For those of you who aren’t aware, Room4 consulting has a new
marketing assistant. Me. Frankie Thomas. After finishing my degree two weeks
ago I have been with the team at Room4 working on their marketing campaign. For
this reason two days into the job I was offered the opportunity to travel
down to Crawley to help managing director Tim Whitehill deliver a workshop on
social media marketing in the construction industry.
My job at the event was much to act as ‘teaching assistant’ and
help out where I could. This enabled a balance between Tim’s years of experience
in the construction industry and my new found degree as well as my considerable
experience of using social media. This is something I hope and believe worked
well as it gave us a rounded view that could relate and offer opinion on all
ways of thinking in the room.
Other than piping up with my opinion every so often we ran
the ‘frankie challenge’. The aim being to show in practical and realistic terms
just how simple growing a social media network could be. We took twitter and created
my corporate twitter account @room4frankie. Beginning with a blank profile we
encourage tweets within the room using the hashtag #frankiechallenge. I tweeted
and added people from the industry and soon #frankiechallenge had participation
outside the 11 (but growing) tweeters in the room. Not only this, but by
using #socemedsecbe, we received ebooks (from @pauleycreative) and multiple
links of interest from various sources keen to have their say on the topic such
as @RSSprojects and @SuButcher.
The delegates were a good mixture of people, from the newbies
of the companies (much like me), to the directors themselves. Although at
different stages technologically everyone seemed willing to learn. Many were
already aware of the importance of embracing social media to not only their
businesses and careers, but also to the industry itself, whilst a few were less
convinced. However the best part was that everyone was open minded and willing to
listen to other people’s side of the story, as well as to share theirs.
Even as a relative outsider I’m aware that for one reason or
another construction is a largely male dominated industry. Considering this I
was pleasantly surprised to see the presence of quite a few women, in the room. However this presence in some senses revealed the
dynamics of the construction industry’s relation to social media. There was one
young lady in particular who described the difficulties she faced in her work.
She had been sent as representative to learn how social media can be applied to
their business, whilst the sceptics were unwilling to participate. Although the willing to engage in some part
is admirable, this is an area that we cannot leave to the ‘youth of today.’ Yes
it may be that they, for the most part, are the ones ‘plugged in’, but it also
the youth that will one day be in charge. It is the youth that will be left
with your hard work in their hands to do with as they wish, and if your hard
earned work is not compatible with the modern day, I’m afraid to say you may
well be left in the dark ages.
This may sound all doom and gloom, but it is in fact an incredibly
exciting and positive eventuality, it is not the case that it is too difficult,
laborious or extensive to comprehend. You don’t have to cover everything out
there, if anything that is counterproductive. Decide on what you want to
achieve through social media, select a few choice platforms to amplify your
message, and with it the route to those aims. If you manage those few well (and
there is software and tactics readily available to help in this) by amplifying
a consistent message, and the message that you want people to see – don’t be
daft and forget the world can see it- then you will not only be ‘down with the
kids’ but you will find, most probably, that success in those aims far
outstrips the labor involved.
By the end of the session I had 40 followers, all in the
industry, some valuable resources, an entire online conversation created and
some convinced sceptics. Success.
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