Social Media in Action: DynPort Vaccine Company LLC
Last post you read about how a local retailer is using social media as part of their marketing mix. Today, I want to introduce you to DynPort Vaccine Company, LLC for a look at how a publicly-traded company that is business-to-business focused is using social media as a marketing tool. April Finnen was kind enough to take some time and answer the following for us.
Tell me a little bit about DVC
DynPort Vaccine Company LLC, or DVC, manages biopharmaceutical product development programs, primarily for government agencies, and provides services to companies in the vaccine industry. For example, we have a lot of experience developing biodefense vaccines, so we often work with other companies pursuing similar technologies.
DVC is located in Frederick, where we have about 125 employees. It’s a great place to work. I like to say we have a small company atmosphere with big company benefits. We are a wholly owned subsidiary of CSC, which is a public company. This has added a level of complexity to our social media efforts, as we have to be careful to follow company and federal disclosure guidelines.
Why did you decide to start using social media?
As a communications/PR professional, I saw that social media was here to stay. What I wasn’t sure about was how to make it work for my company. We don’t have consumer products, and our customers are generally large government agencies, so we don’t have that much interaction with our customers via social media, like consumer-focused businesses or brands
might.
I attended a social media workshop at the Tech Council of Maryland in 2008, and one of the panelists recommended that audience members register their company names on Twitter even if we weren’t yet sure how we would use the account. This would prevent an imposter from taking the name and possibly diluting the brand with fake “official” messages.
How did you start?
I registered @dynport on Twitter quite a few months before I began to use it. Every year we exhibit at the international Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) convention, which draws between 15,000 to 20,000 attendees each year. In May of this year, we were at the show in Atlanta. With that many attendees, it is difficult to find the people you need to speak with, even if you know they are there. The exhibit hall alone spans several football fields.
We were using a laptop in our exhibit to scan visitor badges, and discovered that we had a free wi-fi connection. Attendance was down a little, and our booth wasn’t as busy as usual, so I decided to try an experiment and launch our Twitter presence at the conference. By using Twitter’s search feature, I soon figured out that Twitter users at the conference were using a hashtag (#BIO09) to mark tweets about the conference, so I began doing the same. I tweeted our booth number, and noted that we were looking to fill a couple scientist positions. I also responded to a request from the NPR show Biotech Nation for interview subjects, and the next day the host interviewed our company president Dr. Robert House for a radio show. I also fielded a request from another Twitter user who wanted to meet with our company while at the show, and was able to set up that meeting as well.
What tools/sites are you currently using?
Right now, we use Twitter primarily. Dr. House also writes a blog, which he updates about every week. We considered Facebook, and our corporate office is starting to use this tool for college recruiting, but we didn’t feel it would be a good fit for DVC’s business
objectives.
We generally don’t issue a lot of news releases, so I was a little concerned about finding topics to tweet about. However, nearly every day I find at least one relevant piece of information to share with our Twitter followers, and usually much more. On Twitter, being part of the conversation is as important as creating new content—probably more so. I often re-tweet other content from trusted sources on topics relevant to the company/industry, such as information on influenza vaccines and biodefense events. Many of our followers are in the Frederick area, so I try to offer them useful information as well, such as job openings, information about DVC’s work in the community, and local events and charity benefits.
What results have you seen?
Measuring the return on time investment is difficult, but I’ve noticed a steady increase in our number of followers. Every month we track traffic to our Web site that comes in from Twitter, and re-tweets of our content by other users. This helps us better understand what our audience finds useful, so we can offer them more of that type of information. And, of
course, there have been several direct PR and business impacts, such as the NPR interview, job candidate referrals and booth traffic at conferences.
What has been your biggest challenge in using social media tools?
The biggest challenge is working for a publicly traded company in the highly regulated pharmaceutical industry. We cannot share much information about the progress of our vaccine candidates in development, nor can we share “forward-looking” information or speculation, or offer many opinions. Despite these challenges, we have found plenty that DVC can share, and I’m really having fun using this technology.
Once I started using Twitter for work, I found I really wanted to be able to share my opinion, so I created a personal account as well. Another challenge: spending too much time tweeting! There are so many interesting people and organizations to follow. I carve out a few small chunks of time in each day for social media, so I can stay current with responses, but also get some other work done too!
DynPort Vaccine Company LLC
64 Thomas Johnson Drive
Frederick, Maryland 21702
301-607-5000
Connect with the online:
Web site
Blog
Twitter
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Great case study! I’ve experienced success using Twitter at trade shows which prompted me to encourage clients to do the same to boost booth traffic. I also liked hearing that DVC admits that using Facebook was not the best fit for their objectives. Many times, businesses want to throw everything into the mix without realizing their time can be better spent elsewhere.