Recently Facebook announced a new metric, ‘people talking about,’ would be available on the left sidebar of pages below the number of likes. The number shows how many people have interacted with the page by liking it, commenting, or sharing, and it is meant to show how active a page is. We used this number to do an analysis of around 45 life science companies on Facebook, helping us to understand which companies are successfully engaging life scientists, and why they are successful.

Two charts are needed to fully understand the data, and you can also look at the raw data in the Google document. The first chart shows the number of ‘people talking about’ for each page, along with the percent engagement, or this number divided by the total number of ‘likes’ for a page. You can see that Life Technologies holds all five top spots for ‘people talking about’: Invitrogen, Applied BioSystems, Life Technologies, Molecular Probes Handbook Club, and GIBCO Cell Culture. We applaud them for their efforts, and have been tracking their activity, which helps us to understand what the numbers mean. The Invitrogen and Applied BioSystems pages were launched about six months ago, and we noticed growth was slow for months. Recently both pages have shot up in the # of likes, and we are fairly sure this growth is due to advertising. So, since the ‘people talking about’ number includes how many people have liked the pages, these numbers are high for the pages now, and will likely only be sustained with advertising.

We have found that Facebook ‘likes’ can be obtained for about $1 each (contact us to learn more), so by much hand waving you can surmise that LIFE is putting a healthy budget into Facebook advertising, perhaps $10-20K per month.

The numbers in the first chart also speak to great content which the top companies are providing. Engagement will surely go down after the $ is spent if the content does not continue to engage. The chart above is probably biased by the influx of advertising dollars, so we also charted the total number of life science page ‘likes’ below. LIFE has pages that have grown greatly due to the content, the Cell Imaging and Molecular Probes Handbook Pages are excellent examples. This content must be not simply a broadcast of a company’s products, something we’ve discussed before regarding life science companies on Twitter.

How do the companies find the content? We’ve found custom RSS feeds, which pull information about a topic from all over the internet, including news, blogs, and Twitter, to be vital for this tactic, and we can set one up for you.

As a scientist or a former scientist, you may want to know how we can reconcile these two metrics and find the top 10 life science Facebook pages. We tried combining the rankings for both charts, and the result was that the ranking was the same for the top chart. So, unfortunately or fortunately at this time for Facebook, money talks, likely because it is somewhat uncharted territory. There are around 750,000 Facebook users who indicate they have a life science degree (data not shown), so a ‘land grab’ for them will likely be taking place over the next year for those who have the resources and a defined social media strategy. Additionally, companies must think about how to capture the leads from these efforts. Stay tuned, we plan to provide resources for 2012 social media planning soon. Also, check out our own Facebook page, where we keep tabs on life science activity. Here are the top 10 Life Science Facebook Pages for those who like lists:

1. Invitrogen
2. Applied Biosystems
3. Life Technologies
4. Cell Imaging
5. Molecular Probes Handbook Club
6. GIBCO Cell Culture
7. Engaging Epigenetics Experts
8. Promega Corporation
9. New England Biolabs
10. Ion Torrent by Life Technologies

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Life Technologies Social Media Word Cloud made using the RSS Feed and Tagxedo (click to enlarge)

Word or tag clouds are visualizations which help us to understand the meaning of an aggregate of text by correlating the size of the words with their prevalence in it. As the title suggests, the picture shown here describes the concept best. While the depictions are often correlated with blogs, twitter streams, and other social media, their utility extends beyond this area. In this post, we list several ways that life science companies can use word clouds to understand customers’ needs and adapt marketing and communication strategies to meet them.

