donations is OK and even inspiring. Also check out ConnectingSF, a portal to help those traveling to San Francisco for the big JP Morgan Healthcare conference to connect. The conference is notorious for its large attendance and paucity of online resources, so the site is a welcome addition. Finally, we saw an article in Xconomy about Relay Technology Management, who have a cool app which facilitates partnering with a sophisticated database of drug-related scientific discoveries. It looks like it may be difficult to get a free test drive, but check out this video which shows some of the features. All these sites are harbingers of the next wave of what we’ll be able to do with ‘life science 2.0′ on the web.

2. Mind Maps.

   We think a lot about ways to organize content on the web and social media and our related strategies and tactics, because the format is often non-standard. One tool we’re using is Mind Maps, visualizations in which ideas are organized and expanded upon in a free form fashion. You begin with a core concept and attach ideas–it reminds me of the ‘post-its on the wall’ approaches to software development I’ve seen. A picture is worth a thousand words, so check out this kinase assay social media mind map we created, getting some inspiration from this blog post. As you can see, it’s a great way to organize ideas for areas in which your company might not have a template, including social media. Mind Map aficionados have all sorts of cool ideas for them. You can also embed them in sites, something useful for internal planning. The apps we’ve found most useful are MindMeister (web-based), FreeMind (standalone), and there’s even a droid app which can save files in a compatible format. Your management will likely love these types of diagrams, don’t you think?

3. ScienceOnline 2011.

   We’re really excited to attend the ScienceOnline 2011 conference next week in North Carolina. We get interest from both life science marketers and researchers in working together more in the web 2.0 environment. We’re doing two surveys, one for life science marketers and one for researchers, to help facilitate these interactions. We’ll present the results next week and those who participate will get the results sent to them, so please take the survey soon. Note that the conference will be live streamed, and we’ll post instructions here on how to view, and we’ll be tweeting from it as well.

The soundbytes tag on Delicious contains all links mentioned, as well as others we think are useful. Sign up for Comprendia blog email updates to get our mix tapes delivered to your inbox.
To share this post easily, cut and paste: Sound Bytes: Links and Tips For Life Science Marketing & Social Media 1/07/2010 http://bit.ly/soundbytes0107

About six months ago, Andrew Maynard (@2020Science) and Mike Chelen (@MikeChelen) analyzed the influence of the then 400 ‘Scientwists’ on Twitter compiled by David Bradley (@sciencebase). Since then, I’ve wanted to do something similar for Biotech (Biotwech?) Twitterers, but the application they used no longer works in batch.

Mike Chelen came to my rescue and created an API which will work in batch for Klout, a similar application which gives Twitter influence along with other metrics and classifications for user types. Using the list of users from the Biotech Twibe, including the top 25 influencers from the Wefollow Biotech tag, I created the bubble chart visualization using the ‘Many Eyes’ application. The size of each users’ bubble, which is directly proportional to their influence, is based on the Klout score, which ranges from 0 to 100 and is based on 25 metrics including the size of your ‘engaged’ network, retweets, and number of Twitter lists.

You can view the full Twitter Biotech Influence data set to see more details, and even interact more with the visualization as well. Those of us who are in the Twitter space will not be surprised at most who are in the list of the top twenty, but there are also some interesting observations to be made. Because Twibes are not based on the content a user tweets, there can be some spurious results. For example, while Wise_Diva is certainly influential, she rarely tweets about Biotech, but since it is one of her interests, she joined the Twibe.

Someday soon, hopefully we’ll have applications which will take tweet content into the equation, and we’ll be able to find the key influencers based on keywords (currently, on Klout, if you log in and go to the ‘dashboard’ you can search for influencers on some topics–biology and pharmacy seem to be the closest matches). Klout does list the content of a users’ tweets, but using this information directly may not accurately portend their tweet content. For example, Sally Church aka @MaverickNY is the top ‘true’ biotech influencer, but her content is listed as cancer, FDA, Google, iPhone, Boston, and social media. We do know, however, that she tweets often about Biotech, but just does not use the term. (And, would you move to Boston already Sally since it’s clear you love the place?) So, likely the content algorithms will need to be very smart, or we’ll need to do some curation. Also, you should consider that if one of your goals is to be an influencer for a certain keyword, that you should use the keyword in your tweets, as you will not always be able to count on human curation.

