The Circle Of Influence

By Rob Wright, Chief Editor, Life Science Leader
Follow Me On Twitter @RfwrightLSL

By  Rob Wright

A couple of months ago I wrote a blog about social media (SM), whereby I pointed out my SM inadequacies. I have been making a concerted effort to improve my SM knowledge base and use of this communication tool. The primary reason for doing this is my understanding of the circle of influence. Ralph Waldo Emerson is attributed with uttering the phrase, “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.” In today’s global economy, creating great editorial content will not result in people beating a path to your door. If I want my message to reach my desired audience, I cannot simply focus on gathering and creating appealing editorial content. I also need to stimulate awareness of its existence. In order to do this, I need to use a wide variety of communication outlets, including SM, to reach key stakeholders.

The Circle Explained
The circle of influence involves several distinct stages and key stakeholders. The three distinct stages are the strategy stage, the sourcing stage, and the execution stage. During the strategy stage, executive management attempts to understand current issues, establish objectives, and set strategy. These are primary sources of information used by executive management, business journals, trade publications, consultants, internal departments, and conferences. Through Life Science Leader magazine, I focus on presenting best business practice editorial content executives will find to be a valuable source of guidance as they determine and set strategies. Much of this content is developed through my attendance at various industry conferences.

Next comes the sourcing stage. Here, departmental management and key users begin exploring options to execute the strategy created by executive management. They begin creating criteria for selecting business partners and examine alternatives. During this phase, these stakeholders conduct research. The primary sources they utilize in gathering information include web search, web portals, white papers, and case studies. I attempt to provide valuable information to assist these people through communicating via our extensive online community (e.g. Pharmaceutical Online, life science leader newsletters) as well as through various forms of social media, (e.g. LinkedIn). In so doing, I will have assisted members of the life sciences industry in successfully completing the execution stage of the circle, which involves plan implementation and measuring results. Speaking of measuring, I would like to ask for your help.

Social Media Survey
According to research, the major SM players are LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. However, all of these are not ranked nearly as high as the utilization of industry specific forums. Which prompts me to ask: What are the best life sciences industry forums? If you have a forum you find particularly useful, please, drop me an email and let me know ( rob.wright@lifescienceconnect.com). Lastly, I want to make you aware that we are doing our own research regarding social media. Currently, we don’t participate in every form of social media. Perhaps there are some we should. To that end, I developed a short 10 question survey, which can be found by going to http://ow.ly/4Hw3G

Please take a couple of minutes to provide your input. In so doing, you will have influenced the influencers of the circle of influence.