Here’s a presentation I gave at the University of Minnesota about networking, including audio. I got great rapport from the grad students and they are hungry to network! We thought it would be great if companies or organizations sponsored networking events, seems like a win-win for all, and we do it in San Diego successfully. Let us know if you’re interested in holding events in your region!

We were thrilled when the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology asked us to host an event with them during the Experimental Biology (#EB2012) conference this month in San Diego, see descriptions of it on the SDBN blog and ASBMB website. The event will focus on improving science communication (#SciComm), and as you know we’re big proponents of using new media towards this end. We’ve seen some spectacular examples of scientists and organizations using new tools to reach their peers, the public, and even to get funding. Here, we highlight great examples of new media science communication, and invite those who will be attending the #EB2012 event (#EB2012Tweetup) to share their own stories.

1. #IAmScience. Kevin Zelnio, a freelance science writer who blogs for the DeepSeaNews and Scientific American, started a meme on Twitter around non-traditional paths to becoming a scientist. He found that many scientists described surprisingly diverse paths to becoming a scientist, fueled by passion more than genius (see the video of the Tweets). He thought that the collected stories would make a great resource to personalize scientists and encourage those who are intimidated because they see a scientific career as a ‘one size fits all’ endeavor. He ran a KickStarter project to raise funds, and he was very successful so the project is underway. The personal side of science is being communicated by those who have some extra time to tell their story and Kevin’s passion for the project, and the book will be in electronic form with some print copies for inner city schools.
2. #MyResearch. Great minds think alike, Vancouver professor Raul Pacheco-Vega started the #MyResearch hashtag on Twitter during the 2012 AAAS meeting in January to encourage scientists to describe their research. To date, more than 1700 status updates have resulted, and many tried to make their research understandable by laymen in 129 characters. In these first two examples, scientists have come up with easy ways that other researchers can take time out of their busy days to learn how to communicate and gain perspective, which is a big win.
3. SciFund. We’ve covered this fantastic initiative in which researchers raise money for their work in this blog post and Twitter chat. Through the help of passionate founder Jai Ranganathan and the crowdfunding application Rockethub, scientists pitched their research to the public last fall and raised $76,000! While raising money for science is cool, Jai admits he has a hidden agenda for the initiative, namely to help scientists learn how to communicate their research to the public. We’re soliciting questions about #SciComm from those registering for the #EB2012Tweetup, and several want to know how to achieve a balance between being accurate and capturing the attention of readers. Jai has done some analyses on which campaigns were the most successful, and sees that, perhaps not surprisingly, the number of pageviews correlates to the amount raised. Further, he finds that the size of network of the scientist directly relates to the amount of funding they raised, pointing to the importance of this facet of #SciComm. SciFund will begin again in May 2012 and we will watch its progress via their blog.
4. Great blogging networks. Where do we begin here? We scratched the surface on science blogs in a recent post about life science networks. They not only do a superb job of translating complex science for thousands of readers, but they also discuss the important issues surrounding science communication. Perhaps a good way to get a handle on them is to visit the website for their biggest IRL (in real life) gathering, ScienceOnline. Read the discourses on science communication on the blogs to get an overview of their role in advancing the topic, and follow the #scio12, #scio13, and #SciComm hashtags on Twitter as well. Also, it’s always a good bet to start from the source, and follow Bora Zivkovic aka the ‘BlogFather,’ and the Scientific American (#SciAm) blog network he helped develop.
5. Supporting life science organizations. We were not surprised when ASBMB approached us about the event at #eb2012 because we’ve been communicating with Angela Hopp, editor of ASBMB Today, on Twitter. ASBMB supports science communication through this publication, sometimes inviting bloggers and Twitterers to contribute. We’ve also had great experiences with the American Chemical Society, whose success with social media, including a great blog, encourages life scientists to participate in new media as well. We had a great time catching up with them at the latest ACS meeting in San Diego, and the number of Twitter status updates almost doubled in number compared to the last meeting (internal data). Great work guys! Equally impressive are the folks at Nature. They not only have great blogs and are active on Twitter, they support regional science online discussion groups in London, New York and they’re expanding to the US west coast as well.
6. Scientists using new media. We see great conversations happening on Twitter every day, from scientific discourses to daily encouragement. We see scientists who want to help their colleagues communicate better, a stellar example is this blog about creating better poster presentations by Zen Faulkes (the Comic Sans font used in the image is a hat tip to them, as they like to make fun of it). Clearly, new media tools make it easier for scientists to communicate with each other, and they’re doing a fantastic job. While it is hard to measure the benefit to the field, it is surely multiplied when more researchers and professionals decide to get involved with new media.

