The Construction Marketing Association and Social Media

Founded in 2009, the Construction Marketing Association (CMA) is a professional association which supports marketers in the construction industry with specialized resources on construction brands, products and services, as well as marketing to construction-related targets. CMA's Construction Marketing Institute provides informative webcasts, conferences, training programs and a professional certification program. CMA's website makes considerable use of social media and web 2.0 applications. CMA's YouTube site shows presentations of three of their member companies (Caterpillar, Knaack, and USG)  and how these companies use social media in their marketing strategies. Below is an example of USG's webcast panel discussion:

An online survey called "2011 Construction Marketing Outlook" of 100 construction companies carried out by CMA in September 2010, revealed interesting details of the industry with respect to marketing activities and budgets, top marketing priorities, and marketing tactics. Interestingly, internet and social media as well as PR are considered to be increasingly important marketing tactics for 2011, whereas a majority of 60% of the firms is planning to decrease activities and budgets for trade shows.

Social Media radically changes Stakeholder Dialog

In his contribution to the Public Sphere event on Government 2.0, Owen Cameron highlights the impact of Social Media on political decision making and how stakeholder dialog has increased. Recent events all over the world show that Social Media help to democratize society and consequently empowers the public. Citizens become content creators and content controllers.

• Social Media has changed (a) how people protest and (b) how people protest together.
• Government has to proactively apply Social Media to improve service delivery.

Owen briefly talks about several examples:

• How NGOs coordinated worldwide protests using social and mass media to mobilize the public against large dam construction projects,
• How Climate Change protests in London were leveraged by flickr and mobile blogging,
• How the US government created up-to-date housing supply data with intelligent algorithms analyzing GIS, postal code, social media and title data,
• How e-commerce and micro finance helped African communities,
• and finally Owen gives an example how a fast-track establishment of a new statutory authority and state government was facilitated by efficient stakeholder buy-in with the help of social media. 

Public Sphere: Government 2.0 - Dr Owen Cameron from Kate Lundy on Vimeo.

Related articles

• Conference: Public Sector Web 3.0 and Future of Social Media Government (laurelpapworth.com)

Blogging in the Construction Industry - A Survey

Gemma Went of Red Cube Marketing (London) carried out a small survey on the use of blogging amongst professionals in the architecture, construction and design industries.

"Comparing the results of the questions (a) Why did you launch the blog? and (b) Why do you run the blog now?, there appears to be a complete turn-around in reasons why participants first launched their blog and why they continue to blog today. Rather than seeing blogs solely as informal arenas for expressing industry opinion, participants now run blogs primarily to engage with their communities."

Why do you run the blog now?

The participants of the survey were also asked for the impact of their blog. The responses give an interesting insight highlighting their very positive achievements:

1. Sharp increase in visitor numbers
2. Stronger connection with our audience
3. New jobs, connections and speaking opportunities
4. A wider readership both nationally and internationally
5. Professional growth
6. Approachability

For construction-related service companies planning to launch a blog the participants of Gemma Went's survey give the following useful advice:

• Listen first
• Write about meaningful subjects in your industry to show you care about what you do
• Understand why you are launching a blog. It must be purposeful, intentional and distinctive
• Have a clear idea of what you want to achieve from the blog and tailor posts to that end. Don’t be demoralised, keep posting whatever your visitor numbers may be
• Be clear about what your blog is about. Have plenty of content in place and link your blog back to other sites
• Post focused content and post consistently, but at a comfortable rate. Avoid large gaps of silence
• Keep it up-dated
• Plan for results to take a while
• Be human

For more details and further interesting findings on the survey, please visit the Red Cube Marketing Blog.

What is out there? Who else is writing on my topic?