Another interesting trend is the fact that the top influencers are categorized by Klout as personas, activists, and connectors. While the Klout website doesn’t describe how these categorizations are made, the descriptions they give are listed in the table below. The Network Score, Amplification Score, and True Reach values were capricious, with several being zero for many accounts, so we did not analyze them (but you can visualize them on the Many Eyes site using the menu on the lower left). Klout appeared to be better than tools like Wefollow at discerning between active and inactive accounts, as the latter has at least two inactive accounts ranked highly, including @IamBiotech which is #1. However, some of the top ranking accounts, notably @sdbn at #14 which I manage, are partial bots (mine fed from RSS), and Klout seems to not discern that these accounts are not 100% ‘human.’

Another interesting observation is that 12 of the 16 top influencers’ ‘known’ genders are female, or 75%. Are women better at fostering microblogging networks? This finding is particularly interesting in light of the recent reports that science blogging networks have significantly more male than female bloggers. While it is tempting to speculate why, it should be noted that Twitter users are 60% female. However, it’s been shown that men are likely to get more followers.

Surely I’ve missed some biotech Tweeters, I thought about adding them separately, but my vestigial scientific tendencies told me that it would make the ‘experiment’ less reproducible (also why I left Wise_Diva in). The Twibes application is the only one I’ve found that will output a list of users–Wefollow and Twitter Lists do not. Please add yourself to the Biotech Twibe and I will redo this visualization in a month or so. I’d like also to make some tag clouds of all of the tweets, especially the influencers, but alas I can’t find a tool for that.

I’d like to give special recognition to Mike Chelen for creating the Klout API. Often I get frustrated with analyzing social media data, and the scientists who ‘get’ social media are really fantastic resources. Mike did this for us for free, but you should check out his Linkedin profile and consider hiring him for your project. The intersection of social media and science is one of the most fascinating aspects of my job, and I think exciting things are on the horizon. For a teaser, see how some scientists are using a Bioinformatics/statistics program to create word clouds of Pubmed abstracts. Of course, the Batch Klout API he developed can be used to analyze any list…have at it!

Finally, why is this study important for life science and biotech companies? Let’s say we’re able to find the top influencer for PCR, lung cancer, kinase research etc. These accounts, whether they’re individuals or brands, will be able to spread a message quickly and effectively. Of course, the issue of the ‘separation of church and state’ in media and advertising will still have a play, but we’ve talked about how this can be done carefully by companies. Indeed, Klout is already thinking about this for the larger brands, shouldn’t you be thinking about it for your life science brand?

To share this post easily, cut and paste: Who Are The Top Biotech Influencers on Twitter? http://bit.ly/bio_inf

As consultants, we see that some of our life science and biotech clients are interested in learning how to ‘DIY’ (Do-It-Yourself) marketing and public relations items that were traditionally outsourced. We realize this need for smaller businesses who may have more limited budgets. We offer our suggestions below with the caveat that professional public relations (PR) and marketing firms do have a lot to offer as they have the experience and connections, and as we point out below, a sustained PR campaign requires significant effort. Our guidelines for sending a biotech press release are listed in chronological order.

Start with a message and a plan. The purpose of public relations is to help your company realize its objectives by being perceived in a certain way. For an example, a biotech company may want to be perceived as an excellent drug discovery collaborator so that they will be approached by potential partners. Of course, the perception cannot be far from reality. Once this message and its objectives are clear, a plan should be developed to meet this goal, and it will include other aspects of marketing such as conferences and product launches.