1. Analyzing Social Media Sentiment. For the life science marketer, comments made by life scientists on social media applications represent an ‘amorphous’ form of market research. Instead of direct questions being asked and answered, researchers give candid opinions about research areas, products, events, or anything else they want to talk about. As an example, check out the word cloud made from the Society for Neuroscience 2010 meeting tweets. From this cloud, you can see that important topics at the meeting were Glenn Close‘s talk, an article about spooky coloured auras (from a non-American author), and that the exhibit hall booths were well represented. The raw data must be aggregated and analyzed, these associations may not be clear just from the word cloud. However, it concisely shows the ‘buzz’ at the meeting without having to read a single tweet. As such, word clouds can be used effectively understand and communicate the sentiment from conferences, tweet streams, forums, blogs, etc.
2. Market Research. Although traditional surveys produce data that is more structured than social media sentiment, we’ve found that word clouds can be used to effectively capture important take home messages in market research. As an example, for our client 89 North we surveyed fluorescence researchers to determine the requirements for the fluorXchange, a web 2.0 resource for scientists. We got excellent answers to our open ended questions, and made a word cloud from all of the text. From the visualization, we confirmed that a major ‘pain’ for these researchers was related to improving the signal to noise in their experiments. As a result, we chose to include a wiki along with a forum which would allow them to upload experimental images and fully discuss signal to noise issues. For another example, see the word cloud from our poll of San Diego Biotechnology Network members we used to plan the 2010 meetings.
3. Social Media Messaging and Voice. Just as external social media sentiment is amorphous, a company’s collection of posted content, from different individuals and departments, can be nebulous. The image for this post is from all of Life Technologies‘ (LIFE) social media over the past ten weeks. It is comprised of 16 Twitter accounts, two Facebook pages, and their YouTube channel, you can see the RSS feed here and even subscribe to email updates. The archive contained about 1,000 items posted from LIFE representatives. Note that ‘cell’ is the most prevalent word, and terms relating to DNA sequencing are also prominent. Does the makeup of this cloud represent the topics that their customers are interested in? Also, notice that there a few ‘feeling’ words, such as thanks, friends, and love, but that most of the words are about science or events. Is this the proper level of engagement that LIFE should be using? Interestingly, the word ‘market’ is prominent, due to the fact that they have tweeted about the ‘market size’ of an area in several instances–are life scientists interested in this topic? Also, from many accounts LIFE is trying to make strides into human health, is that reflected in their social media? From the outside it is difficult to determine whether the content and voice matches their objectives. If your company don’t yet have enough social media data to analyze, consider using other communications such as tech service logs. Note: Our purpose is not to be critical of LIFE, they are doing a fantastic job as one of the most active life science companies in social media. We’d like to start a dialog in this area and we are grateful that they are ‘blazing a trail.’
4. Internal Motivation. Word clouds based on customer needs can help life science marketing, sales, and technical service groups convey a common message in everyday conversations, marketing materials, and can even help with product development. Help your team to understand by being creative: post or distribute ‘customer clouds’ in sales guides, give easy-to-update framed clouds for desks, or post them in hallways. Do ‘company clouds’ match your intended message? If not, make your own to emphasize words which more closely match your desired voice and post or distribute them. With cool tools like Tagxedo, you can make them artistic and in any shape, as we did with the LIFE logo above.

Other tools to create tag clouds are Wordle (many artistic options) and TagCrowd (fewer artistic options, but word removal available). In addition, several Twitter and Blog tools will generate word clouds. We did this analysis for free, but it did require that we archive the information for 10 weeks, as the free tools rarely allow for this. At our Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshop 4 we discuss the paid and free tools, and ways to aggregate raw data from life science social media and analyze it.

If you think that this technology seems too simple, consider that the more complex sentiment analysis software designed for larger brands requires much more data. Try word clouds with the data you have in house, you may be surprised with the insights you will gain and the ability to communicate your message internally and externally.

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

1. Life Technologies’ New Look

Someone could write a book about the different branding of Life Technologies throughout the years. To me, they were the first company to really bring a distinctive branding to life science products, and I think following them is important to learn about how companies can deal with the challenges of consolidation. Check out how they’re using the Life Technologies brand as an umbrella for the many company brands they represent. One former Invitrogen employee told me that it is reminiscent of IVGN’s early days. What do you think? It is also interesting in light of CEO Greg Lucier’s comments that the company will expand into the medical area in the next year. Will this new branding be used, or will they require more differentiation for this market?

2. The Social Network.

I just saw this movie about the genesis of Facebook and I’m ‘assigning’ it to anyone who is interested in creating social media applications for life scientists. While the movie tends to focus on the negatives of the early days of Facebook, it also shows how this application, which faced considerable competition from the likes of MySpace and Friendster, differentiated itself and eventually won the race. To me, it underlined the importance of usability and understanding what motivates people to participate in social networks.

3. HIV/AIDS New Media Guide.

This is a great resource from AIDS.gov which gives both a basic overview as well as examples of how new media is being used to engage HIV/AIDS patients and advocates. Even if you’re trying to engage a different audience, it’s a great site to look through and bookmark. As with much of new media, the site itself engages as it educates.

4. The Semantic Web is coming….

As we’ve discussed, the changes happening on the web aren’t just about people interacting or even your ability to engage your customers more. The data structure of the web is changing and you need to take notice as it will change e-commerce, likely sooner rather than later. Here is one article to pique your interest.

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.

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

1. Life Technologies launches Invitrogen Select, a publication alert aggregator.

As we’ve talked about here, research publications are the ‘glue’ that tie life science researchers together, and LIFE is ingeniously tapping into this with it’s new Invitrogen Select website and service. Researchers can sign up for publication alerts in a variety of fields, and LIFE adds an unobtrusive text advertisement at the end of the publication titles. It’s a nice tool for researchers because it is difficult to set up Pubmed alerts which all appear in one email.

2. How to build a social media cheat sheet for any topic.

This is brilliant and self explanatory, I highly suggest doing it to become an expert on any life science topic and/or to generate content for your social media campaigns. If you don’t feel as though you have the time, check out our Custom RSS service, we can generate daily emails for you.

