Life Scientists and Social Media: feeling the love
February 8th, 2008 by Hugh KennedyI’m happy to announce that we have just completed our first research study with BioInformatics, LLC, a PJA research partner with an online forum of more than 30,000 scientists.
The study topic? Life scientists and social media.
And what did we find? More than I expected, certainly. Here are some of the highlights:
* We found that 77 percent of life scientists participate in some type of social media.
* Social media in our survey referred to blogs, podcasts, online communities, Wikis, and social networking sites that are increasingly being used by professionals to share experiences, opinions and advice.
* While scientists still consider their suppliers to be the most trusted source of product information, 45 percent of those surveyed find “access to objective feedback on products and services from multiple sources” to be the most valuable aspect of social media.
* Nearly a third of respondents report that social media of all types help them to make more educated decisions about purchasing new products and technologies, while nearly half report that social media facilitates the sharing of ideas with colleagues and the scientific community
* More than half of respondents agree that social media tools and user-generated content have helped to make more informed decisions, while nearly a third said these tools have made the purchasing process faster and more efficient
* The higher the media engagement of the scientist, the more likely they are to choose traditional marketing channels such as company Web sites, catalogs, trade magazines and content aggregators. However, less-engaged scientists are much more likely to be attracted to new social media channels such as user-generated content or third-party online portals
So, scientists aren’t laggards to the IT crowd in social media—they’ve been there all along.
Yet it’s only recently that life science suppliers have begun to grasp social media’s potential as a way to bond with their customers in a way that really drives loyalty. There’s much more to do, and much more value to, as the consultants like to say, harvest.
The details: we fielded the survey late in 2007, and 1,510 responses were collected between October 29 and November 2, 2007. The participating scientists were engaged in a wide range of biological research including genomics, proteomics and drug discovery. Nearly half of respondents were from North America, 36 percent from Europe, 11 percent from Asia, and six percent from rest of world.
Where can you get the complete results? Glad you asked. They can be downloaded at http://www.lifesciencesocialmedia.com.
February 8th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
When we consider that the Internet has its roots in solving the challenge of allowing university researchers to collaborate computer-to-computer, it’s not so surprising that scientists have turned to social networks to connect and share knowledge and ideas. What’s surprising is that marketers haven’t yet figured out how to make the social networks and communities work for them.