Our April 23^rd event will focus on helping scientists learn to use the new tools for science communication. We are polling them to find which area they feel as though they need it the most, here are the options:

• My career path and choices
• Funding my research
• Finding the right project
• Connecting with peers/networking

If you use new media for science communication and are attending the event at #EB2012, we want to hear your success stories! Please think about how your blog, Twitter discussions, or the use of other online tools have helped you in the areas above, and write about it. Leave a link in the comments below or tag a Tweet with the event hashtag #EB2012Tweetup. We’ll highlight the stories online and at the event. We’re also looking forward to meeting you all April 23^rd!

Special thanks to Geoff Hunt for helping organize this event and to New England BioLabs and Mendeley for sponsoring.

To share this post, cut and paste: New Media Science Communication, What’s Working? Our #EB2012 Event Will Highlight #SciComm Successes http://bit.ly/IclAWn

Believe it or not, we still run into life science companies who haven’t drunk the social media Kool-Aid. In other words, they don’t think their customers use the applications and are not ready to commit to spending resources on them. My answer to them? Everyone Googles. New media has a profound affect on the results from the tool that most of us use daily to get everything from news to recipes. Life scientists are no different, and find technical information, publications, and information about products using Google. Here, we’ll show you 5 ways to capitalize on the pervasiveness of Google drive more traffic to your website and to make broader improvements to your marketing process.