After collecting the first bits and pieces on Social Media and the Construction Industry, I soon realized that there is only limited information "out there". For sure, I will have to spend some more time on the search for more bloggers. However, did I really expect that the construction industry will be at the forefront of e-marketing?
No, of course not. But isn't just that a great opportunity?
I will have to ask myself and my peers:

• What are valuable applications of Social Media in the Construction Industry? 
• What are the business needs and business cases which can be supported by Web 2.0? "If you take a business that is a bad business and put it online, it’s still a bad business. It’s just become an online bad business." (Michael Dell)
• Who are the users / customers? "The stupid, loyal and humble customer, employee, patient or citizen is dead.” (Kjell Nordstrom)
• How will my customers' behavior change due to the use of Social Media? 
• Who in the construction industry will finally use it? Keywords: Technographics, Altimeter.
• What can we learn from other industries which are already in transition towards Web 2.0? 
• How can a construction-related service company create a sustainable competitive advantage by using e-marketing and Web 2.0 applications? 
• How will I apply my marketing tool kit?

Many questions and only few answers! I am looking forward to my new e-marketing venture.

B2B Social Media in the Construction Industry

On his blog socialmediab2b.com Jeffrey L. Cohen interviews Patrick Prothe (@pprothe) who is the Marketing Communications Manager of Viewpoint Construction Software, which produces project management tools for construction professionals. More details here.



Social Media in the Construction Industry from Jeffrey L. Cohen on Vimeo.

Is the construction industry ready for social media? No!

On his Digimarketing Convo Blog, Pritesh Patel argues that the construction industry is not yet ready for Social Media. In general, construction people were still unfamiliar with Web 2.0 applications and social media within the construction industry was still in "newborn stage", Pritesh says.
On his blog Pritesh identifies the following problems which makes integration of social media into construction-related business models difficult:

1. Education. Lack of awareness of Social Media tools in the construction industry and exactly how they work and can be used
2. Too many marketers are afraid to get stuck in play, test, engage and keep up with new ways of marketing
3. Obtaining buy in from c-level execs is proving to be difficult amongst many marketers

Social Media will improve the Stakeholder Dialogue

Scientific evidence (e.g. D. Wheeler, M. Sillanpaeae, 1998) suggests that a systematically initiated and monitored stakeholder dialogue substantially minimizes business risk in the infrastructure construction sector. Construction-related service providers, which ignore the need to actively balance stakeholder interests (i.e. companies with the short-term ‘shareholder-first’ approach), will be out-performed with increasing ease by stakeholder-inclusive companies, which are run with a view to the long-term interests of their key stakeholders.

If set up intelligently, a perfect medium to facilitate stakeholder dialogue in the construction industry is the Web 2.0 and social media: reports, surveys, discussions, interviews, presentations, case studies, construction status updates and news can be efficiently published and interlinked in order to make information easily accessibly and planning processes transparent.
Tasha Cunningham presents an example how social media could be applied by Transit Agencies in order to improve the stakeholder dialogue. Tasha calls her approach "Public Involvement 2.0"

Tasha Cunningham - Social Media, Transit Agencies and Public Involvement 2.0

View more presentations from TheCunninghamGroup.

Tasha's outlook on successfully applied social media in order to improve stakeholder dialogue on infrastructure projects is not necessarily an unrealistic picture of the construction industry:

Social Media In The Construction Industry - What is out there?

I will begin my new blog on Social Media and the Construction Industry with a brief review of what I consider to be interesting or most relevant social media applications for construction practitioners.
Construction PR and marketing specialist Paul Wilkinson provides an appealing introduction into social media applications in the construction industry on Slideshare. In his presentation he summarizes the history of social media (pre-web to WEB 2.0), gives a tour showing some construction-related applications, presents a case study on a successful social media implementation for the international architectural and engineering design firm HOK and finally concludes with a top 10 lessons learned:

1. Start small
2. Invest wisely
3. Involve
4. Manage expectations
5. Identify issue(s), then respond
6. Identify the opportunities / risks
7. Spread the risk
8. Manage, monitor and moderate
9. Total bans don't work
10. You can't ignore Social Media

Social Media In The Construction Industry

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