The day after I let our clients and consultants know I was setting up a freelance marketing and business development consultancy, I got a call from a project manager colleague who wanted a chat.

He pointed out that after spent fifteen years as a lone construction consultant he remained frustrated at the way his breadth of experience was passed over in favour of other, larger but less experienced firms. What might be done about this?

We’ve arranged to meet up and talk about the issue, and how we might help sole practitioners get together.

And then a few days ago, entirely unconnected, Nicholas Handslip who described a similar frustration contacted me on Twitter. He had an idea I thought might be useful to share with you. Perhaps we can work on this issue together?

“As small surveying and architecture firms and freelance consultants we tend to struggle juggling workload with administration, business development and maintaining networks. This is before we have even considered business strategy, how to develop brand and expand the company!

A number of twitter users have contacted @Subutcher expressing a desire or interest in setting up or become involved with group of consultants offering to mentor small SME’s or to benefit from knowledge sharing in some form or another.

I am interested in establishing a virtual network for freelance consultants and surveyor /architect SME’s looking to develop their twitter following into more tangible relationships, sharing ideas, discussing issues, accruing CPD and potentially developing business opportunities.

I am particularly keen to hear how you use social media; what internet forums you find useful; how you feel a forum could best serve you and also whether you would be interested in mentoring small consultancies.

If you would like to get involved or have any ideas on setting up a forum then please contact me on @NFranklinPM or just use hash tag #constconsult and comment.”

So, are you a lone construction consultant (or maybe, a micro business of two or so people)? What is your experience of the downsides of being so small? What do you need that we might, if we collect together and use the internet, be able to help provide?

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. Please comment below, or tweet using the #constconsult hashtag. We’re collecting an archive of tweets.

[UPDATE: Typo's corrected, apologies!]

Latest tweets:

See an archive of tweets here

Here are some of the latest updates for the ArchitectMap project.

Product Manufacturers Join the Architect Map

In collaboration with Barbour Product Search @BarbourNews, we have begun a ManufactureMap for construction product manufacturers and suppliers to join. Each region has a link to the relevant #manufacturemap via the master map here.

The UK manufacturemap is very well populated already – which manufacturers are local to you?

Facebook

The map now has a facebook page which is a good place to have share updates more regularly so I can get back to blogging about other things! If you pop over to the page and ‘like’ it you can receive updates when you want them about how the map is progressing.

We’re publishing all the coverage #architectmap and #manufacturemap get on the facebook page, please feel free to share your links, screenshots and map related news on the wall, and use the discussion section of the page to join in discussions about what we might do with the map. Currently there is a discussion about what we could do to use the map to generate work. Why not take a look?

Studio Em in Dubai reviews #ArchitectMap and interviews originators

It is good to make more contacts in the mid East via the #architectmap. @Studio_Em was one of the first practices in the region to get on the map and we’re delighted to have contributed to what has become their most popular blog post to date. Read more about the map and what we think of it here on the interview.

If you haven’t joined the map yet, here are instructions for how to do it.

Want to add yourself to the #Architectmap map of architects, designers and construction consultants active on twitter? Here are the simplest instructions.

Visit http://bit.ly/ArchiMap and find the map to which you want to be added. Click its placemarker and click the link to view – this one says ‘View ‘UK’ Architect Map’:

Once you’ve found the map you want to join, obtain an invitation to the map from one of the existing users (or @Subutcher or @MarkSchuey) by letting them have your googlemail or gmail email address:

If you don’t have a googlemail or gmail address (which you need for googlemail, googleplus and other google services) you can apply for one here. When you get the invitation email, click on the link to visit the map. Zoom in to the right place on the map for your placemarker. (Double-clicking zooms in – choose ‘Satellite’ view to get accurate):

Over on the left hand of the map you’ll see an ‘Edit’ button. Click on the ‘Edit’ button to start editing the map. Then go to the place on the map you want your avatar to be, right-click (Ctrl-Click for Mac users) and choose ‘Add a Placemark’:

