Social Media Resources

OVERVIEW

At IAmBiotech, we’re passionate about getting more people in the biotech industry involved in social media. This section of the site is designed to give you the resources you need to get started using social media or to take your online networking to the next level.

Since social media tools are always changing, this page is a work in progress. Stay tuned for new content and please send us your feedback and suggestions and we’ll post them here.

For additional networking resources, check out our Job Center.

BIOCROWD: A Social Network for Bioprofessionals

Written by: Clifford Mintz, PhD, Founder of BioCrowd

The biotechnology industry continues to be one of the fastest growing sectors of the global economy. While the field is almost 40 years old, the barriers to entry are still low and any scientist with a good idea, a patent and backing from investors can start a biotechnology company! However, it takes more than scientists, a good idea and venture funding to create a successful biotechnology or life sciences organization.

Recognizing this, Vincent Racaniello, PhD and Clifford Mintz, PhD, two mid-career bioscientists, created BioCrowd, an online social networking site for scientists and other life sciences professionals. Built on a flexible and highly interactive social networking platform, BioCrowd was designed to foster scientific and business relationships between its members. While science is the main driver of this community, it takes a host of other bioprofessionals in addition to scientists to create successful life sciences ventures. To that end, BioCrowd provides its members with immediate access to world class academic researchers, industrial scientists, consultants, recruiters, venture capitalists and other life sciences professionals.

Joining BioCrowd is easy: all that is necessary is an e-mail address and a password. During the registration process, prospective members are prompted to answer a few questions to create a profile page. Once a profile page is created, you can view other members’ profiles and immediately “friend” them unlike most other social networking sites. When “friended”, members receive e-mail confirmation and are allowed to directly correspond with one another via direct e-mail. Members can personalize their profile pages by adding RSS feeds from their twitter accounts, favorite blogs and websites. Individual members’ blog posts, tweets, posts, comments etc, are captured and cataloged in a tab format on profile pages. This allows users to track everything they say at BioCrowd.

BioCrowd’s home page contains a section called BioBuzz that allows members to post comments, discussion topics, job announcements etc that can be viewed by the community. Like the individual profile pages, all information posted to BioBuzz is capture and cataloged using a tabbed format. The BioCrunch section of the home page features selected life sciences videos, podcasts and occasional comments and announcement. Several “clickable” tag clouds showcasing members’ interests, professions, institutional affiliations, upcoming meetings and job openings also appear on the homepage.

Because career development and science education are priorities at BioCrowd, community members can post jobs announcements (at no cost) to BioBuzz and a job board that is searchable and available to all BioCrowd members. The BioResources section of the site features sponsored jobs, career development blogs and search engines and a list of relevant job boards for members seeking new employment opportunities.

In the coming months, several new features will be unveiled at BioCrowd including the ability to upload any rich media content files including videos, podcasts, PowerPoint presentations, abstracts and posters to individual profile pages and the BioBuzz section. Member-generated content will be cataloged according to media type, e.g. video, blogs, etc and will be viewable and searchable by BioCrowd members.

BioCrowd offers the transparency and flexibility of Facebook and the business interactivity of LinkIn to help its members develop new scientific and business relationships and explore exciting new career opportunities. Unlike other social networking sites that were exclusively developed for bioscientists, BioCrowd offers all bioprofessionals an opportunity to interact with one another with the ultimate goal of enriching their life sciences career.

For more information contact cliff[at]biocrowd.com

EPERNICUS

Epernicus is a social networking site developed solely for the working scientist. In place of your favorite music & books, you can list your present and past research advisors, projects you’re working on, and even post full-text PDFs of publications you’ve authored. Based on our experience, you’ll be better off searching for articles in a normal database, but their community tools might just be worth giving Epernicus a try. Because it’s a much narrower group than you’ll find on similar professional networking sites like LinkedIn, you may be more likely to find people with the niche expertise you are looking for.

In fact, that’s exactly why the founders of Epernicus started up the site. In an aptly titled post “Why should you join Epernicus if you’re on LinkedIn?“, they write:

Mikhail and I started Epernicus because we realized that the social networks to which we belonged weren’t able to serve our needs as scientists. The profiles didn’t capture what was important to scientists. And equally as important, we couldn’t use these networks to help us find expertise in real world scientific networks.

