Tips for Your Social Media Road Map

While social media has become exceedingly accessible and appears to be simple as everyone is posting, tweeting and pinning, it’s important for firms to have clear goals and a mapped route for getting to these before embarking your firm’s social media experiment. Like any marketing or communications initiative, you won’t understand what social media can do for your business unless you have a plan.

I recently attended a social media webinar hosted by Jason Falls, coauthor of No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing and founder of Social Media Explorer. The crux of his presentation was that businesses need a strategic planning process that incorporates social media marketing business drivers for success. With a plan you can build, define goals, measure, execute and engage in tactics. Having a plan is a fundamental imperative for you to get what you want out of social media.

Granted, Falls is focused almost exclusively on B-to-C, so here are the nuggets of value that can be applied to the landscape, architecture, engineering and development world of professional services.

What can social media do for your firm? Once you understand what social media can do for your firm, you can assess what is achievable and how to fit this into your business goals.

Falls cites seven drivers of social media:

  • Enhance branding and awareness
  • Protect your reputation
  • Expand public relations
  • Build community
  • Enhance customer service
  • Facilitate research and development
  • Drive sales and leads

You should decide which of these drivers are most important for your firm. If you focus on more than one, which is more than likely, you’ll have to assess your resources and budget.

Now that you know what social media can do for your firm, you can develop a strategic plan.  But just how do you approach the strategic planning process in social media?

Falls defines a strategic planning process as the following:

 “A strategic planning process delivers a set of defined initiatives (projects) that achieve a desired set of business goals.” – Dennis McDonald, technology expert

 According to Falls, there are four things needed for a solid strategic plan:

  • Clearly defined goals
  • Measurable objectives for each goal
  • Strategies to meet objectives
  • Tactics/tasks to accomplish strategies.

When defining goals, each goal should have a singular focus instead of multiple ones. It’s very likely you will have more than one goal. Goals should support your strategic plan. Examples of goals include increase website traffic, increase online sales, decrease negative online sentiment, capture consumer insight and improve search results.

For most AEC firms, a strong content strategy will show prospective clients, competitors and the public what their firm does. Your firm may want to develop a content strategy that features work, the process of a project, a firm’s personality or project awards. Does your firm offer specialized areas of expertise? A solid content strategy may be a good opportunity to showcase these subject areas. Your content strategy could also show related work … Are there assets that you use internally that may be useful to your public audience such as a photo library, product data or original or aggregated research?  Again, these may be valuable to showcase as part of a strategy, but it supports the drivers of social media such as building a community or enhancing public relations.

According to Falls, another key element in making the strategy successful is to ensure that objectives support the following:

  •  Point to one of three things, which is especially critical in the public relations world
  • Have a result or outputs which in most cases is content or product
  • Have outtakes such as information or entertainment
  • Have outcomes such as a change in metrics
  • Indicate a target audience
  • List an expected level of attainment
  • Identify a deadline or timeframe

One of the AEC industry’s biggest misconceptions about social media is that these networks are just another newsroom to post information and news. Social media goes beyond that – it’s not all about your firm’s accomplishments and announcements. One of the most important drivers of social media is building community. This means interaction. It’s about getting to know your followers and fans and engaging with them so you can create content that connects with them and learn what they are doing as well. If you promote their feats and successes, they in turn will talk about your firm’s accomplishments in their circles, expanding your audience and stakeholders.

Weekly Roundup for Week of May 21

Happy 75th Birthday, Golden Gate Bridge. Learn about the festival highlights on Sunday, May 27, and check out a photo essay chronicling the bridge’s history. The bridge's management is planning a celebration on Sunday that includes music, art shows, lectures, a new book and a new visitor center. But one thing won't happen: Nobody gets to cross the bridge on foot on the big day.

Via PBS Chinese Architect wins Pritzker Prize. Wang Shu is the recipient of the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize, one of the most prestigious honors in architecture. He was praised by the Pritzker jury for work that blends traditional Chinese elements with modern lines and attention to the environment.

The award has a symbolic second winner – Hyatt Hotels. The $100,000 prize is sponsored by the Hyatt Foundation, a separate entity from the business, Hyatt Hotels, which has no role in picking the winner. The company's link to promoting Chinese culture abroad may give the Hyatt name a boost with status-conscious government officials and some of the public.

Via Washington Post

 

Six Firms Compete for Urban Future Award. Architects participating in Audi's Urban Future Initiative are considering what "mobility" might look like in cities in 2030.

