It’s hard to believe that just two years ago in June of 2008, I started Comprendia. Colleagues at Stinson Brand Innovation helped me with a logo and branding, and I set up the Comprendia website using the free WordPress platform. Now, in June 2010, we find ourselves as a two year old company with what I consider to be a good reputation and solid experience. Maybe I have too many friends with little kids, but I can’t help but to try to think about what we’ve learned, and what we have yet to learn, from a two year old child’s perspective. Here goes!

Sharing is good. A lot of what we find ourselves doing is providing resources for others, whether they’re scientists in the San Diego Biotechnology Network (SDBN), life science marketing professionals, or any of our network of around 9,000 biotechnology professionals. Are we good people? Sure, but we also see benefits from sharing daily, which gives us a business case to continue. We get new leads, we learn from our peers and our clients, and we get many perks from being connected, such as media access to conferences, etc. In our two years, we’ve definitely learned the benefits from sharing, much as a two year old learns that sharing a toy is the right thing to do.

Learn from your mistakes. I love telling people about the mistakes I made early on, so we can all learn from them. Here is one: I set up a social network for biotech marketers, thinking it would be a great way for us to share experiences and connect. What I didn’t realize in these early days is that many of these free standing networks take a LOT of effort to get going, because they don’t become useful until a minimum number of people join, something called the network effect. So, the group didn’t ever take off, but we did succeed in creating a great group on LinkedIn, where we can take advantage of the fact that so many biotech marketers are already there. We learned from this mistake, and make sure that our clients don’t make them as well. We’ve encapsulated these ideas in our STIR Social Media system to help life science companies create successful campaigns and applications.

You can’t do it all by yourself. We’re lucky to have many great partners who help us to meet our clients’ needs, including Stinson Brand Innovation and WHITECOAT Strategies. We’ve also been very lucky to hire Rebecca Watson-Beattie as Business Development manager, she has brought a wealth of experience and focus to Comprendia. If you’ve met her you know, she’s a great asset and a pleasure to work with. We’ll also be bringing on Julie Mazziotta soon as our WordPress Web and Social Media Manager. Julie’s web, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media experience will help us and our clients to grow. Related to the first point, through our network, we continue to meet exceptional companies and individuals to work with and are very excited about the capabilities we will be able to offer our clients in the months and years to come.

Saying ‘No’ can be empowering. Every small business goes through growing pains–what should our focus be, and which projects should we take on? Like a two year old, we are learning that there are choices we can make that will affect our lives. Sometimes this means saying ‘no’ to some project areas and focusing on where we can have the biggest impact. This strategy benefits everyone, as we prosper, and our clients get the best we have to offer. So, while we don’t say ‘no’ quite as much as a terrible two year old, we hope that by continuing to focus on our strengths, that we’ll be able to help companies focus on theirs as well. If you’ve been reading this blog, hopefully you know, but to clarify, we are a full service marketing firm specializing in web-based tools and social media.

What we can do is quite remarkable. We hope that by building Comprendia and the SDBN from the ground up, you can see what is possible, even for a small outfit. In our Bootstrapping Biotech event with the SDBN last year, we talked about all the cheap or free tools which empower small companies, and our dream is that our success can help yours as well. Like a two year old, we can think about what it was like to crawl, and walk, and now how great it is to now be able to run. Running along with others is perhaps the most fun of all, and our dream is that you’ll all realize how much is possible with today’s tools, and leverage them for your benefit.

It’s a big, wonderful world we live in. These past two years have been nothing short of fantastic. We’ve met so many great people, from famous scientists, to amazing entrepreneurs (latest here), to professionals who are making the best of this bad economy. The number of fantastic life science and biotechnology product and application ideas we’ve heard about over these two years leaves us in awe, and like a two year old we’re anxious to explore and see what’s around the next corner. We sincerely hope that, also like a two year old, we’ve been able to soak up a fraction of your collective knowledge and make sense of it in a way that benefits the community.

Like a two year old, we will grow a lot over the next few years, perhaps in ways we cannot imagine right now. We’ll be unveiling some great client projects over the next year, which we think will open up some new doors in life science marketing. Stay tuned!

