Construction meets Social Media
Being a Social Media advocate or ‘evangelist’, as I sometimes refer to myself, and coming from both a marketing and a construction background often presents me with divided loyalties. This means that I can understand why construction managers don’t always ‘get’ marketing and also why they prefer the term ‘business development’. Having said that, I still strongly believe that if done well, marketing can make a major difference to any construction company and most certainly provide a good ROI. Furthermore, I believe that Social Media marketing can, in some instances, show significantly more cost effective results than traditional marketing.
Thankfully, it would seem that the construction sector is finally coming to terms with the real benefits of Social Media marketing!
The Brian Solis Social Media map
I am proud to say that I am sure that the success of the Be2Awards has broken down some barriers as well as produced some excellent results. No easy task and it’s clearly taken time, effort and a large amount of commitment and dedication.
Fortunately, the event was well sponsored by the likes of Hewlett Packard, British Gas, SMPR, Pauley Creative, Building and various other forward thinking companies. A big thank you goes out to all the sponsors!!
What made the event so special, was the fact that so many people were involved and that the ‘crowd source‘ was very diversified.
This is from the Be2Awards website:
“As social media advocates, we encourage the active online involvement of our members and other supporters. So, we didn’t follow the approach of many awards programs – no decisions made by judges in private here.”
“Instead, the Be2 award nominations were sourced from you, our “crowd”, and voted upon by the same “crowd”: you. This helped ensure we got a wide spread of nominations, and also encouraged shortlisted candidates to mobilise their supporters once online voting began.”
Naturally, I voted for a few people and I thoroughly enjoyed the process, the camaraderie and the fact that something new was happening! To me, that’s what the very best of Social Media is all about, engaging with other like minded people and communicating in a positive way.
Here’s a list of the winners.
- Built environment blogger of the Year - Joe Peach for “This Big City”
- Best sustainability blog - Joe Peach for “This Big City”
- Best AEC social media blog - Su Butcher for “Just Practising”
- Best use of Twitter - Paul Wilkinson (@EEPaul)
- Best AEC collaboration platform - BIW Technologies
- Best AEC community, network or community application - tCn – The Construction Network
- Best use of Web 2.0 for construction products - Reed Harris Tiles
- Best location-based AEC application - NearMap
- Best ‘internet of things’ application - Tales of Thingss
- Best mobile application - Woobius Eye
- Best virtual or hybrid event - Sustainability Now
- ‘Old media/new media’ award - TCI – The Construction Index
- Best AEC PR/marketing campaign - SMPR for Camfil Farr campaign
- Best education and learning award - Virtual Maths
- Best charity, third sector use of social media - EACH Treehouse Appeal
- Best AEC use of photo / video - Andy Marshall (@fotofacade)
A big congratulations to everyone involved!
This event truly proves that ‘communication adds value’!
If you would like to know more about Social Media marketing and exactly how it can help your construction company have a better year in 2011, call peter on 01473 435308 or email peter@constructionmarketinguk.co.uk
www.constructionmarketinguk.co.uk
We build the builders!
Related articles
- Huge Returns on Investments from Social Media (globalthoughtz.com)
- Social Media Metrics Shift Toward Revenue (weatherby.net)
- 10 Things Seth Godin Taught Me about Social Media Marketing (customerthink.com)
- 5 Things You Should NOT Do On Social Media (davidshawblog.com)
Yes I think you are right there are some signs out there. But the mixed signals being created by the austerity cuts here in the UK and other parts of Europe could have a significant effect on the whole economy.
Good to see your blog marketing efforts paying off. Your Alexa traffic rank is now #325,105 not bad for 4 months worth of posts.
Hello Robert and welcome. I agree about ‘mixed signals’ but believe a lot of doom and gloom is media based, it’s not too hard to talk things down when they’re not too up to begin with. I’m optimistic by nature and find that PMA breeds PMA. Thanks for your kind words about the Blog, I make a point of engaging as much as I can and that’s what it’s all about with Social Media as far as I’m concerned. Stay in touch! All the best Peter