Edit the placemark to included your Twitter @Handle as the title and a link to at least your Twitter account in the details. Choose ‘Rich Text’ in order to add a link in the text. Select the text you want to make clickable, click on the blue ‘link’ symbol and paste or type in the link to the dialogue box. Consider adding your profile text from twitter too, also other contact details which will help people decide whether and how to contact you:

Edit the avatar to show your twitter avatar by going to your profile on twitter and picking up the URL address of the avatar next to your tweets using ‘right click’ again:

Go back to the map and click on the placemarker – choose ‘add an icon’ and paste in the URL you have just copied:

Click Save on the placemark, then ‘Save’ and ‘Done’ on the left hand menu to complete the edit:

Please invite your fellow construction consultants on twitter to join the map so that we can all find each other.

More complicated instructions:

If you have a gmail account you can save a link to the maps in ‘My Places’.

If your business has a Google Places entry you can then transfer a Google Places entry as your placemarker by going to it on Googlemaps and choosing ‘Save to map’ from the placemarker. The advantage of adding your Google Places business entry is that it puts your contact details directly into the placemarker.

Any questions? Please ask below.

Since last week’s update the map has snowballed and we’ve been getting thousands of views every day. Popularity has its downsides though, we’ve had to make some changes! Here’s a run down of what’s been happening and how you can get involved and make the most of the map.

Map goes Regional – how to view

As the map filled up we noticed that it wouldn’t let us view more than 200 placemarkers at once and this was causing confusion for people adding to the map as they needed to scroll to Page 2 before they could see the placemarker they had added. In addition loading the map slowed down navigation.

To solve these problems we have split the map into four regions based upon the current density of users – Americas, UK, Europe and Africa / Asia / Australasia.

The addresses to all the maps are as follows, with links to the bit.ly click through statistics:

Global Map – http://bit.ly/ArchiMap - Statistics

‘Americas’ – http://bit.ly/ArchiMapAmericas – Statistics

‘UK’ – http://bit.ly/ArchiMapUK – Statistics

‘Europe’ – http://bit.ly/ArchiMapEurope – Statistics

‘Africa / Asia / Australasia’ – http://bit.ly/ArchiMapAfrAsia – Statistics

The main map is still here with placemarkers from which you can view the different maps. Mark has also written instructions on how to add regions into one view if you would like to:

To view the Global Map, simply add each of the geographic regions to ‘My Places’ (you need to be logged into your google account to do this). Once this is done, makes use you have opened each map (do this by clicking on each map). Then click the ‘Traffic’ box on the right hand side of the map and select all the maps. You should now be able to add or remove any map that you would like to see.

How to join the map

We were having some problems with placemarkers being moved about, so have now restricted access to only those who have been invited via email to collaborate. There are now two ways you can join the map:

1. DM us your Gmail or Googlemail address and we will invite you to collaborate. If you have a friend who already has access they can invite you too by clicking on the ‘Collaborate’ link found above the map description. Then, add the relevant gmail address into the box and click ‘Send Invitation’. [UPDATE: Mark tells me it doesn't have to be a Gmail address!]
2. If you don’t have a Gmail address and don’t want to have one you can ask us (or a friend with access) to add your placemark for you.

If you use any google service – Googlemail, mymaps/MyPlaces, picasa, Google analytics, feedburner etc you will have a googlemail address already and will need it to log into these services. With your own access to the map you can edit your own placemarker if you want to later.

Ready to add yourself? Once you have access, follow the instructions on this blog post [Link Updated].

Extra tools

Peerindex list of users – Mark has built a list of ArchitectMap Users on Peerindex which sorts social media users by various influence measures. Visitors can also turn the peerindex list into a twitter list to follow. You should be on this list if you are on the map. Visit it and ‘add suggestions’ in case we miss picking you up manually.

We have set up a Twitter list for all those taking part.

