One of your customers just helped sell something to a colleague. Congrats!

Uh, oh. But another customer just turned one of your hot leads lukewarm. Maybe even cool. Ouch.

Had you been reading your Twitter account, you might have caught wind of this. Or would you?

We examined a group of leading life science product and service suppliers regarding their use of Twitter, and explored the similarities and differences between B2B and B2C Twitter use. As of early February 2013, Thermo Scientific led the pack for products suppliers with over 21,000 followers, and Quintiles led the pack for services providers with over 7,000 followers.

“Great. Just what I need. Another know-it-all social-media-mogul wannabe writing yet another end-of-the world business warning about why my company will fail if I don’t spend 80% of my time tweeting to my Facebook friends about the latest addition to my Pinterest boards.”

Who, us? No, no, no, no, no, no…

In the middle of planning a drop-dead interesting SAMPS Annual Meeting, we took a quick snapshot of what the SAMPS community was currently doing with Twitter (which we both will tweet to our Facebook friends so that they can see that we added this article to our Pinterest boards).

Show me the Twitter data

Here’s what the data looked like as of February 9, 2013 for a select group of life science product and service suppliers.

Twitter name	Category	Followers	Tweets	Following
@ChromSolutions (ThermoScientific)	Products	21,468	3,725	420
@LIFECorporation	Products	16,132	2,799	777
@AppliedBio	Products	11,289	860	200
@Merck4Bio (Merck Millipore Bio – not for North America)	Products	10,781	1,927	71
@Quintiles	Services	7,167	1,790	1,832
@SigmaAldrich	Products	5,301	872	720
@LifeTechEMEA	Products	5,071	1,908	455
@EMDMilliporeBio	Products	3,950	3,089	1,686
@WatersCorp	Products	3,104	2,748	2,085
@PerkinElmer	Products	2,786	1,130	624
@BioRadLifeSci	Products	2,681	713	125
@BioRadGenomics	Products	2,136	1,189	818
@INC_Research	Services	2,096	752	2,059
@thermosci	Products	1,993	2,832	561
@Affymetrix	Products	1,870	2,468	749
@GenomicApps (Affymetrix)	Products	1,694	945	1,298
@BDBiosciences	Products	1,631	74	21
@NEBiolabs	Products	1,467	559	211
@VWR	Products	1,313	74	11
@Parexel	Services	1,189	720	177
@PPDCRO	Services	1,161	400	95
@ICONplc	Services	1,123	1,492	452
@LifeTechSupport	Products	1,114	2,073	1,117
@inVentClinical	Services	1,069	392	266
@LonzaGroup	Services	944	79	24
@LifeTechSelect	Products	915	1,619	500
@PRAINTL	Services	764	192	127
@CRiverLabs	Services	758	1,155	277
@BioRad_LSG_Euro	Products	694	155	667
@PallCorporation	Products	686	128	370
@Covance	Services	644	286	458
@MobiusSingleUse (Millipore)	Products	623	134	933
@MilliporeBrasil	Products	619	269	204
@ERTglobal	Services	554	338	685
@VWR_UK	Products	521	96	104
@EMD_Millipore	Products	472	393	406
@MerckMillipore	Products	309	181	277
@Pall_LabNotes	Products	294	190	534
@EMDMilliporePS (process solutions)	Products	156	207	127
@biorad	Products	130	0	0
@bioradsa (south Africa)	Products	115	49	0
@affymetrixevent	Products	79	26	35
@Mpiresearch_cro	Services	59	34	25
@CovanceMA	Services	58	59	222
@EurofinsBiolab	Services	30	11	157
@Affymetrix_J	Products	14	0	3
@GELifeSciences	Products	13	0	1

Wondering what your competitors are doing on Twitter?  

Leading the pack as of February 9, 2013 is the Thermo Scientific @ChromSolutions feed, where the content ranges from purely promotional,

 

to objectively educational,

but also includes some fun conversation with the scientific community.

 

Life Technologies, a strong second overall, uses Twitter to promote products and create rapport with customers,

 

but also adds some creative fun to the mix.

 

A nice example of integrating Twitter into a content marketing strategy is provided by Quintiles.

 

Looking to promote a thought leader? Check out the tweet from INC Research.