The 2012 firms were selected for their track records of researching the urban environment and their relationships to one of six metropolitan areas: CRIT (Mumbai); Höweler + Yoon Architecture (the Boston-Washington corridor); NODE Architecture & Urbanism (Pearl River Delta); Superpool (Istanbul) and Urban Think Tank (São Paulo); and Junya Ishigami + Associates (Tokyo).

Via Architects Newspaper

A City Rises, Along With Its Hopes. New York Times architecture critic visits Medellín, Colombia, to see the ambitious and photogenic buildings that have gone up, but also to find what remains undone.

Medellín has lately become a medical and business center with a population of 3.5 million and a budding tourist industry, its civic pride buoyed by the new public buildings and squares, and exemplified by an efficient and improbably immaculate metro and cable car system. Linking rich with poor neighborhoods, spurring private development, the metro, notwithstanding shrieks elsewhere in Colombia over its questionable construction cost, is for residents of Medellín a shared symbol of democratic renewal. –Michael Kimmelman

Via New York Times

Weekly Roundup for Week of May 14

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China’s TV Headquarters Complete. The futuristic building — with two leaning towers linked with a 90-degree twist at the top — has attracted much controversy since the day its design debuted a decade ago.

The 54-story, 772-foot headquarters for China Central Television has two leg-like structures that lean toward each other, meeting in mid-air with a right-angled deck-like connecting body that hangs 528 feet above the ground. Its bold design has drawn praise and detractions and earned the nickname of "big boxer shorts" from local residents.

Via Architectural Record

HOK to Design Medical School. Helmuth, Obata & Kassabaum (HOK) has been selected to design the $375 million University at Buffalo (UB) School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences on its downtown campus in New York.

Located at the center of the region’s emerging bio-sciences corridor, this new transit-orientated medical school development will anchor a lively, urban mixed-use district on campus and bring 1,200 students, faculty and staff downtown.

NY Tech Sector Booming. A report released by the Center for an Urban Future has positioned New York City as the fastest growing tech sector in the country, outpacing Boston to become second to Silicon Valley.

The study indicates a remarkable turnaround for a city that was considered a second-rate tech center half a decade ago. Today, New York boasts thousands of tech startups across the five boroughs, drawing investment from venture capital firms across the globe and bringing high-paying jobs to the city—not to mention some of the best and brightest minds.

Via ArchDaily.com

Changes to Eisenhower Memorial Design. Architect Frank Gehry publicly unveiled changes to the contentious design for the Eisenhower Memorial this week at a session in Washington.

Gehry made the adjustments following complaints by members of the Eisenhower family that the design put too much emphasis on the former president's upbringing in Kansas and not enough on his accomplishments as a military and political leader.

Via Los Angeles Times

Redesign of Modernist Landscape in Minneapolis. Peavey Plaza – one of the country’s most significant modernist landscapes located in downtown Minneapolis – will soon be demolished. Originally designed by M. Paul Friedberg, the two-acre public space consisting of a terraced amphitheater-like space, fountains and reflecting pools was heralded as an “urban oasis” when it was unveiled in 1975 but in recent years, the plaza has fallen into disrepair.

Much controversy surrounds the redesign. Preservationists are urging the City Council to save Peavey Plaza by making ADA and other upgrades. Donors to the project, and the Minnesota Orchestra – which owns 25 percent of the project – support new construction over rehabilitation. The city’s public works department is set to appeal the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission’s recent denial of a demolition permit. If the permit is approved, the issue will be voted on by the City Council on May 25.

Via New York Times

Weekly Roundup for Week of May 7

2012 AIA Convention. The American Institute of Architecture (AIA) National Convention and Design Exhibition will be held May 17-19 at the Walter E. Washington Center in Washington, D.C. This year’s convention theme “Design Connects” celebrates the uniqueness of design as the synthesis of theory and practice, the relationship of the built and natural environments, and the aspiration of architecture to serve the broader goals of humanity.” Highlights of the convention include keynote presentations given by a recipient of two Pulitzer Prizes and an architect who currently serves as a Cabinet Secretary. There will also be a special tribute honoring six architects involved in the rebuilding and memorials following September 11.