Google Earth View

How about viewing the Map in Google Earth where you can spin on a 360 degree axis to view everyone? It looks fantastic! All you need to do is:

1. Make sure you have Google Earth installed on your machine.
2. Download the KML file, which can easily be done by clicking the KML link next to the comments button on the map.
3. Once downloaded, open Google Earth and go File > Open. Locate the downloaded KML file and import it into Google Earth.

Hey presto….. now enjoy…..

Using Youtube in your bio

Ever wanted to add a YouTube video to your Bio to give it something a little bit extra? Check this article out for how to add Youtube to your bio. Any problems give us a shout.

Information sources

To read news about the map follow the #architectmap hashtag on twitter. Use the hashtag in your tweets about the map. No spam please!

Updates are also posted on the comments section of the Global Map – use the link to share with your twitter friends so we can track its usefulness. http://bit.ly.ArchiMapComments

If you need to contact us the quickest way is on twitter by tweeting @SuButcher or @MarkSchuey (especially if you need us to follow you so you can send us your gmail address privately). Or you can comment below, of course. Please let us have your twitter @handle if you do so we can follow you.

How to make the map useful

Get more people to join so that you can meet local twitter users in our industry.

• Send a tweet to your followers, such as:
  

  I’m on the #architectmap http://bit.ly/ArchiMap ask me how to join!

  [West Coast/Singapore/Manchester] architects, engineers and construction consultants on twitter – add yourself to the #architectmap

• Invite construction consultants when you meet them on twitter. Don’t forget to invite consultants such as landscape and interior designers, structural engineers and quantity surveyors.
• Put your twitter handle in your bio on the map – choose ‘rich text’ view to add the URL so it is clickable. That way people can click through and follow you on twitter.

It is interesting to reach the limitations of a tool and work out new ways to make it work for us. Do you have suggestions for how we can make the map the best it can be? Please add them to the comments below.

Here’s an update on the Google map of Architects, designers and construction consultants. Now that we’ve reached 200 placemarks I thought I’d show you some screenshots to show how the map is filling out. Time for a bit of exploration I think.

Whole map on 26 August 2011

Once you zoom in there is plenty of space and collections of twitter users are beginning to show in various geographical areas. Here’s the clustering in North America. Only @PerkinsWill_VAN so far in Canada – where are you Canadian construction tweeters?

USA at 26 August 2011

Of course the motivation for this map came from @MarkSchuey in Dubai and we’re beginning to get a cluster in the Mid East and India. I don’t know who put the place marker in Khartoum, do come and claim it if its yours, or we’ll delete it. The map was featured on designMENA today, they have been following Mark’s work and note some new introductions in the Mid East happening through their twitter account on this blog post.

Middle East and India at 26 August 2011

One of the first users to find the map was @NicGranleese who is based down in Melbourne, and a cluster of twitter users is forming on the East side of Australia. Thanks to Nic for sharing the map on Google+ too. No tweeters in Singapore or other parts of South East Asia yet, though I notice @Makearchitects have located their offices in London, Birmingham and Beijing. Are you out East? Why not join us?

Australasia at 26 August 2011

Of course like everyone I’m interested in things back home, and the UK is looking pretty crowded from a distance. Since I took this screenshot there are more Irish people on the map too, so click the image to see the latest version.

UK at 26 August 2011

Zooming in shows that many are spread out (only a sprinkling in East Anglia, for example) and it isn’t until you get into central London that things get a little crowded. At the moment there is a strip of avatars from Wigmore Street over to Bethnal Green, but space for many more; is your practice in their yet? Don’t forget that all construction consultants and designers are welcome to join the map. Just follow the instructions here.

London and Home Counties at 26 August 2011

I wonder what next week will bring? Please post any questions or comments below.

The map shown here is a google map of architects, designers and consultants who use the social networking platform Twitter.

View Architects, Designers and Consultants on Twitter in a larger map

UPDATE: the map above is now a master map; read the latest post for details.

