Social Media and the Built Environment—the Research Continues

Two years ago, our book Social Media in Action was published to help architects, landscape architects, engineers and environmental consulting firms use these tools in ways that help them reach their business and marketing goals. For this, we surveyed, studied and interviewed hundreds of firms, but much has changed in two years: new tools have  emerged and more firms are embracing social media in creative and innovative ways. So inevitably, new research is required.

Yesterday, in collaboration with Reed Construction Data, my co-author Holly Berkley and I launched a new study on the social media efforts of building product manufacturers to help these companies understand the most effective + efficient ways social media can be used to support their core business goals.

We need your help keeping this data current!

We’re looking for building product manufacturers–of all sizes and across the U.S.–to take a short online survey (it should take about 10 minutes), sharing insight into why, how and when you use social media. We’re also digging into costs, time and ROI of social media use among your building industry peers today. Select participants will be contacted for follow up interviews and possibly featured as a case study.

In exchange for your time, all survey participants will get a first look at the 2014 data results, along with a special white paper written by Holly and me, analyzing how building product manufacturers can best use that data to make social media work for them. In addition, as a special “thank you”, we’d like to offer anyone who takes this survey a discount code for 25% off your purchase of Social Media in Action.

Ready to get started?

Make Your Vote Count: Be2Awards

I first learned about the Be2Awards awards last year while researching our book, so of course we are really excited to have “Social Media in Action” shortlisted for the 2012 Be2 Media Award. I’ll say it up front … the awards are crowdsourced, so please vote for our book! Plus, if you journey to their website and start clicking you’ll discover some fantastic examples of built environment (that’s the B.e.) professionals, companies and organizations who are using new media in innovative ways.

The quality of competition here is no joke.  Mark Johnson’s social media PR campaign (which we recognized as one of our blog post favorites) and his competitor, #droptheban, make for a tough choice in the Best PR/Social Media Campaign category, as does ArchitectMap and Green Vision in the Best Community Category. The categories for the best social media and sustainability blog are ripe with great examples – and blogs to start reading religiously. I was thrilled to see Cesar Abeid’s Construction Industry Podcast, a series that I recently discovered and really enjoy.  The list gets me thinking of other sites, campaigns and communities to nominate next year.

“Social Media in Action” is in the Best Old Media/New Media category and I am honored to be among these prestigious candidates which include the UK’s construction search engine, a UK construction publication that makes all its content free online, the UK’s construction trade association live database of contract awards and The Guardian’s own built environment “hub” for sustainable development.

The Be2Awards are in their third year and aligned with the London strand of the global Social Media Week event series that takes place in a handful of cities worldwide. Be2 is also hosting Be2Talk, a speaker series on the built environment and social media as a part of the London Social Media Week. I sincerely hope these talks will be posted after the event. I’m interested to see Carlton Reid’s ''Cycling, the built environment and social media'' presentation. This is hardly their first event – Be2 has hosted a slew of conferences, Twitter chats and more since the organization was established in 2008 by built-environment professionals Martin Brown  and Paul Wilkinson, Jodie Miners  and Pam Broviak.   I just joined the Be2Camp community to stay better connected to all their happenings and hope you will consider joining too.

Could Sweden’s Twitter Strategy Work for Your Firm?

Are you like 88% of the A/E professionals we polled who are using social media to position their firms' experts? Perhaps you should consider Sweden’s approach.

In December Sweden democratized their Twitter account by giving control of @Sweden to a new Swede each week. (You may have seen the headlines about the when Sonja Abrahamsson stirred controversy with her less-than-politically-correct tweets). This approach is now being adopted by other countries with the Netherlands as the latest to try it out.

Granted, Sweden's objective, to entice tourists to visit, doesn’t directly relate to the field of landscape, architecture and engineering professional services. But the concept of associating a personality and their particular point of view with a brand, could be a great way to showcase the many facets of expertise within your organization.

If you have willing and qualified participants (and please be honest with yourself, not everyone is capable of being a thought leader – it takes knowledge, drive and communications skills), ask yourself if you trust your subject-matter experts to operate the account in a responsible way – professional but personal and gaffe free.

In addition to building your firm’s reputation for each of its areas of specialization, this approach could be a fun way to get more employees and leaders involved in your firm’s social media program. Offer your operators solid guidelines and tips so they are communicating effectively. Help them out by scheduling the first few tweets with them, so they can get a chance to learn from you and overcome any fear of tweeting. For those who are already using social media personally, encourage them to amplify what they are doing for the firm’s account by talking about it and retweeting through their personal accounts -- maybe the firm will pick up some new followers as well.