To share this post easily, cut and paste: Comprendia Turns Two! What We’ve Learned, and Are Still Learning… http://bit.ly/avg7j6

If you’ve been following our Biotechnology Marketing 101 blog, you likely know that we are ‘in the know’ about social media. We’ve used it to grow our own company and the San Diego Biotechnology Network, and we’ll be featuring our work with other companies soon. Check out our Social Media Capabilities page to learn more and to get started!

If you’ve been following along with the Biotechnology Marketing 101 blog series, you know that we provide guidance for life science and biotech companies to start and grow. We’re taking this from virtual to IRL (in real life ;) at our October 29th Bootstrapping Biotech event with the San Diego Biotechnology Network. We’ve lined up some excellent speakers who will cover everything from getting funded to strategic and tactical marketing and social media for your company or products. We’ve had a lot of interest so far, even outside of San Diego, and really think that a lot of great, synergistic connections will be made at the event. Even if you don’t work at a small company, we think you’ll be able to learn and meet those who can help you make the most out of your marketing budget. As always, we’re open to feedback as to what you’d like to see–leave a comment here or on the SDBN site.

Life sciences companies can be divided three ways: those who don’t have a newsletter, those who have one, and those who have one and understand the purpose. Companies often see the newsletter as simply a way to showcase new products, and see it as a monthly chore. As we’ve discussed, this ‘broadcasting’ of your products is much less effective these days, as customers have a lot of ‘noise’ to sort through during their daily routine.

A company newsletter should focus on your customers, not you. If they simply want to see a list of new products, they’ll visit the website. Here’s an example to help understand how to ‘turn around’ your thinking on newsletter content. I have a friend who’s a photographer, and I was trying to talk her into sending her clients a newsletter (yes, I think marketing 24/7). She replied “Why would I want to send my clients information about photography and how I shoot pictures?” She is thinking that a newsletter is about her company. Instead, I suggested that she give her clients information that may be considered tangential to her business, but very relevant to her clients. For example, for her wedding photography clients, send tips on the best locations and times for weddings. Where are the best deals on bridesmaid dresses? For her portrait clients, send couples or family-focused tips on vacation spots, and include some nice photography she’s done at the location. Her clients will start to look forward to her emails even after their pictures are finished, and will keep her in mind for themselves and friends.

How does this translate to developing a newsletter for your life sciences company that will contribute to your bottom line? Think about your customer first. What are their daily challenges, and how can you use what you’re already doing to help them even more? We helped chemistry building blocks and services provider BioBlocks develop a newsletter using this approach. BioBlocks’ scientists are very savvy with several classes of chemical building blocks, and they utilize this know-how to build their collection. Their newsletter focuses on helping their customers understand the research behind their choices, including patents and drug discovery publications. Of course, their newsletter is tied to their products, but it is not simply a listing of what’s new. As a result, they’ve received many compliments on their newsletter and their mailing list has grown substantially.

Want to get started? Contact us for a free consultation today. Newsletters, like other forms of social media, take time to develop, and there’s no time like the present to begin connecting with your customers. In the meantime, check out our Biotechnology Marketing 101 blog series, and sign up for email updates.

When I started Comprendia little over a year ago, I actually had some doubt as to whether WordPress, a software popular for blogging, could be used to create my entire site. With the knowledge I had of web programming and WordPress, some through my personal usage, I quickly developed a branded, web 2.0 site. Now, it appears to me as if WordPress is taking over. If you look closely, you’ll see many websites are using it. Several nice examples of corporate WordPress sites exist here and here.

Why is WordPress so great? It has a highly customizable front end, with a user friendly back end as well. This translates into professional-looking websites which can be easily edited by non-professionals. This combination creates the potential to make businesses of all sizes more functional on-line and responsive to their customers, even if they choose not to use WordPress blogging feature. It is a stellar example of open source software, meaning that developers literally all over the world have written ‘plugins’ and ‘themes’ for it, making it infinitely customizable. Using it, I created the Comprendia site and the SDBN site quickly. Both are branded sites with many web 2.0 features, and I am able to quickly change content. Additionally, search engines LOVE blogs and WordPress can be configured to dramatically improve your ranking, which I’ve used to quickly reach the first page of results for terms that I think are important.