All the users on the map have uploaded their own placemark. If you belong on the map please do add yourself according to the instructions below.

Those of you who have been around a while might know I’ve been trying to locate the architects twitter league on a map for some time. Here are my first and second attempts, neither of which work anymore – they were developed by third parties and I’m not able to resurrect them, though the second one was very impressive!

Fortunately Twitter has a great way of turning up new ideas and solutions to problems, and in this case the catalyst was Mark Schumann (@MarkSchuey on twitter) who is a director for Davis Langdon in Dubai.

Mark has been wandering round my blog dredging up useful things and brought to my attention the fact that the second mapping exercise was no longer working. He’d been looking for a way to put local construction twitter users, architects, consulants and designers on a map of the Middle East, so we started talking. As a result google maps came up as a solution.

Today you can make a google map (in My Places) such that anyone can edit it, which is what we have done here. We are then inviting all architects, designers and construction consultants who use twitter to put themselves on the map, share it and use it. This process is known as Crowdsourcing, where through our curation individuals can collaborate in small ways to generate something we can all share and use.

We hope you like the map. Please add yourself and tell others about it. Don’t forget to get local contacts you know to add themselves and make use of the map to find professionals local to you.

If you’d like to share the map feel free to use the shortened URL http://bit.ly/ArchiMap and the hashtag #architectmap as well to see what others are sharing about the map.

How to add yourself to the map

If you have a googlemail account you can save the map to ‘My Places’ so you can find it again. I recommend you do this first. The ‘Save to My Places’ link is at the top of the sidebar on the left hand side.

Whilst you are in the map, search for your location, or if you have a Google Places entry, your google places entry.

For a google places entry, click on the entry and ‘Save to map’ and choose the Architects, Designers and Consultants Map. Please only add your google places entry if you have an active twitter account, and make sure the account is in your entry so people can find and follow you.

For an individual, go to the map and click ‘Edit’ in the sidebar. Whilst you are editing please be careful not to move anyone elses placemarkers, and don’t edit the title and description. Click ‘done’ when you have finished editing, then you can explore the map without moving anything about.

Whilst in ‘Edit’, search for your location in the usual way. When you have reached the right place, right click and choose ‘Add a Placemark’.

Edit the placemark so that users can see who you are. We recommend using your twitter handle in the title e.g. @SuButcher.

Use the description for your twitter profile information, any links (you can use HTML here) including a link to your twitter account so people can click right through to follow you if they want. The simplest and most attractive will be if we all simply copy our profiles onto the map placemarks.

Don’t forget to click ‘Save’ and ‘Done’ when you are finished.

To add your twitter avatar as the place marker

In another browser window, go to your profile on http://twitter.com/ and right click on one of the avatars next to your tweets. Choose ‘copy link location’ to copy the url to your clipboard.

Back in the map, edit your place marker once you’ve created it, to show your avatar, by going to your place marker on the map and clicking ‘Edit’ in the sidebar.

In the dialogue box click on the marker itself and choose ‘select icon’.

Paste in the url you have copied from twitter.com and click ‘OK’ and ‘Save’ and ‘Done’.

Now go explore the map!

Your comments and suggestions most welcome

If you have any comments, suggestions for how to improve the map, or issues with it, please post them here or on the map comments and we’ll do our best to make it as useful as it can be.

The last few weeks have been rather strange for me. Having been an active user of social media for nearly eight years (way before that term even existed) I suddenly find my activites are of interest to the trade press, and the ‘architectural establishment’.

Its very flattering to be asked to write for a publication, but there are downsides, especially when you’re activities are suddenly flavour of the month. Editorial control isn’t yours, you have to deliver to a strangers’ deadlines, but more particularly, the agenda of your new fan is probably going to be slightly different from the one you envisioned for yourself.