Related: If you have attended #AIAchat on Twitter in the past, be sure to check out the TweetUps while you are at the convention and connect with your Twitter contacts in person:

  • Thursday, May 17, 5:30–6:30 p.m. Emerging Professionals Lounge, Washington Convention Center
  • Friday, May 18, 3–4 p.m. AIA Town Hall, Washington Convention Center

Andrew Hawkins (@HawkinsArch), a friend of both the #AIAchat and the #AECSM chat, will be presenting Twitter best practices – don’t miss it!

If you haven’t registered, you can still RSVP via Twitter using the hashtag #aia2012.

(Walter Communications is disappointed to be missing the AIA Convention this year.)

Welcome Transparency. A New York Times architecture review says that Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s new visitor center features high-contrast oppositions between growing and built.

A lot can go wrong when you try to conceal a building, or even part of one. People are clever; throwing some plants on a roof is unlikely to fool us. But Weiss/Manfredi, perhaps aware of the peril, shaped its roof with care. Even now — when the grasses and flowering bulbs are just beginning to grow in — the new construction, seen from various points in the garden, succeeds in deleting itself from the composition just enough. – Philip Nobel

Fort Mason Contest. Twenty renowned firms from four continents have been invited to participate in a design competition seeking “creative and practical design concepts” on thirteen acres of prime waterfront real estate at the historic Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.

Local invitees include Hood Studio (Oakland), EHDD Architecture  (SF), Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects (SF), CMG Landscape Architecture  (SF) and SWA Group (SF) who may compete with big firms such as James Corner Field Operations, SANAA, Studio Gang Architects and BIG.

Via Arch Daily

Prestigious Arts Prize. Spanish avant-garde architect Rafael Moneo, known for the use of light in his building designs to create diaphanous spaces, was named as this year's recipient of the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts.

The jury hailed the universal quality of Moneo's work, saying it enriches urban spaces "with an architecture that is serene and meticulous" adding that Moneo is an acclaimed master who combines aesthetics with functionality, "especially in the airy interiors that act as impeccable settings for great works of culture and the spirit."

Via Fox News Latino

Designing Your Stories

ImageAs designers, there are many tools to help you explain your ideas, but even with all the cool technologies and 3-D capabilities of this visual profession your ability to verbally tell your story is still essential. This was the underlying message of a panel discussion I moderated for Presenting Architecture at the AIA in San Francisco. In fact, most of the panelists presented their advice in parables. Architects frequently tell their design stories to journalists, clients and cities; so we assembled a panel that reflects this: John King, the urban design critic for the San Francisco Chronicle; George Calys, the architecture critic for the San Francisco Examiner; Frank Doyle, a Tiburon Town Council member; Phil Woods, AIA AICP, the director of physical & environmental planning, physical planning design & construction at University of California, Merced; and Jonathan Stern, director of the development group at the Port of San Francisco.

At the end of the session, two morals emerged from their accounts.

  1. Context is king.
  2. Good story tellers will tell the same tale in very different ways depending on who is in the audience.

Jonathan Stern narrated the tale of the 8 Washington building designs. He must have flipped through 30 slides of the planned changes to city from the perspective of the average pedestrian and nearby resident before he revealed how these studies and urban designs naturally informed the architecture of the site. The right context puts the obstructers’ minds at ease and sells the design.

Similarly in Tiburon, some projects have lingered for as many as seven years, while others sailed through the City' approval process after one presentation. The design of the house itself is less important to an audience of laypeople than the preservation of neighbor’s views or the intrusion of the natural aesthetic of the hillsides. The architects, who anticipate the concerns of the audience, illustrate their story with visuals that address these and articulate these points clearly in their presentation – instead of waiting for someone to challenge their design.

In the world of higher education, architects don’t always see that the university planners are your allies. Instead of going on and on about your very polished architecture designs, consider the bigger picture – the planning, how the architecture is incorporated into the neighborhood. Or better yet, give the university the opportunity to put their fingerprint on the project and they will help sell how wonderful it is for the city.

However, the audience is not always so obvious when you are dealing with the press. While you may want to impress the reporter with the features of your project that you feel are the strongest. The stories that will be successful in capturing journalists’ attention are the ones that appeal to their audience.

Ultimately, telling good stories requires preparation. George Calys’ words seem to be an appropriate summary of the lessons, “Have a message and be clear about it.” “Don’t make the audience read between the lines.” And finally, “The more you say, the less they hear.”

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:

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

Weekly Roundup for the Week of April 23

State of the Union. Six shortlisted teams unveil vision boards for LA's Union Station. Architecture teams developed concepts for the 42-acre area, presenting “vision boards” containing conceptual renderings—with no specified limitations— for the neighborhood as it might look in the year 2050.