Form relationships with the media. It’s important to start this process early, as of course relationships take time. Due to the changes in the media landscape, publications are now more ‘hungry’ for biotech and scientific information, so they may welcome your ideas more readily. Part of your PR plan should include target publications in which editorial coverage (or ‘earned media’) will help you to achieve your goal. You’re likely also advertising in these publications, so ask your salesperson to connect you with the editorial staff. It also helps to review the editorial calendars of these publications, so that you can coordinate your schedule with theirs.

Make the release newsworthy. One of the results of the changes in the media landscape is that now that everyone can send a press release…everyone does, flooding the internet with commercial ‘news.’ Ask yourself before sending the press release, is it news? Putting out a string of press releases does not entail a PR strategy. If you decide your release does count as news, tie it into biotech business trends and life science research news. Send personal emails to your top targets, explaining to them why the story would be good for their publication. Or, better yet, call them; the most sought after journalists get many emails, calling may be a way to stand out. Consider embargoing the press release to your top targets as well, giving them time to cover the story in more depth, although this is not a guarantee you’ll get good coverage.

Use a press release distribution service. We’ve seen life science companies take the ‘DIY’ concept to the extreme, defining a ‘press release’ as a blurb on their website and an email blast. While you may have a terrific network and a great distribution list (which we’ve warned against abusing), for the time being, distribution services such as Marketwire (which is the service we suggest) will get your release in front of many people and also help you with SEO (search engine optimization). The cost will be between $500 and $1000, depending on the length and options you choose. If it sounds too expensive for the number of releases you plan to send, then you may want to consider that you’re sending too many.

Consider SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Is it your company’s goal to be the leading provider of kinase assays? Make sure these keywords appear prominently in your release, and that there are links to your website as well. As with many other marketing activities, we’re big proponents of using Google Analytics/Adwords data to find what your customers or target audience are searching for. This will help you to get the most out of the ‘Google Juice’ you’ll get out of your release, and many of the distribution services also have SEO tools to help you.

Use social media. You knew this suggesting was coming, if you’ve been reading this blog. Build your social media network so that you can send the information to people who care about your company’s news. As always, engage, don’t broadcast, and see our social media training and workshops if you need help. Using social media for PR could be an entire blog post so we’ll keep this short in anticipation of that…

Things will continue to change, and it’s possible that in a year or so we’ll adjust this list, perhaps making ‘social media PR’ #1. One thing that will likely remain the same is the importance of relationships in getting attention for your company’s news. As the ‘DIY PR Pro’ for your company, you should now consider this part of your daily routine!

To share this post easily, cut and paste: How To DIY Your Biotech Press Release http://bit.ly/dk6K7n

Comprendia is dedicated to improving communication in life science and biotechnology, and towards that end we are big proponents of social media. Our Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshop 2: The 4 B’s of First Party Applications interactive webinar will take place July 28th from 8 a.m.-12 p.m. Pacific Time. During this four hour workshop, you’ll learn how to build web 2.0 applications including blogs, forums, wikis, and how to generate meaningful content for life scientists. For each strategy or application, you’ll learn the 4 B’s crucial to attracting scientists and achieving a good ROI: the Basics, Benefits, Best Practices, and Biotech Examples. Register here or contact us if you’re interested in a private or customized version of the workshop.

We also offer training for social media applications such as Twitter, WordPress, LinkedIn, and Facebook, check out our Social Media Training and Workshops page for more information. We can also customize the training for your business, contact us for more information.

Our first Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshop went over well, with IRL (in real life) and virtual sessions full of marketing and business development professionals eager to learn how to attract scientists and improve their return on investment with social media. When polled anonymously, 100% of attendees indicated that they would suggest the workshop to colleagues, and we continue to incorporate your feedback to make the workshops even better. In the first workshop we covered Comprendia’s STIR Social Media™ system which defines the four qualities needed for a successful campaign: Sticky, Transparent, Intuitive, and Resonating.

We discussed in detail how social media is a natural extension of the activities life science companies have been engaged in for years, and that, as with all marketing, strategies must come before tactics. If you missed the IRL and virtual events, don’t despair, you can still order it on demand through the Comprendia website, and we highly suggest it before you attend the second workshop. The Workshop 1 webinar is roughly 3 hours long, and we’ll give you a ‘day pass’ in which you can watch it any time that day, and we’ll send you the printed presentation as a booklet beforehand.

