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

1. Commentary on social media and science from David Bradley

Where is social media for life scientists headed? Read thought leader David Bradley’s commentary on the subject, and also be sure to read Brian Krueger’s blog post as well. The importance of finding value is underlined, as well as the challenges at hand, and it will help you learn how your company can leverage social media to help and attract life scientists.

2. Life Technologies launches the Molecular Probes Technology Network and the Protocol Exchange for transfection.

Related to the first links, Life Technologies is dabbling in social media communities for life scientists with these new applications, which are focused around protocols and discussions. Will they gain traction? Time will tell, however the similar (from an application perspective) Stem Cell Network they launched a few months ago seems to be languishing. Do the networks meet our STIR Social Media system criteria, which we believe are needed for success? You decide!

3. New Twitter launches…kind of…

Twitter is launching a new web interface, which you can learn about in real time by following the #newtwitter hashtag. The interface will include more multimedia, powered by partnerships with many different companies, and will help Twitter to compete with third party applications (e.g., TweetDeck) and even Facebook. The new interface is being rolled out slowly to users, and the joke on Twitter is that the most experienced users aren’t getting access because they never use the web interface. I have 8 accounts and don’t have it yet! What will it mean for you, the life science marketer? It could make Twitter fill a more relevant niche as more multimedia is added, making it more similar to Facebook, but easier to manage.

4. Social media infographics.

Everybody loves an infographic! Learn and help others in your organization understand many different aspects of social media with these schematics.

All links can be found under the soundbytes tag on Delicious, and 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 10/01/2010 http://bit.ly/soundbytes1001

Comprendia has been invited to present a social media workshop for the chemical industry by Informex, the leading meeting place for buyers and sellers of high-value chemistry for a broad range of applications. Learn more from Informex’s press release about the social media webinar for the chemicals industry, and register here. If you’re interested in hiring Comprendia to train your group, see our life science social media training and workshop opportunities.

Social media applications which track users’ locations are big news recently since Facebook Places launched, competing with Foursquare which has three million users. Many businesses are learning to leverage these applications, allowing users to learn about discounts and gain benefits for ‘checking in’ to their establishments online while they are visiting them. Even though life science companies do most of their business via the internet and mail, there are ways they could leverage these location-based applications. Below are our ideas for life science companies to use tools like Foursquare, and we hope it sparks some ideas for building their brands and obtaining leads and sales in new ways.

Account Managers. Getting the sales team using location-based applications is perhaps the most straightforward way to take advantage of them. Account managers could check in while visiting large institutions or hot spots, offering prizes for customers who see their check ins online and find them. More generally, account managers could give prizes to those who check into institutions in their territory–the implications for lead generation are fantastic! What’s great about Foursquare is that from the login perspective, it’s an isolated application. In other words, employees don’t have to worry about mixing their personal and business personas as they must do on Facebook. They can create a Foursquare persona for work and upload their email contacts (and check in only when working).

Events. Perhaps vying for first spot with the sales team, events are a terrific opportunity for life science companies to use location-based applications. At conferences, companies could offer benefits for ‘checking in’ to their exhibit (anyone can create a venue on Foursquare). Attendance at seminars and workshops could also be tracked, rewarding the first to check in. While it’s true that currently these applications can be ‘fooled’ and users can check in without actually visiting, really it’s more about engaging with them and building your brand through their sharing. As with most social media applications, Foursquare ‘plays well’ with the other tools such as Facebook, allowing each check in to be shared with hundreds of people on other applications. A nice side benefit is that customers may make connections with each other while participating, helping everyone.

Supply Centers. Many institutions allow companies to stock popular products on site, making it more convenient for customers. These supply centers are usually fairly low profile–usually a freezer in the hall or shelves in a small room. They are the perfect opportunity to use Foursquare. Companies could allow users to check in and perhaps give discounts or prizes for the mayor (the person who checks in the most frequently). The perhaps little-known supply center will also be seen by all Foursquare users in the vicinity, as cell phones’ GPS is used in the application, allowing them to pick from nearby venues to check in to. Our local Scripps Research Institute has 156 checkins from 23 people, and this number will likely grow.