Shortlisted teams:

  1. EE&K a Perkins Eastman Company/UNStudio
  2. Gruen Associates/Grimshaw Architects
  3. IBI Group/Foster+Partners
  4. Moore Ruble Yudell Architect and Planners/Ten Aquitectos/West 8
  5. NBBJ/ingenhoven Architects/SWA Group
  6. Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW)/ Parsons Transportation Group

Via Architects Newspaper

New eZine. World-Architects.com has launched an eMagazine that features a broad spectrum of architectural culture and trends.

The eMagazine articles include Insight, which highlights interviews with clients and discussions with academics and curators, news headlines, Building Review, Film and Product Spotlight.

Via A Daily Dose of Architecture

 

Flood of Funding. Residents of Houston passed a ground-breaking measure to fund a water and wastewater infrastructure with a pay-as-you-go plan.

This innovative funding tool for a large-scale drainage project is virtually unprecedented, and is a monumental step for Houstonians that offers a roadmap for other cities.

Via estormwater.com

related links: http://swagroup.com

Space Exploration. AECOM’s NASA Sustainability Base at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, may be one of the most forward-thinking building projects in existence.

The LEED Platinum facility blends highly technological green design with innovations originally devised for use in space exploration to form a working office that also showcases the intelligent technology developed by NASA.

 Via WorldArchitectureNews.com

 

 

The Generosity of the Thinking Man (or Woman): Managing, Sharing and Leading Through Knowledge

Image Not everyone is comfortable being generous with their knowledge. Many choose to hold it close to their chest hoping that their exclusive ownership of it will somehow be a competitive advantage. But people won’t know you have this knowledge if you don’t talk about it … and talk is cheap.

In order to convince people that you know your subject thoroughly, you have to show it. What better way to do this than to give it away?

Firms like HMC Architects and SWA Group are putting their knowledge to work in the form of educating the general public. (Full disclosure: Walter Communications has worked with both firms on these projects.) In both of these cases, young people are the knowledge-sharing conduit. SWA’s Matt Baumgarten notes, “Kids can spread information very effectively. Once they understand the concepts, they go home and teach it to their families.”

HMC’s godfather of sustainability Pablo La Roche recently led a workshop series on sustainability at a local elementary school. This initiative was made possible by a grant from the firm’s Designing Futures Foundation in an effort to contribute to the next generation of environmental stewards.

SWA is organizing two events in Houston, Texas for this fall that aim to open the public’s eyes to the real danger of living in a floodplain by calling their attention to the 100-year floodline and the natural infrastructure of the City’s bayous. The first is an art installation and the other is a series of presentations to public schools and an organized two-mile student walk along the 100-year floodline. These initiatives effectively build stronger connections with their communities and garner kudos from the press, but they also reinforce their reputation as experts – and as an added bonus, they keep employees happy and engaged.

Another firm that has impressed me by their know-how generosity I learned about at KA Connect –the single event where all the AEC industry innovators hang out. Through their strict focus, client list, research and services, Ayers Saint Gross has built a solid reputation and positioned itself as a resource for anything related to campus planning. The firm and its website is the single place a university need look to compare their campus with other schools, to access an image resource library, to find research and whitepapers on the latest trends and to hire top tier planning and design services.

Yes, this could be seen as a risky move since the competitors of Ayers Saint Gross can also access this resource, but the gamble pays well. According  to Principal Jim Wheeler, the firm’s policy is “give it away” and even goes so far as to require all employees to demonstrate knowledge through research, speaking and publishing. When firms set an expectation like this internally, it raises the bar and challenges staff to clear it. It may not be the right environment for every professional, but for those who want to take part in shaping their profession it is the place where they will thrive. What firm doesn’t want this type of person working for them and representing them to the public?

Ayers Saint Gross has it right.  They are creating a culture of learning, thinking and testing. Through this culture, they have created a reputation for stellar services and a continuous cycle of encouraging staff to exceed expectations, communicating findings and winning new challenging projects where they can put their research to the test.