Our second workshop will focus on first party social media, or applications and strategies which are integrated into company websites:

• Web 2.0
• Blogs
• Forums
• Wikis
• Content Generation

We’ll focus on the 4 B’s which will help you create successful first party applications and campaigns, which are the Basics, Benefits, Best Practices, and Biotech Examples. As in the first workshop, we’ll focus on the questions that really matter to you, including strategies that work with scientists, metrics, return on investment, and implementation. We know that seeing real examples helps you to think about applying the ideas your business, so we’ll spend plenty of time on this as well. We’ll have wifi so you can bring your computer, ask lots of questions, and head back to the office ready to get started. Sign up!

Who Should Attend: Business Development and Marketing professionals who provide products or services in a non-regulated environment and are interested in using social media to increase sales, leads, or visibility. Examples: companies who sell research-only products or services to scientists or small to mid-size biotechnology companies that need more visibility. Contact us if you have questions. Completion of Social Media and Life Science Workshop 1 is recommended but not required (details on ordering the Workshop 1 webinar will be given during registration).

As a Participant You Will Receive:

1. Printed workshop materials
2. A highly interactive presentation session from Mary Canady, customized to your needs and using real examples from life science and biotechnology
3. Worksheets designed to help you get social media launched at your company
4. Hands-on, online training and feedback from Comprendia during the session
5. Free follow-on session with Comprendia
1. Review of workshop ‘homework’
2. Guidance for next steps

This is our second in a series of Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshops. Sign up for updates to our blog and you’ll be the first to hear about our workshops and training. Contact us if you’re interested in having these workshops customized for your company.

Check out our Workshops and Training page to see when this workshop is offered next.

Each post in our Life Science Marketing Plan series will help you piece together a ‘map’ that is representative of the analyses and learning process that will help you define your marketing strategies and tactics for the year. In the first part of this series, we provided and outline and described why marketing plans are needed for life science companies of all sizes to meet their goals. In this post, we’ll define the first half of the components in detail. Let’s get started!