1. Simple Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There is a lot of low hanging fruit that we see many life science companies missing out of in terms of SEO. Surprisingly, it is left off of many web development projects. The web is full of quick guides, and here are our recommendations:
   • Do keyword research and find the top terms people are searching for.
   • Use the top keywords in the titles, content, and SEO summaries of each page. Always write for humans, not the search robots, as no robot will ever purchase a product from you.
   • Submit your website changes directly to Google so that it is always up to date on your content (this can be done automatically via programs that create and submit XML site maps).
2. Create a dynamic website. I like to think of Google as imitating a human in some ways. If you visit a website a few times, and it never changes, you assume you know everything that it contains, and there isn’t really a reason to keep returning. Google assumes the same, and that the converse is also true—it assumes sites with changing content are worth visiting and ranks them higher. Of course, there are many websites that try to game the SEO system, so random content is not acceptable, but as long as you’re writing real content for humans, you’ll do well. Examples include blogs, forums, and FAQs. We’ve also covered how making these changes won’t just improve SEO, they can also affect your bottom line. Running your website using a content management system (CMS) will help the marketing team make more regular updates.
3. Use Google Tools. The best things in life are (mostly) free, Google proves this with myriad applications available for improving your website and driving traffic to it. We could write a whole blog post on their tools, here is the short version of the applications we recommend:
   • Google Analytics. A no-brainer. Install a snippet of code on the pages you want to monitor, and get a wealth of information about traffic, keywords, conversions, and more.
   • Google Adwords. Drive traffic to your website and do research on keywords and Ad copy at the same time, and you can even look at what your competitors are doing. Get real time feedback on your customers’ interests with any size budget.
   • Google Webmaster Tools. This resource is a bit less well known and it is unclear to me why it is separate from Google Analytics. The two are intertwined, and by logging into Webmaster Tools, and installing the code on your website, you can access more features such as seeing how many/which websites link to your site (important for SEO). Also, you can set your site up to submit XML sitemaps to Google here as well.
4. Use Social Media. Google loves dynamic websites and it is becoming enamored with social media too. Why? Because with social media Google can take advantage of human brains to filter the increasing amount of information on the internet, much of it designed to fool search engines. Very few spammers can convince hundreds of people to ‘like’ or share their content, but a post that appeals to humans will be amplified in these ways. ‘Social search‘ is the term used to describe the augmentation of search engine results from a person’s online social network, it aims to give you suggestions based on what your friends and colleagues like. It is currently just a part of SEO algorithms, which we don’t have access to as they are proprietary, but this post shows some convincing data regarding its importance. Indeed, 60% of the results on the first page for a Google search of ‘Comprendia’ are from social media applications such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, showing the importance of content and activity on these applications. Google+, a social network from the search giant, launched in June 2011 and Search, Plus Your World was announced January 2012. Now, Google+ users will get Google search results that their contacts have recommended. We’ll admit that we haven’t taken to Google+ as much as we thought we would, but this change has big implications. As a company, you could directly influence the search results of everyone who has connected to your Google+ brand page (hint: get one now…). Now, while not everyone is sold on Google+, many have Gmail, and it is tempting to speculate that Google will someday leverage these 350 million users. Also, Google owns so much of our online lives that it is not inconceivable that they’ll find other ways to sneak into our search with acquisitions, etc.
5. Analyze and repeat. Here is the fun part. Everything mentioned in this post can be directly measured quickly, so you can track your progress and repeat what works. Here are analysis examples that also track ROI:
   • Track keyword performance and conversions, adjust and move into new keyword areas as necessary.
   • Determine how many people are clicking to your site and converting from social media.
   • Track the ranking of your site with keywords, your traffic, and determine whether it’s leading to more conversions.

   These are just a few possibilities, and in the process you’ll surely come up with new and relevant metrics to track and utilize.

There are many ways life science companies can leverage researchers’ online activities to help them and improve their bottom line. Also, we think you’ll find that by doing so you’ll get more feedback and ideas for directions to take with your product line and online activities. The costs for all the tactics we described are scalable and can be very modest. What are you waiting for? C’mon, everyone’s doing it…

The image for this blog post is based on a children’s book you may have heard of and it was created by my daughter, an aspiring graphic designer!

To share this post, cut and paste: Everyone Googles: How To Leverage The Tool All Life Scientists Use http://bit.ly/GJN718

A recent article from the Huffington Post states that social networks for scientists won’t work because there is no incentive from a career perspective. The piece focuses on ResearchGate and takes a stab at the Economist’s article about the community. Here at Comprendia, we’ve never advocated that Facebook should be recreated for scientists, as there are 700,000+ life science graduates in the US already using the application,* and they are likely already connected there to lab mates and colleagues. Rather, we should broaden our idea of the ‘social network’ to include any online community of scientists, not just those which are similar to Facebook. The value of social networks for scientists lies in faster access to information relevant to their research and the communities that are made more available by new tools. Here are 6 successful examples which can be used to understand scientific social communities.