You don’t always have to be the originator of an idea to have a reputation of being knowledgeable about a topic. I ran into Anthony Flint at the American Planning Association conference last week and learned about a new resource that his organization has created. In this case, The Lincoln Institute for Land Policy isn’t sharing its own knowledge (although they do frequently publish their own research and findings), but instead it has aggregated and organized all the scenario planning tools that are currently available in order to help planners learn which tool is right for them, how to use the tools, and to support further development and refinement of scenario planning tools. The Institute’s report “Opening Access to Scenario Planning Tools” and corresponding website establishes The Lincoln Institute as an authority on the technology that is pushing the industry in new direction without building a tool of their own.

If all of this sounds good and you are thinking that you’d like to start spreading your firm’s knowledge, make sure you look inside first. If centers of knowledge and leading experts can’t be easily found and accessed internally, then start with addressing this problem. If your firm already has a strong process for knowledge management, then what are you waiting for? This is the stuff of marketers' and communicators' dreams.

We’d love to hear how your firm is using its knowledge, leave us a comment.

Weekly Roundup for Week of April 16

Image Design Competition for LA Bridge. Engineers and architects from across the globe are invited to submit designs to replace the Sixth Street Bridge across the Los Angeles River east of downtown.

Engineers believe the 80-year-old bridge has a 70 percent chance of collapsing in the next 50 years and a very good chance of falling during a major earthquake. “The Sixth Street Bridge design competition will make sure the new bridge reflects our city’s spirit and style,” L. A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says.

Architects Aid Tsunami Efforts. A new community center that serves to help with tsunami rehabilitation and support program has been completed in Thalalla Mathra, Sri Lanka.

The community center was built in a Buddhist temple’s land as a token of gratitude to the Chief Monk of the temple who helped the tsunami-affected village by providing food, accommodation and sanitary facilities during the aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami.

Architecture Billings Show Slight Uptick. The commercial sector continues to lead the Architecture Billings Index (ABI), which has remained in positive territory for the fifth consecutive month.

The American Institute of Architects' Architecture Billings Index has shown a slight increase in so-called billings for the past five months. The billings index is viewed as an early indicator for future development work, given that developers need designs before they build.

After the Architecture Meltdown. With the heyday of architecture long gone, what do architects do after the recession?

‘So what needs to change? Our conception of what Architecture is. We need to accept that Architecture isn’t just designing – but building, creating, doing. We need to train architects who are the agents of their own creative process, who can make their visions come to life, not 50 years down the road, but now. Today.’

A Marketing Revolution for AEC

It wasn’t that long ago when the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industries looked down on the idea of marketing and self-promotion. For the most part that has changed today, but in many firms the role of marketing is still dominated by proposal generation leaving little time remaining for analytical thinking about markets and audiences. The industry continues to be behind the curve as compared to other professional service fields.

The role of the web in AEC marketing is no exception. Having a presence online is the norm. Every firm has a website, because everyone expects to find your firm online. While each day, more AEC firms are adding social media tools into their online mix, many more are still reluctant to commit, clinging to the myths about social media’s relevance and purpose.

But even the firms that have embraced social media wholeheartedly tend to be using it as a soft sell compared to the online marketing machines that are bringing in new leads daily for other professional service industries. According to Hinge Marketing’s recent report “Online Marketing for Professional Services Firms,” purchasing decisions are influenced by social media – videos, testimonials, photos, stories. These are the elements that distinguish one firm from another. If a prospective client searches for you online, and you’re not there, they will find your competitor.

The report focuses on five professional services groups – marketing/communications, technology services, management consulting and accounting finance and AEC – and suggests that there is a connection between online lead generation and the growth and profitability of a company. Of the professional services firms they surveyed, those that generate a higher percentage of leads online grow faster and are more profitable. Unfortunately, they also found that very few AEC firms generate online leads at the benchmark rate of 40% or more and that AEC has the lowest growth rate out of all the surveyed professional service industries.

 Could this be because of its low level of online lead generation?

 The AEC firms that were more active online, developed a community and showcased unique assets such as a video saw an increase in new clients and more positive mentions about them online. One featured case study that supports the connection between online lead generation and company growth is the architectural firm Modative. About 90% of Modative’s leads come through the website. The firm receives about four warm online leads a week and its web traffic has increased from 10 visits a week to 400 per day in a short time by using search engine data available through tools like Google Adwords to find good keywords that increased search engine traffic. Modative wrote several pieces of educational content on the topic of “small lot subdivisions” and uploaded to their website in their Resources section and requiring an email address to download each piece. This contact info is added to the firm’s list of leads and becomes part of their sales pipeline.

