This week I spoke at a conference about social media for the construction industry.
It was one of those gigs where you are given a topic to cover and you have to adhere to that brief.
My presentation was about Facebook and my remit was to examine the ways that Facebook could be used in the construction industry to drive brand recognition and revenue.
Basically, I had to talk about how the construction industry could use Facebook for 40 minutes.
My first thought was “Yikes! What am I going to say here?” (I know next to nothing about the construction industry).
As I started to research the topic and look for examples of how the construction industry is already using Facebook, my heart sank even lower; case studies of Facebook groups and pages in this industry are few and far between.
So, I took a step back and began to think about why the construction industry might want to consider Facebook as a marketing channel.
Quite frankly, the stats speak for themselves. Facebook has 19M active users in the UK and 44% of these are over 30 years of age.
That’s a massive amount of people and the demographic is hugely inclusive.
Even for a niche industry the potential audience is still bigger than you might find any other single network.
That convinced me that Facebook was certainly worth considering as a marketing channel for the construction industry but I still wasn’t convinced about Facebook’s value as a B2B comms. channel.
Again, I went back to basics and started to think about what Facebook offered.
The bottom line is that it lets businesses simply and easily create a presence which they can use to engage with an audience and create a dialogue with them (for free).
Also, Facebook forces people to be authentic – unlike other social spaces, when you create a profile in Facebook you use your real name. And when you create a business presence in Facebook, you use your personal profile to do this.
This actively supports B2B communication, which is about one-to-one relationships– Facebook offers businesses the opportunity to create connections with real people AS real people.
So far so good, but the next question was how could the construction industry engage with their audiences?
Like I said, I’m no expert on the construction industry (they build stuff, right?) but once I started to think about the kinds of reasons why someone might want to connect with a business, I realised that these apply to all industries.
Bingo, I had my presentation – and my core message.
Which is (in less than 140 characters, as is the current twend):
Facebook has lots of users and offers tools to help you reach them. Work out who you want to reach and what they want. Give it to them.
My summary slide here shows the variety of ways in which you can engage and give value to people on Facebook but why not check out my full presentation to see how you can put this in to practice?
At the end of my presentation (which, I am relieved to say, was well received), some of the companies I spoke to still had concerns about using Facebook in this way – it just isn’t seen as a viable tool for B2B marketing.
That’s OK. It’s not my job to sell Facebook to you.
What is important is that you are aware of its potential for business and its place in your social media toolkit so you can make an informed decision. And I really believe that this applies whatever business you are in!
2 Comments
Great post (and well done for getting through a daunting presentation!)
Wish I could retweet the message and link it back to you guys ;)
Is there a point about Facebook not being right for all businesses, despite having a large audience? Isn’t a social network with just 100p people but all talking about the construction industry a better fit?
I think you are right to some extent – Social Media offers you a toolkit for connecting with your audience and you should select the tools that allow you to connect in the best way.
A social network with a highly targeted audience is likely to create lots of engagement. It’s also likely though that the audience is already aware of what you do, and whilst it is obviously paramount to connect with this audience, it doesn’t provide much opportunity to reach new people.
This is I think what the volume that Facebook offers – this ability to make entirely new and unexpected connections and reach people that you might not otherwise find.
I’m still not convinced that if I was developing a social media strategy for a construction client that I would recommend a Facebook presence but I would certainly consider it – and if the client had a need to reach a new audience (e.g. for graduate recruitment or consultative purposes) it might be that it could form a valuable part of their toolkit