1. Facebook Pages & LinkedIn Groups. Scientists have used mailing lists and forums for years. Facebook pages and LinkedIn groups are a ’2.0′ version of them with the benefits of centralization and easier access to participants. Life science companies, most notably Life Technologies, have fostered social networks in the form of Facebook pages centered on a topic. We discussed successful life science Facebook pages in the past, and encourage you to visit the Molecular Probes page and NEB’s Engaging Epigenetics Experts page (our client) to see vibrant networks on Facebook centered around a scientific topic. Life Technologies in itself has created a social network of 100K life scientists centered around about 10 product and brand Facebook pages. Additionally, many thriving life science and biotech LinkedIn groups exist, see our list on our partner San Diego Biotechnology Network site. Fantastic LinkedIn groups surrounding topics such as protein and antibody purification exist, but their discussions are closed to those that aren’t in the group (which we hope will change). You can check out the active discussions in this Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery group (which was started by a company).
2. Twitter Hashtags. Scientists use Twitter to share scientific blog posts and news, to find friends and colleagues around a topic or event, and sometimes to vent about their situation. Hashtags, which are text identifiers for status updates on a topic, allow a Twitter social network to form around it, something we’ve covered in depth. Some that are ongoing are #iamscience, #phdchat, and #icanhazpdf, and you can see what conversations they follow by using our guide. Twitter status updates tagged with #scio12, the ScienceOnline2012 conference in January resulted from a ‘community’ of almost 4,500 Twitterers (10 times the attendance) who Tweeted more than 38,000 updates about the conference. Hashtag ‘communities’ can also communicate as a group to the public and affect change (see #5 below).
3. ScienceOnline. Speaking of which. The main conference takes place in January in North Carolina, and is growing by leaps and bounds. Another ScienceOnline event takes place in London in the fall each year, there are related events in New York monthly, and events are planned for the bay area and Seattle/Vancouver as well (Lou Woodley from Nature, personal communication). The IRL (in real life) events are full of hundreds of enthusiastic science communicators who advance the field exponentially, and the conversation takes place year round on Twitter.
4. True Social Networks. As we wrote about a year ago, some of the bona fide social networks have a great following. I’m not sure why Mark Drapeau (the author of the Huffington post article ) is not impressed by ResearchGate’s 1.4 million users, as we know that scientists don’t have time for frivolous endeavors, especially when they’re under the watchful eye of their Principal Investigator. As we noted in our post a year ago, there has to be a value for them to participate, and the successful ones center around research publications. BiomedExperts, CiteULike, ResearchBlogging, and ResearchGate had the highest traffic in our quick study, and they all rely heavily on publications. I like to say that PubMed was the first social network for scientists. Back in ‘my day,’ I learned about collaborators through PubMed, and I got paper copies of their publications when I had time for a trip to the library (yes, I’m old). I usually had to wait for a conference to talk at length with fellow scientists, although we did have email. Today, the conversation can take place all year long, with new connections being made with those who haven’t published in peer reviewed journals yet. These social networks, with access to information and advice from colleagues much more quickly, will have a definite impact on scientists’ careers, contrary to the claims in the Huffington Post article.
5. Publication Sharing/Open Access. Related to the last point is a subject that requires its own mention as it transverses from proper social networks to desktop applications, Twitter, and even a movement to make research publications more accessible. Mendeley is the rock star of the publication sharing/open access genre, boasting 1.77 million users who are sharing 169 million publications. When we speak with life scientists at conferences or client visits, we often hear about the application even from those who are not strong believers in social media. Additionally, these applications have whetted scientists’ appetites for more open access to publications. This thirst for more accessible knowledge was evidenced by the big backlash to the Research Works Act, which limited access to research findings and was brought down by a scientific social network distributed on Twitter (hashtag #RWA) and the blogosphere.
6. Blogs. Colleague William Gunn (at Mendeley) said in a presentation we made together in San Diego a few years ago “blogs were one of the first forms of social media for scientists.” Sometimes these social networks are a bit harder to get a comprehensive understanding of as an outsider, but check out the comments for popular blogs such as ‘In The Pipeline‘ where you’ll see that even drug discovery chemists, stalwarts of hard core life science, participate in blogging communities. A thriving ecosystem of science blogs is visualized in this Google document created by Brian Reid and maintained by the community. Blog aggregators such as ResearchBlogging or ScienceSeeker feature hundreds of blogs and likely a comparable number of communities focused around individual research topics.

