e-Marketing BAMA 513 Final Client Presentation

Tweet Yesterday night, Geoff, Max and I presented an e-Marketing plan, which was part of our final project for BAMA 513, to our clients. After the presentation, I produced a SlideCast using our Powerpoint presentation and an iPhone voice recording.

On the first slides, Geoff will give and introduction of our proposed marketing strategy and will guide through our customer's brand attributes, use perceptual mapping, characterize the customer and its values as well as the 4P's of our clients's product. Max will then present industry benchmarks by highlighting highly promising case studies and show how our clients's competition effectively and successfully uses social media in order to leverage their offline marketing effort. Thereafter, I will speak about our client's business goals as identified in a first meeting with our client three weeks ago, propose promising e-marketing strategies and guide through the implementation of e-marketing tactics using social media. I will highlight the so-called "crawl-walk-run-fly" approach, which ideally should be used when implementing the proposed e-marketing tactics. Then Geoff speaks about how to bring all presented elements together in order to create a robust e-marketing plan. Finally, all of us will present the timeline of the e-marketing project. Max will speak about specific examples on efficient monitoring of social media dialog as part of our presented e-marketing timeline. Thereafter, I will close the presentation wrapping up with required logistics, resources and budget in order to enable a successful implementation.

We hope that you will enjoy our SlideCast and please give us some feedback whether you liked it after you watched it. Many thanks.

BAMA513 Client Presentation

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How to make a splash in Social Media?

Tweet In a funny, rapid-fire 4 minutes, Alexis Ohanian of Reddit tells the real-life fable of one humpback whale's rise to Web stardom. The lesson of Mister Splashy Pants is a shoo-in classic for meme-makers and marketers in the Facebook age. Alexis Ohanian co-founded Reddit, a social-voting news website with geek allegiances, a small-town feel and a penchant for lighting up the memes your friends IM you about next week.

Is Social Media a fad?

Tweet Below, I posted two entertaining YouTube videos by Erik Qualman who also wrote the book Socialnomics which is (as Erik describes on his blog) an essential book for anyone who wants to understand the implications of social media, and how businesses can tap the power of social media to increase their sales, cut their marketing costs, and reach consumers directly.

The first video is a collection on facts around social media the second video proposes how return on investment in social media could be quantified: "When I'm asked about the RoI of Social Media sometimes an appropriate response is ... What's the RoI of your phone?"

How are the top construction companies in the UK applying Social Media?

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Nick Pauley analysed the use of Social Media Tools in the Construction Industry. The top fifteen UK construction companies in 2009 were systematically examined whether they had a presence on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook as well as if their social website presence was properly linked with their own websites. Nick also investigated as if the firms were able to proactively monitor traffic and whether they had the ability to measure the success of their marketing intiatives and their social media activities for example by using Google Analytics.
Nick Pauley's analysis shows that the top 15 construction companies are actually applying Social Media. However, without actively engaging with the online community. It also appears that the firms "only do it because everybody is doing it" without any creative integration of Social Media in their business and marketing strategy. Apparently, with their approach to Social Media those companies gamble away substantial opportunities and expose themselves to a significant business risk by not monitoring and guiding the online discussions on their social media sites!

One of Nick's main observation is that there is a considerable lack of integration of their online marketing tools. Moreover, it appears that each social media platform is treated like its own individual campaign without integrating Twitter and Co. into their main business websites. Furthermore, Nick observed that there is no proactive discussion, moderation and not even a proper monitoring of the ongoing discussion of many of the top construction companies.

Nick Pauley's complete and very thorough analysis can be found on his website PauleyCreative.

Nick Pauley's analysis of the 15 largest construction companies and their use of Social Media. Nick's analysis shows that most of the companies are present on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, however, there is a significant lack of integration between their company website and the Social Media sites as well as a substantial lack of proactive participation in the online community

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

Tweet 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)

How to follow local trends on Twitter?

Trendsmap is a neat real-time geographic visualization for emerging Twitter trends. The online application analyzes over 5 million tweets per day to visualize trending topics on a global, regional and city level. Trendsmap identifies news as they happen and tracks their impact around the world as can be seen in the  snap shot below showing the city of Vancouver:

Segmentation of the Construction Industry - based on SIC Codes

SIC-C Codes for Principal Business Activity and Principal Product or Service
North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)

I Construction and Related Activities

40 Real Estate Developers, Builders and Operators
401 Real Estate Developers and Builders
402 Real Estate Operators
403 Real Estate Developers, Builders and Operators, Integrated Operations
404 Prefabricated and Pre-Engineered Buildings Manufacturing

41 Industrial, Highway and Heavy Engineering General Contracting
411 Highway, Street and Bridge General Contracting
412 Industrial and Heavy Engineering General Contracting

42 Special Trade Contracting
421 Structural and Related Work
422 Building Exterior and Interior Work
423 Electrical and Mechanical Work
429 Other Special Trade Contracting

43 Services Incidental to Construction and Building Operations
431 Services Incidental to Construction
432 Services Incidental to Building Operations

44 Building Materials
441 Cement, Concrete and Concrete Products Manufacturing
442 Asbestos Mining and Manufacturing
448 Other Building Materials Mining and Manufacturing
449 Building Materials Wholesaling