Activities and Virtual Events. An interesting take on the location-based applications is Miso, which allows users to check in while they are watching TV shows. In San Diego, we’ve even ‘checked in’ after earthquakes, treating them as an activity. Now, this could make many life science brands salivate, as you could imagine researchers checking into such activities as ‘doing PCR with Company X Polymerase.’ While I don’t envision these activity-based check ins going this far, I do think researchers would check in for webinars, product launches, promotions, or even scientific discoveries. Wouldn’t it have been cool to ‘check in’ when the structure of DNA was discovered, or the human genome sequenced?

As we cover in our Life Science and Biotech Social Media Training and Workshops, many companies in our industry are just getting their feet wet with these new ways to connect with their customers. So, these ideas may not be adopted soon, but we think that it’s never too early to start thinking of ways to leverage the massive networks that researchers have already created. The changes that Facebook have made recently will likely herald a new era of the web, where these networks, and standardization of its content, will rule. The ‘virtual world’ of online places can be seen as the ‘wild wild west’ (www, get it?) in which life science companies should stake their claims now.

To share this post easily, cut and paste: Four Ways Life Science Companies Can Leverage Foursquare for Branding, Leads, and Sales http://bit.ly/bggljD

You’ve put together your overall life science social media strategy (if not, see Workshop 1 and our other social media training) and it includes third party applications such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. How do you use these applications to reach out to your customers effectively? The applications are all different, requiring individual strategies, tactics, and methods for determining metrics. Join us August 31st in San Diego or via the web to learn the ‘Rule of 3′s’ for third party social media, and you’ll start reaching out to your customers like never before (almost like a 3D movie, you could say).

In this four hour interactive workshop, offered in San Diego and via webinar, you will learn everything you need to know to implement campaigns on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube, including:

• Strategies
  • What strategies and themes work with life scientists?
  • Which third party social media applications are my customers using, and how do I target them there?
  • How do I fulfill corporate goals and provide value at the same time?
• Tactics
  • How can I get the most out of my time spent on 3rd party social media?
  • What are the best tips and tools for each application?
  • Where can I find the content I need?
  • How do I get direct leads from 3rd party applications?
  • How can I quickly understand the etiquette for each application?
• Metrics & ROI
  • How do I measure success using external and internal metrics?
  • My management still doesn’t understand the value of third party social media applications–how can I convince them?

As always, we’ll give you plenty of examples specific to life science to help you see things in context. 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 workshop is now available as an on demand webinar lasting 3.5 hours, see the workshops and training page for more details. Printed materials will be mailed to you, so there may be up to a one week waiting period. Register here and contact us with any questions.

We hear from life science marketers that they ‘don’t have time’ for social media. We think that for many reasons, they should ‘make’ time, as the benefits are far reaching, from reinforcing your brand to getting input on product development. However, we are realistic and know that integrating these habits into your routine will take time, so we’ve created this list that will help you to leverage life science social media by spending just ten minutes a day.

Set up custom RSS feeds. We’ve talked about the power of RSS feeds to deliver customized content from all over the internet, from research publications to company websites to blogs. Set up RSS feeds and use the information to tweet or blog about, as well as to stay on top of what is going on in your industry and with your customers. You can browse this content from an RSS reader or set up customized emails. Need help? We can set up a customized feed and daily emails for you quickly and affordably, check out this example of a drug discovery blogs RSS we set up. We’ll set it up for you, adjust it if necessary, and give you all the information you need to adjust it in the future as needed. As we’ll cover in our July 28th Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshop 2, great content is the cornerstone of a winning social media strategy.

