We monitor the Twitter status updates for every life science conference, and noticed something very curious about the number of these so-called Tweets for two recent conferences, the American Society for Cell Biology conference (ASCB) and the British Society for Immunology Congress (BSI). We found that although the ASCB meeting had about 8 times the number of attendees as BSI, the number of Tweets from the former is only slightly larger (~20% more for ASCB). Further analysis of the BSI Tweets showed a great effort by a life science company which generated a lot of buzz and more Twitter activity. Their campaign demonstrates five elements necessary to successfully engage life scientists at a conference and generate new leads, and we detail them below.

1. Planning. At first we thought the large number of Tweets (per attendee) for the BSI conference might be a result of the conference organizers promoting Twitter, for example displaying the hashtag prominently on the website (the hashtag is a text identifier that begins with “#” appended to status updates related to the conference, e.g., #ASCB2011). However, we found that both the BSI and ASCB organizers did equally poorly in this aspect (sorry, the truth may hurt, they could learn a lot from the ACS or our guide). However, Life Technologies (LIFE) picked up the slack by Tweeting the hashtag early and creating a video featuring the hashtag and announcing their presence at the conference. Planning ahead not only generates anticipation for the event, but allows researchers to come to the conference ready to participate in social media. Conversely, no company took the lead for ASCB, and the request by President Sandy Schmid to Tweet more during the first day of the conference likely fell mostly on deaf ears. Life scientists, if they do Tweet, are much less likely to get started in the throes of a conference than if they plan ahead by setting up the hashtag search, making sure they have access to the internet, bringing a charged smart phone, etc. (and we won’t bring up ASCB’s little incident in 2009, because they rectified it quickly).
2. Creativity. LIFE came up with a campaign for the BSI conference which included wristbands and small gifts which they gave out to anyone who Tweeted with the hashtag #giftfromlife. These items, along with the video they created, were likely inexpensive but they got a lot of mileage out of them such as retweeting by scientists with pictures, which spread the message. Perhaps contrary to our comments in #1 regarding new Twitterers at conferences, these free gifts actually motivated two attendees to Tweet for the first time! Yes, scientists swoon over freebies, and it was clear that the buzz was so strong that even non-Twitterers heard about it.
3. Fun. This ‘buzz contagion’ was likely due to the tone that LIFE set from the beginning video, calling the ‘stars’ of it ‘Tweethearts’ and warmly welcoming people to meet them. It was clear that they cared about the scientists, enjoyed using social media to connect, and their jobs as well, leading to a fun atmosphere. With budgets tightening, and all the information that is freely available on the web, conference and exhibit attendance is waning. This ‘joie de vivre’ is what is needed to attract life scientists back into exhibit halls where they can interact with the tool providers which aim to help them, and we commend LIFE for their efforts.
4. Engagement. Comparing the Tweets of each conference it was clear that at BSI there was more of a friendly vibe between scientists and companies, while at ASCB one life scientist commented that 50 ‘random vendors’ were Tweeting, indicating a disconnect. We have noticed that some companies think that it is acceptable to schedule all Tweets ahead of the conference, and don’t engage with scientists at all during the event! Contrary to this, LIFE staff Tweeted a lot during the BSI meeting, even responding to the wifi issue. Additionally, they did a great job of introducing themselves virtually via pictures and IRL (in real life), as one BSI attendee commented.
5. 24/7. It was also clear from LIFE’s tweets that they didn’t just ramp up Tweets for the conference, they have been involved with the community and likely knew some of the Twitter-savvy attendees before going in. This not only led to a seamless transition to Tweeting from the conference, but also helped them plan their strategy as they know what works. It is clear to us that some life science companies start Tweeting at a conference and expect results. As we’ve talked about before, companies need to work on social media 24/7, not just when you want results (but there are also ways you can easily work it into your daily routine.)

We didn’t work with LIFE on this campaign, but know one of its leaders through our interactions on Twitter, Nicol Watson, Regional Market Development Manager at Life Technologies in Paisley, UK. Nicol told me that he actually initiated the #BSI2011 hashtag a few months ago, and he shares our aim to encourage life science hashtag utilization. He added “We wanted to improve the BSI 2011 conference experience for everyone and make researchers feel special. When a researcher used the #giftfromlife hashtag, we personalized a gift for them, and we really made some great connections at the conference.” The #giftfromlife hashtag was used 107 times and even ‘transmogrified’ into #giftforlife!

Clearly, the LIFE team created a buzz and likely got many great leads from their efforts (sometimes difficult from Twitter or Facebook), for what seems like a modest budget. If you want to achieve this at your next event, start now and let us know how we can help, we can also provide in depth analyses of any 2011 life science conference social media activities through our Social Media Compass reports.

To share this post, cut and paste: A Tale Of Two Twitters: The Secrets To One Life Science Company’s Conference Success http://bit.ly/tu2xyw

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

To share this post easily, cut and paste: Life Science Facebook Engagement: Which Companies Are Creating ‘Contagious’ Pages? http://bit.ly/sTb2Uw

Here’s our most recent playlist of links and tips for life science marketing and social media:

1. Sigma updates website.

   Sigma Adrich has updated their website. It looks nice (except I think they need to be consistent with the red–it’s too light at the top) and time will tell whether life science researchers find it easier to use. The video about the new site shows 4-5 staff members describing the changes and excitement they have for it (frankly I’d rather just see the updates). The video is a bit over the top–did they really work with the ‘top designers in the world’? From the web 2.0 standpoint, they now have favorites and product reviews, which is great, and it looks to be iPad compatible. Social media is not prominently displayed–links are in gray at the bottom right. They indicate that it is the ‘first stage in their digital evolution.’ The sophisticated video makes me think of this post about every company needing to be a media company now. Is your company expanding its video production team?