The scientist that is described in the Huffington Post article is preoccupied only with the end result of publications, not improving the path towards them. When I was a bench scientist in the 90′s, my limited access to information and colleagues was imposed upon me by the era. I can see that I would have grown into my current career choice much more quickly if given greater access to them. At conferences and networking events today, we are seeing a transition, albeit slowly, to a new breed of scientists who understand the importance of scientific networks. We need to adjust our definition of scientific social networks to understand the next steps towards helping scientists use them to thrive.

What areas do you think the organizations named, or communities themselves should focus on to take scientific social networks to the next level?

*According to the Facebook advertising application.

To share this post easily cut and paste: What Is A Scientific Social Network? 6 Thriving and Inspiring Examples http://bit.ly/yNMcLY

What’s the news from the biggest healthcare investment conference, JP Morgan, happening this week in San Francisco? We’ve created a Tweet cloud of almost 1800 Twitter status updates tagged with #jpm12. Each word is linked to a Twitter search, and you can also see an archive here. How well do you think the Tweets reflect the news and sentiment at the conference? If you’d like a more in depth analysis, contact us.

To share this post easily, cut and paste: JP Morgan Healthcare Conference Tweet Cloud #jpm12 http://bit.ly/jpmcloud

Yes, in fact, we are obsessed with Twitter hashtags, terms that are added to status updates surrounding a topic, event, or chat. They give insights into the discussions and trends by anyone on Twitter who wants to join in, and allow us to discover new people and ideas. We track all the life science hashtags we’ve found, with a bent towards the research tools area (e.g., non-FDA regulated products). We’ve analyzed the utilization of all hashtags in our compilation and have identified the top 10 in 2011 based on the number of Twitter status updates tagged with them. We’re also enamored with word clouds and have displayed them in a clickable image below linked to a Twitter search of the term, the largest words indicating the top hashtags in 2011 (note Twitter searches go back only 8 days, some links may give no results).

We’ve listed the top ten in the table below. Note that this list is by no means perfect, we’ve tried our best to find all the life science hashtags, but may have missed a few, be sure to comment below if you’d like us to track others. Additionally, some topics may extend outside of life science, such as #phdchat. The top ten indicate the versatility of hashtags to discuss topics, events, or to have a targeted chat. It is interesting also to note the prevalence of open access themes, and the influence of the ‘BlogFather‘ Bora Zivkovic who is heavily involved with three of the top 10: #openaccess, #scio12, and #sciamblogs. It shows how digital influencers can impact the landscape of an ecosystem. Two ‘traditional’ conferences made the list, #sfn11 and #bio2011. There are no life science company hashtags in the list, which is of course a big opportunity. A Twitter user recently started a meme with the hashtag #chemistrythemovie, generating 800 Tweets in a few days, something that should make life science companies drool.

The Top 10 Life Science Twitter Hashtags of 2011

Hashtag	Type	Description
#phdchat	chat	Weekly discussion/forum between aspiring and current PhD/doctoral researchers and supervisors.
#biotech	topic	Biotechnology
#scio12	event	ScienceOnline 2012
#sciamblogs	topic	Scientific American Blogs
#openaccess	topic	Open access for scholarly publications
#biochat	chat	Biofuels focused chat
#singularityu	topic/event	Singularity University
#stemcell	topic	Stem cells
#sfn11	event	Society for Neuroscience 2011 Meeting
#bio2011	topic	Biotechnology Industry Organization 2011 Conference

Outside of hashtags, life science terms can also be tracked to pick up trends and find influencers, let us know if we can help you with a Social Media Compass analysis.

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

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We’re really excited that ScienceOnline 2012 registration has started, get your spot during the remaining registration times. It’s a great place to meet bloggers and other digital influencers, and to get inspired as a scientist. Twitter is where the discussions are happening right now, and we’ll be posting a weekly Tweet cloud which contains the most prevalent words being used in status updates tagged with #scio12. Click on a word to be taken to the recent relevant discussions about it archived in the scio12 Twapper Keeper, and contact us if you need additional information.