Clearly, this idea is not for every firm, but for the right organization it could be fun. What do you think?

If you decide to try this out, please let us know so we can stay tuned!

Weekly Roundup for Week of April 30

2012 National Design Winners. The Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt has announced winners of the 13th annual National Design Awards, a program established to promote excellence and innovation in design. 2012 National Design Award recipients:

•   Lifetime Achievement: Richard Saul Wurman

•   Design Mind: Janine Benyus

•   Corporate and Institutional Achievement: Design that Matters

•   Architecture Design: Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects

•   Communication Design: Rebeca Mendez

•   Fashion Design: Thom Browne

•   Interaction Design: Evan Roth

•   Interior Design: Clive Wilkinson Architects

•   Landscape Architecture: Stoss Landscape Urbanism

•   Product Design: Scott Wilson

Via ArtDaily

 Lackluster Expo Line. Los Angeles Times’ architecture review says Los Angeles’ Expo Line is a mix of architectural goals that never fully meshes into one unifying concept.

 “The stations seemingly want to disappear into the cityscape and at the same time assert a Big Metaphorical Idea about what public transit means for Los Angeles. And in trying to do both, of course, they do neither.” - Christopher Hawthorne, Los Angeles Times Architecture Critic

Via LA Times

Straying from Convention. Despite declining attendance and revenue, many cities are expanding convention centers or building new ones.

Dozens of cities have been building new centers or enlarging old ones. In the last year alone, Indianapolis and Philadelphia have opened sprawling new centers, while plans for such facilities are being floated in Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Boston.

Via Architectural Record

BIG Wins in Seoul. Bjarke Ingels Group’s hash-shaped residential block will contribute to the developing skyline of Seoul and become a recognizable marker of the new cultural and commercial center of the city.

“The Cross # Towers constitute a three-dimensional urban community of interlocking horizontal and vertical towers. Three public bridges connect two slender towers at different levels - underground, at the street and in the sky. Catering to the demands and desires of different residents, age groups and cultures the bridges are landscaped and equipped for a variety of activities traditionally restricted to the ground. ” -Bjarke Ingels, Founding Partner, BIG.

Via WorldArchitectureNews

“Invaluable” Guide for A/E. In the ArchNewsNow book review of “Social Media in Action”, Architecture Critic George Calys describes the book as “invaluable for practitioners who realize that social media is not a passing phenomenon and can play a part in their business.”

Via ArchNewsNow

Putting It All Out There

I’ve known for many years that writing a book is no easy task. I pitched the publisher, managed the writing, editing, image selection, etc. of EDAW’s first book Designing Public Consensus with author Barbara Faga in 2005. I distinctly remember prying the manuscript from her hands on the day of our final deadline. I now completely understand the difficulty of letting go of something that bears your name. I’ve since apologized to Barbara for not being more empathic. I was fully prepared to put in the long hours, but my family wasn’t. When I worked on Designing Public Consensus, I was married with no children and my husband accommodated my schedule by having dinner ready when I finally arrived home from work and I learned to happily eat tacos 3 nights each week. This time, my husband has a much broader range of recipes, but we also have two young kids. Working late wasn’t really an option, so I started my days at 5am and a couple nights a week I’d plug back in after the kids went to bed. After a while, this started to wear on me. Working a few hours on Saturdays and Sundays and few hours here and there on vacations, this started to wear on my husband.

My co-author Holly Berkley, who has written two books prior to this one, also has her own consultancy, a husband and two young kids—but somehow she manages this smoothly. I’m so glad to have had her throughout this process to lean on, complain to and learn from.

I had mixed feelings about letting go of this manuscript. “Perfect is the enemy of done”—a mantra a former boss used to recite to me. This went through my head daily, but there was always seemed to be one more thing. Finally we finished it. Now it’s out there for the world to judge.

The product of 13 long months, Social Media in Action: Comprehensive Guide for Architecture, Engineering, Planning and Environmental Consulting Firms is now available as an ebook for $9.95 and the print version will be available next week for $29.95. You can even enter to win a copy on from our AEC Idea Exchange Facebook page by posting your favorite design or planning site, tool or event on social media.

However you come across a copy—if you come across a copy—and if you read it, we’d love to know what you think. And if you like it, please tell someone about it.