1. Executive Summary. Even though this part of the marketing plan is at the beginning, it is written at the end. Writing a marketing plan is like a journey, and at the end of it you will have learned a lot and have a clear understanding of the strategies and tactics needed to help you reach your goals. Keep in mind that several people, especially senior management, will read only this part of your marketing plan, so summarize the report here and don’t worry about being a bit redundant. Feel free to reference figures and tables in the report for easy and quick analysis. Also, if there’s a point you’d like to make to senior management (e.g., I need a bigger marketing budget to meet my numbers!) this is a good place to make your case.
2. Situational Analysis. Before getting started on an in-depth analysis, you need to provide details about your products, internal factors, and external trends which will help explain where you’re starting from. Remember that the marketing plan is a tool to help you communicate to others, so this is a good place to step back and set the stage so that anyone in your company who reads the plan will understand it clearly. Be very literal and don’t worry about explaining things you think everyone knows, such as defining the products included in the marketing plan and that big acquisition that occurred 3 months ago (a safe bet you’ll need to include that these days). In this section you will describe broader issues such as the life cycle stage of your products and any history that is relevant such as trends in the industry and current attitudes about your company’s brand.
3. Sales History and Forecast. This is fairly self-explanatory, but sometimes a bit tricky depending on when you are writing your plan. Because you normally need to start your plan well before the year ends, having a full year of sales history is difficult. In my experience, projections are normally used to estimate sales for the current year, and remember that sales fluctuate from month to month (e.g., December is usually lower) so base the remaining months’ sales based on these changes. Sales forecasts for the year that the marketing plan describes may need to be done at the end of the report, as the complete analysis may be needed to make predictions. Consideration of the historical sales growth, the size of the marketing budget in comparison to yearly revenue, and other factors will be important. In addition, my experience has been that ‘top down’ forecasts are sometimes given to marketing and product managers, indicating the revenue growth they must achieve in the coming year. While this is sometimes disheartening, the marketing plan can be used to explain why a higher budget is needed if these growth figures are too ambitious. A general rule of thumb is that the marketing budget should be at least 10% of the annual sales for the products it supports. In practice, I’ve seen the budgets run much lower than this, perhaps because marketing is sometimes under-appreciated in life science companies. However, it’s a good number to shoot for, and a strong marketing plan will provide confidence to the management that you will meet your goals if given the appropriate budget (and be prepared to work hard to reach them if your wishes are granted!).
4. Market Research. One of the objectives of a marketing plan is to ensure that your company continues to be driven by the market. In other words, you need to know about your customers’ needs and about factors that are driving their purchases, and there is no substitute for getting this information straight from them. Market research can be done many ways–you can buy off-the-shelf reports (Price $3-10K), hire a company (broad price range, $5K minimally), or conduct research yourself (price varies greatly). The scale can be large or small, from online surveys of hundreds to phone interviews of 10. Larger and purchased surveys will give you estimates on the size and growth of the market and each company’s share of it, while smaller surveys help you understand your customers more on a personal level (which is very important as we’ve discussed). Another consideration is whether you want the survey to be blind, and whether it should focus on only your customers or more broadly. One of my fantastic mentors Michael Gonzales told me once at the start of a market research project to define very specifically what internal decisions you need to address before you begin, and write each question to definitively provide answers to them. There is no point in posing a question unless it will have an unambiguous effect on a decision that you will make. It is easy to get carried away designing questions related to your company or products, as you’re curious about so many aspects, but keeping your objectives clear helps to focus the effort. Questions should center around the customers’ needs and habits and how they relate to your product development and tactics. What are their daily struggles or ‘pains’ in the broad area of your products? What conferences are they attending this year, and which publications do they read? Perhaps most importantly, you should give customers a chance to give you any feedback they have for you in an open-ended format, as they’ll often have great ideas and opinions and appreciate being heard. Even with a focused effort, you’ll learn a lot about your customers and their needs, and can use the information all year for many different purposes.

   After you’ve completed these tasks, you’re well on your way towards completing your ‘journey’ towards defining your marketing strategy and tactics. The way the pieces fit together will become even more clear after the next post in our series, The Life Science Marketing Plan, Part 3: Components (Second Half). Sign up for updates so you won’t miss anything, and see the whole series here.

   To share this post easily, cut and paste: The Life Science Marketing Plan, Part 2: Components (First Half) http://bit.ly/c0uVdX

How can life science and biotechnology companies leverage social media to increase visibility, generate more leads, and ultimately improve sales or the value of the company? Comprendia is the recognized leader in understanding how to develop and implement social media strategies tailored to life science and biotechnology companies. Check out our Biotechnology Marketing 101 Blog for more details. There are myriad online social media resources and agencies, but this workshop is the only resource that will provide you with strategies backed by real examples and designed to help you launch campaigns that will work with your life science customers.

In this 4 hour hands-on workshop we’ll answer these questions, giving real examples and materials to help you jump start social media campaigns for your company:

• Which applications and themes work with scientists or biotech professionals?
• How do I integrate social media with existing marketing strategies and tactics?
• What is the return on investment (ROI) for social media, and how do I maximize it?
• How do I get buy-in from the management and motivate my team to participate?

We’ll have wifi so you can bring your computer, ask lots of questions, and head back to the office ready to get started.

Who Should Attend: Business Development and Marketing professionals who provide products or services in a non-regulated environment and are interested in using social media to increase sales, leads, or visibility. Examples: companies who sell research-only products or services to scientists or small to mid-size biotechnology companies that need more visibility. Contact us if you have questions.

As a Participant You Will Receive:

1. Printed workshop materials
2. A highly interactive presentation session from Mary Canady, customized to your needs and using real examples from life science and biotechnology
3. Worksheets designed to help you get social media launched at your company
4. Hands-on, online training and feedback from Comprendia during the session
5. Free follow-on session with Comprendia
1. Review of workshop ‘homework’
2. Guidance for next steps

This is our first in a series of quarterly Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshops. Sign up for updates to our blog and you’ll be the first to hear. We’re also considering ‘virtual’ workshops or roadshows–let us know if you’re interested.