2. Tineye image search.

   This is cool. Ever see an image in an Ad, or get sent an image that someone in your group wants to use in some marketing materials, but don’t know where it’s from? Enter Tineye–upload an image from your computer or give the original web address and the application will try to locate it on the web so you can purchase it, etc. It has saved me many times!

3. Millipore creates iPad app.

   Millipore, now EMD Millipore, has launched an iPad application which helps researchers map histone modifications, and lists publications and their products that are related. This app can be seen to extend the tools they have on the web, such as clickable pathways and a GPCR and kinase profiling tool. They have a very content rich, and web 2.0 site in several ways (interface and layout), but their social media presence is not very engaging, which is a shame. The iPad app is a nice addition, it will be interesting to see how popular it is.

4. Life Technologies launches Invitrogen and Applied BioSystems Facebook pages.

   OK this move confuses me. LIFE has been very active in social media, creating an overall corporate presence and ‘personalities’ for different product lines (e.g., Everyday Cloning). They’ve recently launched Invitrogen and Applied Biosystems Facebook pages. In our workshops and training, we talk about the fact that life scientists need to find value to participate in social media–what is the value in following a broad product line? To me, it muddies the identity of LIFE as a brand. An additional complication is that Facebook has organization pages for each of these sub brands (example), which the company has no control over. Whatever happens, you can follow all of LIFE social media via the RSS or email alert we’ve created.

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 playlists delivered to your inbox.

To share this post easily cut and paste: Sound Bytes: Links and Tips For Life Science Marketing & Social Media 5/26/2011 http://bit.ly/soundbytes05_26

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.

To share this post easily, cut and paste: A Picture is Worth 1K Words: Using Word Clouds for Life Science Marketing and Communication http://bit.ly/lifecloud

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

We’re starting something new here, inspired by our friends Mike Spear and Walter Jessen, who each provide posts with useful links and summaries regularly. Our ‘flavor’ will be focused on life science & biotech marketing and social media, all meant to keep you up to speed on the interesting things we’ve found during the week. We’re documenting all of the links on the bookmark sharing site Delicious under the ‘soundbytes‘ tag, so you can always reference them (and even sign up for RSS updates–look for the orange RSS symbol). You’ll note that there are many bookmarks there now…we’ve had this in the works for a while. Without further ado, here are our first Sound Bytes!

1. Google Announces ‘Caffeine,’ a new ‘as it happens’ search engine feature.

This link’s a bit outdated, but very important, so I’m including it. Google may be feeling pressure from more timely searches available from Twitter, and introduced this new feature which indexes a ‘subsection of the internet’ quickly. What does this mean for you? We talk about in our workshops and training that search engines love dynamic websites, and this new feature turns this affection up to 11. Which ‘subsection of the internet’ do they index quickly? No one outside Google really knows, but I’m guessing blogs and other social media applications are being indexed quickly. For the Comprendia blog, our posts often ‘hit’ the first page of our target Google search engine keywords within minutes of posting. They may fade away depending on their popularity, but we get great ‘Google Juice’ almost immediately. Meaning? Start that blog yesterday, and post often!

2. More fallout from ScienceBlogs’ ‘PepsiGate’: New Wired Science Bloggers and Bora Zivkovic heads to Scientific American.

We covered ‘PepsiGate,’ Seed Media’s unfortunate episode hiring Pepsico bloggers for ScienceBlogs, and how many bloggers left the popular site. Since that time, many players have ‘stepped to the plate’ to offer these bloggers a home, and Wired Science is one of them. Their effort is certainly one to watch, as is the more ‘home grown’ network Scientopia. This week, the highly respected ex-ScienceBlogs blogger Bora Zivcovik announced he’s helping Scientific American launch a new science blogging network. What does this mean for you, the life science marketer? Advertising on these new sites is definitely a possibility, but I’d like you to think beyond this type of broadcast advertising and think about how you could help these sites in a more context-specific manner. It’s very ironic that the addition of Pepsico to the ScienceBlogs roster caused this cascade of events–if Seed Media had instead chosen a life science company-hosted blog, the outcome would have been very different!

3. Creating Social Media Business Guidelines.

We covered this topic in our Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshop 2, and as things usually go in this fast paced area, a few great resources have come out since then. Check out this post, it’s a gold mine!

4. RSS feed for Life Technologies Social Media.

Interested in seeing how LIFE is doing social media? We’ve aggregated all of their accounts into a single RSS feed, allowing you to view it in an RSS reader or get email updates. We also created a Twitter list so you can follow them easily. They’re the most active company in life science social media, incorporating many brands, you can learn from them by watching what they’re doing.

That’s all for now, folks, we’ll make another life science marketing mix tape for you in about a week, and sign up for email updates so you won’t miss anything! Stay tuned also for Sound Bytes Videos with tips and tricks from our workshops and training.

To share this post easily, cut and paste: Sound Bytes: Tips For Life Science Marketing & Social Media 9/16/2010 http://bit.ly/soundbytes0916