B2B social media - Communities in Medical Industry

I have been researching:

• Should a B2B Medical diagnositics company start a professional community site for a group of users? Within this are questions:
• ROI of social media, specifically
• ROI of professional community sites
• Direct Revenue from site
• ROI from increased sales as a result
• Other measures which influence sales
• Increased Brand image, Trust -> customer retention
• Increased Trust -> increased customer testimonials
• Decreased Customer support calls, 
• Increase in marketing data collection at decreased cost
• Increase in ability to hold and record conversations with end users
• ROI of other B2B social media (facebook, twitter)
• Costs of implementing
• Community site
• Other social media program costs
• Examples 
• Concerns about regulated industry what can be done

B2B, Medical and Lifesciences diagnostics;  case studies and best practices examples

• Key is Utility, Value, Entertainment "because they believed in the power of their strategies, they went ahead without compromising and focused their efforts and resources in developing best in class executions. Unfortunately, diminishing initial creative ideas is a mistake that still happens too often due to the difficulties in evaluating return on investment in social media." BurgerKing, BestBuy, Gap,  Canon EOS (community photos )  http://jyesmith.com/social-media/4-case-studies-in-utility-value-and-entertainment/
• Indium - 15 engineers blog: 70 blogs.  http://socialmediab2b.com/2009/09/b2b-social-media-example-indium-blogs/  - Rick Short Indium
• There is also a statement that these are personal opinions, rather than company positions.
• Mayo clinic
  You tube channel - community  - testimonials from patients, talks by docs
  http://www.youtube.com/user/mayoclinic#p/a/u/0/3N-2v-fjCB0
  Thought Leadership: Mayo Clinic center for health social media
  http://socialmedia.mayoclinic.org/
  
  Social Media tools for analysis:
  Listening: http://socialmediab2b.com/2010/06/b2b-social-media-tools-4/
  
  Industry segment:  life sciences diagnostics
  biorad genomics FB -
  They also have some amazing youtube video
  http://www.facebook.com/BioRadGenomics
  http://www.facebook.com/BioRadGenomics#!/topic.php?uid=315474864939&topic=14356
  
  
  Sigma-Aldrich
  Facebook
  http://www.facebook.com/SigmaAldrich
  
  Roche xcelligence
  http://seekingalpha.com/article/140515-bio-rad-sparks-video-war-among-lab-supply-companies  20k views
  Roche also has twitter pages (multiple)
  
  Applied Biosciences
  PCR - Amplitaq 360
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISGQt9WJi5k&feature=related
  
  
  Illumina - Genome analysis machines
  900B revenue / 124m income 2010
  
  

  Real-Time PCR (qPCR) uses various fluorescent detection chemistries to monitor a PCR reaction as it progresses, allowing samples to be characterized at the point when amplification is first detected,

  
  twitter https://twitter.com/illuminaqpcr
  http://twitter.com/illuminainfo

ROI 
Compendium on ROI case studes http://barnraisersllc.com/?p=2504

• Cisco saved $100k on product launch costs through investment in social media instead of in traditional media http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/cisco-social-media-product-launch/
• ROI and internal community and Social media strategy: IBM 
• Has SM guidelines, but does not police employees
• Provides and internal platform for Inside co social media with 17,000 blogs, internal wiki with over a million daily page views.
• Crowd-sourcing identified 10 best incubator businesses, which IBM funded with $100 million
• $100 billion in total revenue with a 44.1% gross profit margin in 2008
• http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-ibm-uses-social-media-to-spur-employee-innovation/ 

Community sites: 
presentation on why brand communities? Benefits:
http://www.slideshare.net/agentwildfire/it-takes-a-community-to-raise-a-brand-not-a-campaign-presentation

• Hispanito http://www.socialmediaportal.com/Research/2008/04/How-to-build-and-grow-a-Hispanic-Social-Network-the-case-of-www-Hispanito-com.aspx 
• Oracle Partner Network:Gartner report http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/oracle/article134/article134.html 

• Nurse one
  http://nurseone.ca/

• List of patient and practitioner communities
  http://www.doseofdigital.com/healthcare-pharma-social-media-wiki/
   
• review of physician communities, July 2010
  http://careers.bmj.com/careers/advice/view-article.html?id=20001227
  Top 5: doctors.net(175k) sermo.com(112k) doc2doc.bmj.com (28k)  doctorshangout.com (17k) 

• Vitabotics ROI from community site
  http://www.freshnetworks.com/case-studies/social-media-case-study-vitabiotics 
• The UK's leading health supplement manufacturer used social media to learn more about the health and beauty needs of their customers.  Created a community site with forums, blogs, beauty experts to answer questions. 13,000 community members, 1000 women apply for product trials which get a 95% completion rate.
• learn more about customers
• find customers to test and trial products and get feedback
• Promote products to target audience
• Responses from customers feed into new product development

Platforms

 Jive is used by Cerner (ucern), Netapp, Charles Schwabb
see book
The 2020 Workplace - in depth discussion -
Company Goals, commmunity, transparency, collaboration -"bottom up" culture
"community gardners" - from corp learn ing who moderate. Internal launch 2009 - point systems. helpful employees get points from participating online which leads to + performance reviews. system is integrated into workflow not separate.
http://www.jivesoftware.com/# 
 
Netapp community http://communities.netapp.com/index.jspa

Charles Schwabb http://activetrader.schwab.com/research/TradingCommunity.aspx
trading community. "Share ideas, ask questions, and find ways to improve your trading - plus network, socialize, and learn from other Active Trader clients, Schwab and third-party experts. "