Check out our Workshops and Training page to see when this workshop is offered next.

To share this post easily, cut and paste: Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshop, Part 1: Get Started With Industry-Specific Strategies and Tools http://comprendia.com/smworkshop1

We talk a lot about social media on this blog, and are of course strong proponents of its utilization for life science and biotech companies. One of the aspects we like about it is that the basics of traditional marketing planning are also the cornerstones of social media planning. For this series of posts, we’ll go back to basics and explore traditional marketing plans–beginning with their ‘raison d’etre’ to the details of developing one. We see marketing plans as a journey in which you learn along the way, and we’ll provide one ‘piece’ of the map in each of these posts, helping you to see the big picture by the end of this series.

What is a marketing plan? Marketing plans can be centered around a product, product line, brand, or small company. My experience has been that they are developed early in the fourth quarter preceding the fiscal year they describe. While they can be discussed by a team, normally I’ve seen one person taking the lead in writing the document–of course this is dependent on the scope of the plan. Input can come from anywhere, but the marketing group and the management should own them and have the research to back up the marketing plan’s claims. They can take the form of a text document with figures (e.g., Microsoft Word) and usually include a summary presentation (e.g., Microsoft PowerPoint). In theory, they should be considered living documents which can be modified by the owners (in practice this often proves too difficult for the busy marketing professional).

What are the components? Of course you can find marketing plan templates online, and you can certainly customize them to fit your needs. Here are what we consider to be the basics:

1. Executive Summary
2. Situational Analysis
3. Sales History & Forecast
4. Market Research
5. Competitive Analysis
6. Strategy
1. Messaging & Positioning
2. Overall Plan
7. Tactical Plan
1. Events (Conferences, Ad planning, Product Launches)
2. Budget

You’ll often hear the components referred to more generally as strategic and tactical marketing. Overall strategy is determined by the careful analysis of components 2-5 above, and it guides the tactical plan. We’ll go through each of these in detail in subsequent posts.

Why do I need a marketing plan? We all understand that having a plan makes everything work better, but I’ve worked in smaller companies in which it has been very difficult to justify taking time off to write a formal document. Let me give you a few examples for why it is so important, and why it will actually make your work easier.

Consistency. Working through a marketing plan will help you to see your path clearly for your product or product line and to quickly communicate it to others. For example, let’s say your objective is to be the leading provider of fast, high performance protein chromatography, and your target customers work mostly in pharma companies. This is all part of defining your positioning in the market, and will guide all of your marketing materials and actions. Every time you or your colleagues communicate with a customer, write a marketing piece, etc. you’ll be guided by this principle. This will result in a consistent message which will improve your brand perception.

Better product development. Successful companies are driven by the market. In a smaller biotech or life science company, the products (at least initially) are by nature driven by the market, because the company was likely founded based on strong need. However, as companies grow, there is a tendency for scientific companies to produce what they ‘can’ rather than what they ‘should.’ Developing a yearly marketing plan is a great way to get a reality check and to define your product line’s direction and be ready to give solid reasons to back your decisions. Additionally, having a document that can be forwarded to the R&D team is a powerful way to help everyone brainstorm about product development.

Time savings. Your colleague comes to you with a great conference at Cold Spring Harbor which he says is PERFECT for your company to attend. Your answer? Thank him, but point to the marketing plan and indicate that your target market won’t be in attendance, so it doesn’t make sense. Quick decision, no feelings hurt (hopefully), and you’ve pointed him in the right direction as to what conferences he should be looking for.

More bang for your buck. The strength of a good marketing plan is in the power to see how tactics can work together to be more powerful than they are individually. The tactical plan normally takes the form of a spreadsheet or table which list the months of the year and every major planned event, such as product launches and conferences. These can also be cross-referenced with editorial calendars (see our 2010 planning guide). Example? Let’s say your big product is launching in August, but you see that a relevant conference and editorial piece are available in July. By planning ahead, you may be able to work with R&D for an earlier launch, and come out with a bang in month of July with news about your product at the conference and in the editorial.