When I wrote about architects twitter use ‘doing a hockeystick’ back in early 2009, my league of architects was of interest to a growing band of bloggers and tweeters who wanted to find each other and start talking. And yes, being on a ranked list helped encourage some healthy competition. The competition then was for the number of followers, which was one of the few metrics available. Then there was the kudos of being an early adopter, the earliest to use twitter, an accolade always to be held by @eversion but there’s always the possibility that someone was here before him…

Now its different. What we are doing here is getting the opportunity to show people who don’t use social tools what we can do with them. Now we are in print. That is a moment that should be celebrated, and savoured.

This is a huge opportunity, but with the ‘holy grail’ of publication in the AJ and BD ringing in our ears, we can lose sight of what we are here for.

I like Christine Murray’s editorial because it tells non-users that we have made a home for ourselves on the internet where we are doing good work well. There are, however, many things that were left out of the articles which (having editorial control here) I’d like to share here. This is (obviously) just the beginning, but it is what I have to share today. Much more is to be found on this site, and on the sister blog, Just Professionals.

You are your brand.

Being online for your company (officially or unofficially) is a huge responsibility. Don’t take it lightly, because your boss won’t. Remember that you’re not down the pub, you are searchable by google.

Those business owners (like my boss Roger Gilles) who have enabled, permitted, or even silently ignored, our activities online are to be applauded for the thing they have done, that the large firms attempted to close off with firewalls and blanket social media bans. Remember all those posts about that? What we have done here has blown all that rubbish out of the water.

It is sobering to think, if you are a business owner, that your employees probably know employees in many other firms in your town or city. They meet in the pub when you aren’t there. They send each other text messages. They talk about what it is like to work for you. This is happening now, and it happened 20 years ago when I did my year out in Liverpool. That hasn’t changed, its just that now your employees can find people of common interest and friends in different towns and countries. And their conversations are visible.

Talk to each other

There is some subtle ribbing going on in print about whether architects should bother talking to each other on line. Of course they should. Architects should talk to everyone online who has an interest in their interests.

When I gave a talk at the RIBA called “Why Take your Network Online” in the autumn of 2009, I ended my talk with a mosaic of the first 200 architects I had found using twitter, and described them as “Each one through their conversations and stories, redefining the brand in their own image.” The brand of ‘Architect’ is being rewritten in all our conversations.

Make something

So here we are, we have identified over 300 architects and staff on twitter in the UK, I know around 1500 all round the world, and people are listing construction and property people, journalists, housing associations, you name it.

We have all arrived here and are finding each other. We’ve started to talk about what we’re doing, and some of us have been doing quite a lot. Now is the time to celebrate what we’ve achieved so far, but next we need to start using these tools to get the profession and our practices where we want them to be.

Have you written that plan yet?

]]> http://www.justpractising.com/construction-on-twitter/it-is-what-you-do-with-it-that-counts/feed/ 1 http://www.justpractising.com/construction-on-twitter/top-100-uk-construction-on-twitter-%e2%80%93-the-first-list-by-influence/ http://www.justpractising.com/construction-on-twitter/top-100-uk-construction-on-twitter-%e2%80%93-the-first-list-by-influence/#comments Thu, 14 Apr 2011 11:54:50 +0000 su http://www.justpractising.com/?p=1410

Today Construction News exclusively published the first list of UK Construction people on twitter, both on their website and in print.

The list is collaboration between the Construction Network (@tCNtweets) and Peerindex, one of the new tools which has been developed to help evaluate influence and authority amongst users of the twitter social media platform.

Construction News has done a great job of collecting together a group of articles for their readers about what twitter is and why it is useful for the construction industry. They have also graciously taken most of the articles outside their usual paywall so that they can be shared online by non-CN readers.

The best thing about Construction News’ involvement is their elevated position as a print publication within the industry. Publishing the list in print brings the value of twitter to a much wider audience and will, I am sure, encourage many industry leaders to look again at what strategic goals tools like twitter might help them fulfil.

The Articles

Full list of articles and comment

EXCLUSIVE: The tCn Built Environment Twitter 100

From this page you can also download an Excel spreadsheet of the top 100 and look at their detailed statistics.