Repurpose. Different social media applications have different functions and audiences, so there is no harm in sharing a link on, for example, both Twitter and Facebook. In our workshops, we’ve also talked about ‘recycling’ content from your website or blog. Resources, news, and user-generated content such as FAQs can be used. Of course, don’t be too redundant, and don’t consider that posting information about product discounts, etc. is necessarily interesting to your audience all the time.

Automate. Related to repurposing is the fact that you can use tools and tricks to automatically post status updates to more than one application, which is handy. For example, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook all ‘play nicely’ with each other, and you can set them up so that you can post an update on one and feed it to the other applications. In addition, you can use great tools like HootSuite to post to multiple accounts and also schedule updates for later. We do think that there is a lot of value in logging in and browsing your network or followers updates, but to begin with, you can do this weekly instead of daily to save time (see next item).

Use calendar reminders. Some aspects of social media require maintenance, such as growing your Twitter followers or your LinkedIn network. These things can’t be done all at once, so we suggest setting weekly calendar reminders for tasks such as connecting with new people you’ve met on LinkedIn or using Twitter searches to find new life scientists to follow. If you work at a larger company, you may need to aggregate all of your activity using RSS feeds, Friendfeed, or Hubspot, and depending on the size of your company, you’ll want to review these daily or weekly. Also, reviewing metrics such as engagements or return on investment (ROI) is important as well, and is likely best done weekly or monthly. If you want more information about the strategies behind these tactics, check out our workshops and training.

Use the force. One of the great things about social media is that you can find great people to follow, share content from, and emulate. Once you find a few ‘Jedi masters’ you can save time because they will serve as ‘channels’ of information for you to learn from and share. We hope that you’ll consider this blog as a channel of information for life science and biotech marketing and subscribe to updates.

The workflow we suggest follows the order of this list. Start with good content, and the rest should naturally flow, to the last item in which you’ll hopefully be engaging with the thought leaders in your area. We hope that you’ll find so much value in these ten minutes that you’ll branch out more and spend more time leveraging social media. What techniques have worked for you to get the most out of the time you spend using social media? We’d love to hear, please leave a comment below.

To share this post easily, cut and paste: How To Leverage Life Science Social Media in Ten Minutes a Day http://bit.ly/9dLERq

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.

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

You’ve surely noticed it in other areas–the news is chock full of stories about how businesses are using social media to get ahead. What about using social media in the biotechnology or life sciences industry to help your business to grow? Well, there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that Biotech’s presence is lagging behind other industries in most social media. Searching “biotech” in Facebook and Twitter gives a small number of results compared to other industries, and most of the bookmarking sites don’t even have a biotechnology category (we’ll define these media below). The good news is that now is the time to get active in this media, so that you can get traction now before the competition discovers how useful it is. Besides further engaging your customers (a la Web 2.0), you can also use it to increase your web traffic by improving your search engine ranking.

We plan to publish several blog articles in our Marketing 101™ series on using social media to grow your business. Social media can be described as split up into the 4 C’s: Context, Contacts, Communication, and Collaboration. There is a broad range of applications and a lot to cover, and things change literally daily. In this initial installment, I’m providing the following guide to social media get us started, and you can also check out the Wikipedia entry.

Comprendia has recently become active on Twitter, and we have found it to be a great way to keep in touch with the (small) biotech and drug discovery community presence there, and to get people to visit the site. We have also used LinkedIn and Ning to create the Biotech Marketing Group, which will facilitate networking and exchange of information between professionals in the area. The capabilities of the “out of the box” tools such as Ning are growing daily, so you don’t have to build them from scratch. In addition, there is a wealth of biotech news, reports and research available in myriad places, allowing you to leverage the information to create interest in your website and products.

In the coming installments, we will provide tips on using social media to build your biotech or life science business. Let us know if you have any specific questions you’d like us to address. Also, check out our full Marketing 101 series to learn more about leveraging marketing tactics and strategies for biotech or life science business growth. If you can’t wait to get started, contact us about integrating social media into your business and marketing strategy, and you’ll get a leg up on your competition!