For example, I have hundreds of contacts on Facebook and LinkedIn. But neither site can help me find a person in my department who has who expertise with dynamic light scattering or siRNA delivery. This is why we built Epernicus.

Just how do you find these people? ….

KEEP READING

MENDELEY

Mendeley wants to do it all—it organizes your electronic articles and citations, makes writing a works cited or a list of references a snap, and lets you easily share your work with colleagues across the hall or around the world. It elegantly integrates a desktop program, browser and word processor plugins, and an online networking site.

Why is Mendeley useful? You probably have a folder full of PDFs you’ve collected from various online sites, planning to read and use at some point in the future. However, it’s often hard to find the one article you need in the clutter of your computer’s hard drive. Mendeley solves this problem with its stand-alone program, Mendeley Desktop. Just add all your PDF files to your library and Mendeley will extract (with pretty good success rates) the author, title, journal, and year of publication for each one. You can then use the program as a sort of iTunes for your documents.

KEEP READING

LinkedIn is still the go-to spot for professional networking. Despite some grumbling that LinkedIn is sooo 2003, it still stands alone among professional networking sites in terms of scope and community size. Getting started is pretty easy, and the site has a number of how-to guides for new users. They even provide free training webcasts.

Once you have signed up and created your profile, the next step is making connections. You can get connected to colleagues and friends by uploading your contacts directly from your email. Then you can extend your network by joining groups of people interested in your professional specialty. For example, a quick search for “biotech” groups will give you over 400 results. The groups can be broad – like the Life Sciences Opportunities in the US group – or very specific – like Boston Women in Biotech.

So, now what do you do with all those connections? LinkedIn isn’t just useful when you are looking for a new job or a new hire. It can also help with your day-to-day business. You can use your network to find vendors, consultants or even investors. Here’s a short, fun video illustrating the usefulness of LinkedIn for these kind of situations. (It’s a bit elementary…but I have a soft spot for stop motion animation…)

You can also use LinkedIn to find events and “off-line” networking opportunities in your area.

TWITTER

Finally ready to bite the bullet and try Twitter? Or maybe you’re trying to break out of your core group of followers to reach people beyond your family and friends? Well, we have some great resources for you.

If you’ve never used Twitter before and want a complete step-by-step guide on how to get started, this video from Howcast is a great place to start:

So, now that you have your Twitter handle and you’ve gotten started tweeting, how do you find the people you want to follow and those who’d be interested in following you? There are a few ways to approach this.

First, you can do a simple search on Twitter for topics that interest you, like “biotech”, “agriculture”, or “biofuels” and look at the people who are tweeting about that topic. This isn’t the most efficient or comprehensive process, since you’ll just get the most recent tweets and there’s no guarantee that the people you find there are interested in that topic on an on-going basis.

A more surefire way to find people interested in a particular topic is by using hashtags. Hashtags, like #biotech or #ag will help you find people engaged on a particular topic and will help them find you too.

Another great way to find people who are truly interested in the topics you care about are looking at groups of twitterers on Twibes.com. Some of our favorites are the Biotech Twibe, the Agriculture Twibe, the ScienceCommunication Twibe, and the Sustainability Twibe. Don’t see a group that fits your interests? Start your own!

Another great resource for science-focused twitterers is this wiki from Sciencebase. It’s an open list of Scientific Twitter friends.

Still not enough to choose from? Check out IAmBiotech’s twitter followers in the mosaic below for more ideas.

Additional useful resources:

Moving beyond the web interface: Twitter.com is pretty limited, but there are tons of useful apps to make your user experience easier. Our favorite is TweetDeck, which puts groups, url shorteners etc all in one place.
Twitter’s business value to agriculture: Still not sold that Twitter isn’t just a waste of time? Check out this discussion from some of the top ag twitterers.
Why Scientist Won’t Use Twitter: Interesting discussion about why some scientists are reluctant to adopt Twitter.
Twitter 101: Basic guide for organizations and activists getting started on Twitter from Conservative strategist David All. Includes useful case studies.
Tools to organize your tweeps: Following too many people? These tools will help you organize your tweeps.