Why Should Contractors use Twitter?

OPINION: Twitter helps form and develop business relationships (by Paul Wilkinson)

Twitter: top tips for getting started

Newbies might also find my Seven First Steps useful.

How to become part of the tCn top 100

(You can also click a button on the tCntop100 list on Peerindex to suggest someone who should be added)
Follow Construction News on Twitter

See the dynamic Peerindex Listing of the tCn100 here.

I’d urge you to take a look at the list and read the articles. If you have any questions, why not ask them here?

One thing that you’ll notice is that 15 of the top 20 most influential when I last looked were individual accounts, not organisations.

As you may be aware, I’ve been finding architects on twitter since early 2009 (here’s my first post on the subject) and over the period I’ve looked at various ways of sharing them, be it putting them in a league by number of followers (sooo last year!), measuring when they joined twitter, locating them on maps, and trying to find out what they are talking about.

I have now found around 1400 architects from all over the world, including students –emerging professionals – practices, individuals and ex architects, all using twitter in some capacity or other. The fact that I have found them means that they profess to be architects either on their profile or by contacting me, which also means they value their architectural training as part of their being. Reading what they have to share is really interesting and I’m so glad I made a special twitter account to follow them so I get a real flavour of what they care about (in dozens of different languages too).

You can follow all the architects I follow, through the three lists I maintain – @subutcher/architectleague, @subutcher/architectleague2 and @subutcher/architectleague3.

The new Opportunity

For over a year I’ve been unable to create any type of ranked listing of the architects because the web based applications I’d used were discontinued by their owners, but now a new opportunity has arisen which I think might also be useful to members of the ‘Architect Twitter League’. It is called PeerIndex.

Last month I blogged about PeerIndex on my Just Professionals blog. I posted because they had been featured in the Sunday Times, putting together a list of the ‘UK Twitterati’. My post was called “PeerIndex and the Independent tells us nothing about Twitter” because I felt that the focus on celebrity and the ‘broad brush of the famous ignored its true worth as a home to the “niche, specialist, small world of the ordinary.” I can understand why teaming up with the Sunday Times is an offer you can’t refuse, but I think it has its downside, disguising the subtlety of what they are trying to achieve between the ubiquitous veneer of celebrity.

The conversation went offline at this point, and the discussions we had on the blog post led to several other ventures including the #tCnTop100 list of 100 top UK Built Environment twitter users. It also gave me the opportunity to think about how PeerIndex might help us get to know each other better, and become better at using twitter.

So I am now in the process of making a Group on PeerIndex called ‘Architects’. It lists all the architects I follow with @ArchitectLeague.

The list is ranked using PeerIndex’s topic-based authority rankings, which are still in development (the platform was only launched in January 2011 and is still in beta, so we are part of the experiment). The system is very complicated but I’ll be exploring it a bit more over on JustProfessionals if you fancy the techy stuff.

But in the meantime, if you would like to find out more about what PeerIndex says about your twitter use, how you can compare yourself with other accounts, then join PeerIndex here. When you join (by OAuth through Twitter) PeerIndex is able to tell you a lot more about your use of twitter than it can with users who haven’t registered.

If you’d like to be in my Architects Group and appear on the rankings there, and you are an architect, ex architect or studying architecture, comment below, or tweet me and I’ll add you.

I’d like to thank Azeem Azhar, CEO and Simon Cast, Head of Products & Engineering at PeerIndex for putting up with my rants and helping me set up this group, one of their first. I know they have plans to do many things with the platform, including its group function. Lets hope we can learn more about ourselves, and at the same time, help them share more about how our sector uses twitter.

I recently posted this on a Linkedin Group and thought it might be of interest here as well. The discussion was started by the marketing manager at a firm of structural and civil engineers in London. She wanted to know about marketing to architects in London. Here is my reply.