A marketing plan is a journey in which you step back and look at things more broadly, and spend the year prepared, making smarter decisions and being less reactionary. Of course, a marketing plan can be written any part of the year–there’s no time like the present. Next in our series will be The Elements of a Life Science Marketing Plan. Sign up for updates so you won’t miss anything, and see the whole series here.

To share this post easily, cut and paste: The Life Science Marketing Plan, Part 1: What Is It And Why Do I Need One? http://bit.ly/bX4Tok

You know I am one of social media’s biggest cheerleaders, especially for life science and biotech as I see enormous potential. However, when planning a social media (SM) campaign, there are some important things to remember about what it isn’t. This list is meant to help you plan and to sell SM to your organization by understanding ways that it differs from what we might expect.

1. Instant. Social media campaigns take time. If done correctly, the end result can be worth much more than what you’d get out of a traditional marketing campaign, but it’s not like flipping on a switch. Keep this in mind during planning, and and define clear objectives for the growth of your campaign, for example number of twitter followers or increase in web traffic. Of course, your ultimate objectives are likely to increase revenue, but these are good indicators that you’re on the right track.
2. A No Brainer. You don’t have to look far to see social media campaigns that have not gained traction or have reflected badly on the company that implemented them. There are myriad consultancies who will claim that ‘it will be as easy as setting up some accounts,’ but the truth is that there is a lot of planning that needs to go into a campaign. Like traditional marketing, and in order to integrate with your existing strategy and tactics, you must understand the customer, your product’s positioning, the competition, and the tools to succeed.
3. Your Mouthpiece. It is tempting to see a large LinkedIn group or a forum as a place where you can talk about yourself or your products…for free! However, if you are only using these venues for this purpose, it will soon become evident and the group members and moderator will tire (and may banish) you. What’s better? Create your own group and cultivate a community that cares about what you care about. Follow the 90/10 rule: spend 90% of the time helping, 10% promoting yourself–if people appreciate and respect you, they’ll listen to what you say. The absolute worst thing you can do in social media is to be labeled as a spammer or as only caring about yourself.
4. A Free Lunch. Along the same vein as the usage of ‘free’ advertising such as LinkedIn groups, there are some that think that Social Media is their way to market their product for free. Now, I do think there are lots of ways that you can save money using social media, but…you may remember someone telling you that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and SM is no exception. Your costs will likely shift from print advertising to online, and from paying fees for broadcast-type Ads (banners, etc.) to strategies, tools, and perhaps consulting for building your campaign theme and implementing it correctly.
5. A Panacea. Social media does not defy the rules of marketing or common sense. If you have a product that your customers do not need, no amount of SM will help you. What’s great about it, though, is that you’ll receive more feedback than you have ever had before, and you’ll be able to turn this information into products that your customers need.

Sound complicated? The best way to understand it is to get your feet wet and start participating. If you’d like a free consultation, we can help you better understand how to succeed in the social media landscape that your life science or biotechnology company operates in.

To share this post easily use the URL http://bit.ly/86sBPQ

It’s December and 2010 is within reach! We thought we’d provide some resources for life scientists and marketers. We’ve listed conferences on our calendar, be sure to bookmark it. Are we missing your favorite conference? Let us know and we’ll add it. Also, we’ve listed some uber life science event calendars, including the Cell Press calendar where you can let them know you’re attending and connect with others who’ll be there! Great idea. Below that, we’ve got listings for media kits for life science marketers. Again, let us know if we’re missing any information, and have fun planning for 2010!

Life Science Conferences

Here is our list of life science media kits. Marketers use them to plan their tactical schedules. Unfortunately, many are 2009 versions, and don’t list prices, but we’ve included contacts for you to get the most up to date information.

Life Science Media Kits & Contacts

To share this post easily use the URL http://bit.ly/4s99cY