3. The buzz is all about Quora right now…

Quora is a site everyone’s talking about, it is a ‘clearing house’ of questions and answers for any topic. It looks like it will be good for finding thought leaders/KOLs, information, and to establish yourself in an area.

4. LinkedIn Labs launches.

Looks like LinkedIn is launching a bunch of new search tools. This is hot off the presses, I haven’t had time to look into it, as always help yourself! LinkedIn is a treasure trove of information, having more access to it is bound to be very useful.

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 10/14/2010 http://bit.ly/soundbytes1014

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

A few months ago we did an analysis of life scientists’ utilization of social media applications, studied the applications ourselves, and published our findings. Based on this study, and our own experience, we’ve developed the STIR Social Media™ system which helps life science companies develop strategies and tactics which will both attract life scientists and maximize their return on investment (ROI). STIR is an acronym for the four attributes which social media applications and campaigns must achieve to succeed: Sticky, Transparent, Intuitive, and Resonating.

In our workshops and on this blog, we’ve pointed out that life science companies have been utilizing strategies and tactics that are similar to those behind social media for decades. Social media is about ‘paying it forward’ and providing resources which go beyond self-promotion, see this blog post for some examples of life science companies who have been doing this for years. Social media involves taking these resources to the next level, and using all the web 2.0 tools available to engage scientists in a two-way conversation rather than broadcasting messages to them. This can be tricky, and based on our studies and experience, we’ve developed the STIR Social Media system to help, its four attributes are described below.

Sticky. Create a site or application which has almost immediate attraction for scientists, providing reasons for them to visit, interact, and return. We’ve all heard about, then visited sites which we never return to again because they’re not sticky. My favorite example of a sticky website for life scientists is BiomedExperts. When you create an account and login, the application allows you to upload your publications, and you’re instantly connected to everyone you’ve ever published with. As such, they’ve circumvented the negative impact of the network effect that plagues many young social networking sites, a brilliant move by the developers of this application.

Transparent. Scientists are skeptical of anything that has the slightest hint of marketing or advertising in it. They love your products, and have lots of brand loyalty, but hate to be be marketed to. An example I like to use is UC Davis Professor Jonathan Eisen’s response to what he calls ‘Stimulus Spam‘ which refers to emails sent by companies eager to help (and profit from) researchers applying for ARRA/stimulus funding. Now, I do think some of the resources that companies provided were useful to scientists, but you can see that they were viewed otherwise by some in the community. As such, social media programs must be handled with complete transparency, as you can imagine campaigns in which the identity of the sponsoring company is not immediately known is a recipe for disaster. I have no examples of life science companies who’ve made this mistake, but read about the 3M social media debacle to help understand why it is so important. Being 100% transparent also means that ties to your products will be much more easily made. A good example in the life sciences is the Accelrys blog, which is completely transparent in its intentions and has great links to their products.

Intuitive. During our study of social media applications for life scientists, we were curious as to why BiomedExperts had so many more users than Scilink, when in essence they have the same premise, in other words connecting scientists via their publications. We surmised that part of it may be that the BiomedExperts interface is much more easy to navigate, or intuitive. Scilink appears to be gone now, so comparisons can no longer be made. This intuitiveness quality speaks to the way we have all been accustomed to the increased functionality of websites. We gravitate towards what is easy, gives us what we want, and what we understand quickly. Related to these expectations, intuitiveness also means that users need to know what’s expected of them in a given interface. For example, users come to LinkedIn to network and find business, and Facebook to share information and socialize, so any activities you plan for either application should match with these expectations. The Invitrogen Everydaycloning Facebook page is a good example of an intuitive application, as the content is useful, light, and social, and encourages fans to engage.

Resonating. Develop a theme that resonates with life scientists; one they can relate to and participate easily in. There are myriad places for scientists to spend time online, and your website or application must resonate with them in order for them to remember it and return. Sigma’s Wherebiobegins campaign is a good example of a resonating theme. They’ve asked scientists “where did your BIO begin?”, and have gotten great engagement on Facebook and other applications from them in the form of videos and comments.

The four STIR Social Media system attributes work together to define social media campaigns and applications that both attract scientists and achieve a favorable ROI. I’m not brave enough to call out those that don’t meet all four requirements, but you can check out our list of life science companies using social media and judge for yourself.

Want to learn how to become a STIR Social Media expert so that you can develop winning campaigns for your company? Attend our ‘on demand’ Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshop 1 webinar, a three hour workshop which will explain these concepts in more detail, and give you worksheets which will help you to jump start social media at your company. Additionally, we’re offering a series of workshops, with the second being held in San Diego June 22nd. We’ll be offering it as an interactive webinar and on demand as well soon. Sign up for email updates so you’ll always be on top of the developments.

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