What does the ‘WordPress Wrevolution’ mean for life science/biotech companies? For small companies, it means you can set up a professional looking website with an integrated blog, and it can be branded and doesn’t have to look like open source software. Interesting scientific news and articles can easily be fed into your site, adding functionality and content. Your site can easily be integrated with and leverage other social media, creating a comprehensive strategy gain exposure and new customers. Mid-size life science companies Accelrys and Promega use WordPress for their blogs, even Johnson & Johnson’s JNJBTW blog uses it! Hopefully, this embracing of WordPress means we’ll see more blogs and interactivity from biotech, life science, and pharma companies in the future. Currently, as we’ve covered, the number of blogs from our industry is very small.

My niece Anne is doing a ‘virtual internship’ with me this summer, and some of this includes learning WordPress so she can update the Comprendia and SDBN sites. Typical of her generation, I asked her to do it, and although she knew little about it to begin with, she told me you ‘just have to figure it out’ and picked it up quickly. We can all learn a lot from her attitude, and realize this ‘just do it’ mentality is all we really need, regardless of whether we ‘grew up’ with Facebook.

How do you get started? Check out the links below to get your feet wet. While we encourage you to try it yourself, we can also help you to create a branded and unique website and blog, or integrate a blog with your existing website. We work with a team of designers and developers, and together with you we’ll create a site that will help you to grow quickly. Contact us for more information, check out our Biotechnology Marketing 101 blog series, and sign up for updates via our RSS feed.

WordPress Resources

Special thanks to Anne Warner, student at Indiana’s Taylor University, for composing this list. You can follow Anne on twitter at @anwarner. This is Anne’s ‘Summer of Social Media.’ ;)

I got an e-newsletter recently from a company announcing that they had ‘entered the blogosphere.’ I thought this comment was odd because it was as if they started a blog just for the sake of starting a blog. This ‘on the bandwagon’ sentiment is common and likely in response to all of the hype surrounding social media and blogs.

You probably know that in general I believe that yes, companies should have a blog, and I’m usually happy when any life science or biotechnology company starts one, even if the initial intentions are misguided or vague. One of the catch-22′s of social media is that you don’t often understand a medium until you experience it, something we discussed in our Social Media for Scientists presentation to the SDBN. I do think that the above mentioned company will ‘get it’ over time. They’ll begin seeing a much faster-paced and informative dialog with their customers which will ultimately result in improvement of their products and the attraction of new customers.

However, because of the ‘chicken and egg’ phenomenon of social media, an overall change in perspective will take some time. It will probably be similar to the collective realization by companies that took place 12-15 years ago that they needed to have a web presence. Sometimes, as well, a company doesn’t ‘get it’ until they see an example, or see that their competitor is doing it. How do we ‘jump start’ this process? It begins by realizing that the answer isn’t simply to ‘have a blog’ but to understand greater driver that customers expect to be engaged with now and not broadcasted to. All around, we see examples of companies or even media outlets that are unresponsive, and failing as a result. Examples of those companies who ‘get it right’ do help, but unfortunately there are few in life sciences or biotechnology.

We’ve compiled a list of biotechnology companies with blogs below, and because the number from all sectors is so small, we’ve put them together, as disparate as they may appear. Let us know if we’ve missed any, and we’d love to see this list grow! There are so many valuable ways that a blog or social media can be used, and we are lucky that in biotechnology, there is a wealth of information for us to share. ‘Whether ’tis nobler in the blog to suffer the slings and arrows of social media, or to take arms against the status quo…’ You get the picture.

We also suggest that you look at successful social media examples and blogs in other industries. Also, as the title suggests, consider that blogging may not be the solution for every company. A newsletter, forum, or even starting by making your website more dynamic (web 2.0) may be the right next step. Indeed, companies such as Stemgent have a wiki and a forum, giving them an ‘honorable mention’ in this post.

Need help? Contact Comprendia, we specialize in social media strategies designed to help you engage your customers and grow. We’ll make sure you ‘get it’ from the start by setting up a ‘social media charter’ which will guide and integrate your efforts. We’ll also be covering issues on blogging and social media in our Biotechnology Marketing 101 series, sign up for updates!

Life Science, Biotech & Pharma Companies with Blogs

Special thanks to the friendfeed Life Scientists room for helping me compile this list.