Hi Alison,

Can I answer your question as someone who runs a practice of architects and is often the first point of contact for consultants looking for work?

I get called and/or emailed several times a week by consultants with whom we haven’t worked before. Sometimes the person who calls is a marketing manager who is trying to set up meetings for a partner/director to meet as many architects in an area as possible.

I’m not suggesting this is how your firm would do it, but it is very common way consultants seek work with architects, and looking at the issues from an architects’ perspective might help identify an alternative strategy. The architects perspective might be summarised as:

1. I don’t know you – so I have to make a decision in a sentence or two. So you’re on the back foot already.
2. I didn’t call you – so I probably don’t need to speak to you right now
3. You’re asking for some of my time and we’re not looking for what you’re offering right now so why would I say yes?

I’ve worked for half a dozen architects in my career and most of them employ a gatekeeper as soon as possible to separate them from dealing with these enquiries. Not just because they are very busy, but also because they find it difficult to say “No thank you”. This means you’ll end up meeting architects who say they want to meet you when they’ll actually be thinking ‘Oh God, not again, please go away!’

What we want your marketing strategy to architects to result in is exactly the opposite of the technique I’ve described above. So lets start with their pain.

When do they want you?

Firstly, when does an architect want to work with a brand new structural engineer (for example)?

1. When the existing one screws up
2. Er, that’s it

No-one wants change for the sake of it. The most likely change is that someone in the team doesn’t want the status quo any more.

So tactic number one – Work out how your competitors screw up and differentiate yourself as the exact opposite in character. Then when they are looking for someone new they are more likely to look favourably on your firm as opposed to the others.

How will they find you?

Secondly, what does the architect do when they need a new structural engineer?

1. They ask their friends/colleagues/clients and then they look you up;
2. They look up firms online and then they ask their friends/colleagues/clients

Either way, you’re not very likely to get a job without some sort of prior relationship, and the best prior relationship is a direct introduction from someone you know and trust, to someone they know and trust.

So tactic number two – build your relationships, not your direct mailing list.

Where will they talk about you?

Thirdly, who else uses or works with and therefore can directly recommend structural engineers? Other architects of course, and other clients and consultants. All these people talk to each other in many different ways, and you have to become part of this discussion.

The advice in the comments is all very good – Pritesh is entirely right that you should consider how architects will find your website. However I would stress that they will also be looking for a connection to you through a trusted person. That is where ‘social’ networking comes in.

Tactic number three is, use social tools as an extension of traitional relationship building, not as a tool to shout with.

The idea that social tools like twitter, facebook, linkedin etc are somehow separate separate from the ‘real, professional’ world is a myth, and a wasted opportunity to see who is there. Social tools, indeed any platform with an interactive, conversational element, are a direct extension of the palm pressing professional service firms have been doing for generations. The only differences are, you can do it much more quickly and effectively (especially to make the first contact or keeping contact between meetings), and some of it is in public (so that people can find you directly).

I am aware of thousands of architects and other construction professionals actively using twitter as a serious business tool. To see it as unprofessional is a mistake. Don’t be put off by people suggesting that people will be overwhealmed. This is a misunderstanding of the purpose of these platforms – they are about search, not browse. Here is how it works:

The reason you, your company and your ‘client facing’ staff should be on social networking sites is that these sites make visible the network of human relationships between people. As a result the architects who happen to find your website or blog can then google you to find where else you are.
Then they can go on LinkedIn, find one or two of your people and see who they know who already knows them. They can take a look, discretely, even anonymously, at your profiles on twitter and see who you are talking to, perhaps someone else they know. Then they can ring up, email, message, DM that person and say ‘how well do you know John Smith at Fred Bloggs Partnership? Only, I’m looking for a new structural engineer for…’

The great thing about this type of approach, take it from me, is that whilst you have to put in the legwork, you don’t have to call people up, spam them with email or hassle them when they are busy. They come to you, and the first thing you’ll know is when you get a phone call from them asking to meet.

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