We hear from life science marketers that they ‘don’t have time’ for social media. We think that for many reasons, they should ‘make’ time, as the benefits are far reaching, from reinforcing your brand to getting input on product development. However, we are realistic and know that integrating these habits into your routine will take time, so we’ve created this list that will help you to leverage life science social media by spending just ten minutes a day.
Set up custom RSS feeds. We’ve talked about the power of RSS feeds to deliver customized content from all over the internet, from research publications to company websites to blogs. Set up RSS feeds and use the information to tweet or blog about, as well as to stay on top of what is going on in your industry and with your customers. You can browse this content from an RSS reader or set up customized emails. Need help? We can set up a customized feed and daily emails for you quickly and affordably, check out this example of a drug discovery blogs RSS we set up. We’ll set it up for you, adjust it if necessary, and give you all the information you need to adjust it in the future as needed. As we’ll cover in our July 28th Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshop 2, great content is the cornerstone of a winning social media strategy.
Repurpose. Different social media applications have different functions and audiences, so there is no harm in sharing a link on, for example, both Twitter and Facebook. In our workshops, we’ve also talked about ‘recycling’ content from your website or blog. Resources, news, and user-generated content such as FAQs can be used. Of course, don’t be too redundant, and don’t consider that posting information about product discounts, etc. is necessarily interesting to your audience all the time.
Automate. Related to repurposing is the fact that you can use tools and tricks to automatically post status updates to more than one application, which is handy. For example, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook all ‘play nicely’ with each other, and you can set them up so that you can post an update on one and feed it to the other applications. In addition, you can use great tools like HootSuite to post to multiple accounts and also schedule updates for later. We do think that there is a lot of value in logging in and browsing your network or followers updates, but to begin with, you can do this weekly instead of daily to save time (see next item).
Use calendar reminders. Some aspects of social media require maintenance, such as growing your Twitter followers or your LinkedIn network. These things can’t be done all at once, so we suggest setting weekly calendar reminders for tasks such as connecting with new people you’ve met on LinkedIn or using Twitter searches to find new life scientists to follow. If you work at a larger company, you may need to aggregate all of your activity using RSS feeds, Friendfeed, or Hubspot, and depending on the size of your company, you’ll want to review these daily or weekly. Also, reviewing metrics such as engagements or return on investment (ROI) is important as well, and is likely best done weekly or monthly. If you want more information about the strategies behind these tactics, check out our workshops and training.
Use the force. One of the great things about social media is that you can find great people to follow, share content from, and emulate. Once you find a few ‘Jedi masters’ you can save time because they will serve as ‘channels’ of information for you to learn from and share. We hope that you’ll consider this blog as a channel of information for life science and biotech marketing and subscribe to updates.
The workflow we suggest follows the order of this list. Start with good content, and the rest should naturally flow, to the last item in which you’ll hopefully be engaging with the thought leaders in your area. We hope that you’ll find so much value in these ten minutes that you’ll branch out more and spend more time leveraging social media. What techniques have worked for you to get the most out of the time you spend using social media? We’d love to hear, please leave a comment below.
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Great article Mary! I would venture that one way to use Social Media 10 minutes per day is simply to help a scientist answer questions on one of the many discussion boards out there such as Protocol-online, Molecular Station, Scientist Solutions, or the Molecular Biology Forum over on Biotechniques website. Not only is it get use of Social Media, its good PR and it helps a scientist!
Rusty