Friday, November 5, 2010

Is the Construction Industry ready for Social Media? Interview and SlideCast with Kimberly Kayler

Welcome to the first SlideCast on my website. In the following weeks, I am planning to produce SlideCasts in which I ask the question: "Is the Construction Industry ready for Social Media?"
Today, I was talking to Kimberly Kayler, President of Constructive Communication, Inc., a consulting firm providing marketing strategy, public relations, online social media and communications tactics for the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) and other technical industries. Kimberly has a journalism degree and a decade of high-level experience serving engineering, architecture and construction firms as a corporate marketing executive, as well as experience working for a full-service advertising and marketing communications agency. Kimberly started Constructive Communication, Inc. in 2001 to serve the needs of technical and professional service firms.
Below the SlideCast you can find a list of questions I asked and a list of main takeaways and useful implications I drew from the interview.
Interview with Kimberly Kayler
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The main takeaways of the interview with Kimberly and useful implications for my professional environment are:
  • Social Media is increasingly becoming  an integral part of good marketing campaigns and marketing strategy for the Architecture, Engineering and Construction  (AEC) Industry. 
  • Social Media as a marketing and public relation tool cannot be ignored any more today and in future. 
  • Social Media is better applied proactively to guide and influence discussion about your AEC enterprise and on industry-related topics rather than reactively to mitigate damage to your company. 
  • Even if you are not conformable in creating social media content for your company you have to monitor social media content constantly to mitigate business risk at an early stage.
  • You should better see Social Media as an opportunity to engage in the discussion, create community and reach out to new customers and business connections.
  • It is relatively costly and complex to objectively measure success of the Social Media presence of a company, however, the opportunity if done well to give a company a human face and participate in the community is highly valuable from a public relation and marketing perspective.  
Here is a summary of the questions, I ask in the SlideCast:
  1. How do you and your company apply Social Media within your organization? (see Kimberly's answer in slide 3)
  2. Is Social Media applied efficiently in your company? (slide 5)
  3. Your customers are from the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) Industry, which is known to be relatively conservative. What is your experience working with this industry trying to implement marketing and communication strategies which use Social Media as a tool? (slide 6)
  4. How do you convince your customers? (slide 8)
  5. What are your customer's expectations? Can you always meet these expectations? (slide 10)
  6. Who are your customer's customers? (slide 11)
  7. Do you and your customers have to put many resources into your Social Media projects? People or money? Do you outsource or in house? What are your limitations? (slide 12)
  8. What is a typical success story you can tell? (slide 13)
  9. Where do you see the future of Social Media and the AEC Industry? And how important will Social Media be? (slide 14)
  10. What can AEC learn from other industries which are already in transition towards Web 2.0? (slide 15)
  11. Finally, what brief recommendation can you give me if I had to convince senior management to implement an e-marketing strategy? (slide 16)
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