Life science customer support via social media vs B2C social media

Interestingly, one function that this quick study didn’t come across was technical support or customer service problem solving issues on Twitter. While at least one organization (Life Technologies) has a dedicated Twitter account for technical support issues, most all of the tweets are promotional or informational. This could reflect the limited nature of this research, or perhaps life science customer and technical support issues show up on other sites. For instance, technical support issues may be featured on more life science specific websites like Scientist Solutions.

Or perhaps the lack of using Twitter for life science supplier customer and technical support is in part due to a fundamental difference between B2C and B2B use of Twitter. Unlike B2C customers, a dissatisfied life science B2B customer may prefer to deal privately with with a supplier.

Lets dig a little deeper.

It’s one thing to ask a technical question on a site like Scientist Solutions, but it’s another to complain in a public forum. A B2C customer who complains about a problem represents themself, but a B2B client represents an organization, and so has to consider how the complaint will be viewed by that organization AND by future employers, especially if the claim is not easy to substantiate. To this end, many life science businesses, especially pharma, biopharma, medical device, and diagnostic companies, have rules that may preclude employees from posting certain comments.

How many Twitter feeds are enough?

Your organization isn’t limited to one Twitter account, also referred to as a feed. It’s feasible to create separate feeds for different product areas, different purposes, and for different subsidiaries of a large conglomerate. One such example is the Life Technologies technical support feed mentioned previously.

The tweets we’ve shared to this point are largely commerically oriented, but so long as it meets your organization’s regulations, you could create Twitter feeds to broadcast news about personnel announcements, industry and scientific news, subject recruitment for clinical research studies, pretty much anything that passes muster with your company. In other words, Twitter could be a significant component of your public relations and content marketing strategy tool kit. And let’s not forget our friends in Human Resources, who might want to piggyback their recruiting efforts to your social media stream.

Multiple feeds need care and feeding

By feeding, we mean managing, that is creating, monitoring, and revising the content flow in your Twitter feeds. Like any content marketing plan, strategy is key. Without a plan AND a process that includes scheduling, creation, and assessment, how can you assure that your desired messages are being delivered (and the dangerous ones blocked)? So, more feeds means more work, but the chance for greater rewards also grows.

Will social media put money in your pocket?

The folks at the McKinsey Global Institute certainly think so. And we’re not talking pennies.

In a study published in July 2012, McKinsey researchers concluded that businesses are leaving 900 billion to 1.3 trillion dollars on the table because they don’t take advantage of the commercial influence of social media.¹ The McKinsey report also cites that one-third of all consumer spending could be influenced by social media.¹

How does this translate into the B2B world?  Would this boost the life science product and service community, a notoriously challenging market that requires a specialized marketing strategy? Maybe not, but does a 10% boost in total influence sound bad to you? McKinsey also proposes that the wise use of social media could boost worker productivity by up to 25%.

Table 2 summarizes some of McKinsey’s thinking regarding how social media could increase sales and productivity.

From The social economy: Unlocking productivity and value through social technologies. McKinsey Global Institute.¹

And the point of all this is?

Marketing to the scientific community is tough enough. And now during most weeks, somebody throws a colorful infographic on your desk or emails you (or tweets you?) a link to an article predicting the downfall of any company not applying the latest form of a geo-locating, content-strategy-agnostic, responsive-design-based technology newly hatched from a 3-day conference attended by venture-capital-chugging Silicon Valley/Alley darlings.

The McKinsey report suggests that profits can be increased greatly by incorporating social media into your marketing plans. Check out the executive summary or full report and assess its potential impact on your business.

But why is so much emphasis being placed on social media? Ask 5 people and you’ll probably get 10 opinions, but maybe it comes down to the one of the most primal reasons—trust. John Doherty shares data showing declines in the number of people who subscribe to information feeds provided by a website (RSS feeds) at the same time that Twitter traffic is increasing. The data aren’t exhaustive, but there’s evidence of a trend away from relying on subscription information from an enterprise versus information you can obtain from someone or some group with whom you’re familiar on a more personal level.

To paraphrase Mr. Doherty, people trust people or brands that they know.

References:

1. The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies. Chui M, Manyika J, Bughin J et al. McKinsey Global Institute. July 2012. Available athttp://www.mckinsey.com/insights/business_technology/big_data_the_next_frontier_for_innovation. July 2012.

2. Doherty, J. What The Shift From RSS to Social Media Means for Marketers. Available at: http://www.johnfdoherty.com/shift-rss-social-media-means-marketers/. Accessed February 9, 2013.

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Authors: Alan Gerstein and Chuck Drucker