One fascinating twist in their findings is that the AEC industry uses social media for recruiting more than any of the other industries. Perhaps there are lessons AEC marketers can learn from colleagues in the recruiting department.

If architects and engineers follow the online marketing trends of other professional services groups, could the industry see exponential growth, profitability and a new way to do business?

What do you think? Is online marketing the future for your firm?

Weekly Roundup for Week of April 9

I spent two days this week immersed in ideas with progressive firms and professionals who are investing in research + development for their work and testing how new technology can shift their practice. I'm still buzzing with new thoughts and eager to build on the connections I made. Stay tuned next week for what I took away from KA Connect. Architecture and Design Film Festival. The second annual Architecture and Design Film Festival brings 30-plus features, short films and events to the Music Box Theatre in Chicago.

ADFF 2012 includes Pruitt-Igoe Myth, a documentary about Pruitt-Igoe, a St. Louis housing project that became a symbol of modernism’s and public housing’s perceived failures. In the Eames documentary, architect and painter James Franco narrates Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey’s look at Charles and Ray Eames, the king and queen of midcentury modernism.

Eating in Nature. Bamboo Wing restaurant in Vietnam exemplifies the merits of steel-free design.

World Architecture News highlights a slideshow of images that showcase a breath-taking restaurant and event venue by Vo Trong Nghia Co., Ltd at Flamingo Dai Lai Resort in Vinh Phuc province, Vietnam. Constructed entirely using bamboo as a structural and finishing material, the rustic interior is the perfect backdrop for romantic dinners, celebratory drinks and events such as weddings or official ceremonies.

Interview with Frank Gehry.  The 83-year-old architect talks to the Wall Street Journal about his 12-story Opus Hong Kong, the most expensive piece of residential real estate ever built in the city.

“It’s an honor to be called to do a building, especially on a site like this, on the Peak in Hong Kong. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I accepted it that way, and I wanted it to be special. I didn’t want it to be a sore thumb, because you can see it from Central. So I didn’t paint it red.” –Frank Gehry

related: Bloomberg Businessweek

Design Competition. Designs by finalists in competitions aimed at re-imaging three sections of the National Mall are on display and open for public comment. Which is your favorite?

According to Architectural Record, the 12 schemes are available for viewing April 9-15 at the Smithsonian Castle, the National Museum of American History. The concepts seek to restore and improve Constitution Gardens at the Mall’s west end; the Washington Monument Grounds at Sylvan Theater, near the center; and Union Square at the east end, near the Capitol. Some aspects call for the construction and/or renovation of structures.

Friday Features: Weekly Roundup for the Week of April 2

We are starting a new series where we highlight some of our favorite news and online finds for the week. Please share!

Social Media Buzz: Mashable presents 9 key ways to add LinkedIn to your company’s website.

LinkedIn is not only the most useful social network for recruiting, but it’s also 277% more effective at generating leads than Facebook and Twitter. This article shows you how to make it easier for your website visitors to share information with their links, stay connected with your company and to get to know you better as well.

Rising Waters: The Washington Post writes about Architects exploring the design of floating homes as sea levels continue to rise in coastal cities.

“Climate change will require a radical shift within design practice from the solid-state view of landscape urbanism to the more dynamic, liquid-state view of waterscape urbanism.” - Danai Thaitakoo, landscape architect

related: Waterstudio.nl

100 Years Contest: AIA Florida celebrates its 100-year anniversary by finding out the public’s favorite Florida architecture.

Vote for your favorite building among 100 candidates.

related: AIA Florida

Reuse Renaissance: Downtown Los Angeles' retro-chic makeovers show how retail and restaurants can transform a neighborhood. By @Gluck in the Architect's Newspaper

"With an abundance of largely intact historical buildings, architects and designers have paid homage to the past by restoring or re-creating many of classic features while adding a modern sensibility."

related: Kelly Architects, Killefer Flammang Architects, SO/DA

Urban Debate: The New York Times asks, Should Los Angeles New Yorkify? A panel of urban designers, Angelenos and writers weigh in on the topic. By @RoomForDebate

"Millennials are embracing the urban lifestyle by the tens of thousands, especially along the Red Line subway between downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood (two neighborhoods that are every bit as urban as most of Manhattan and, in fact, often stand in for Manhattan in the movies)." - Bill Fulton, Smart Growth America

Sustainability Education: Eco-Structure features an architect’s story how he took parent participation to a new level by hosting a series of sustainability workshops at his son’s school.

"I have taught undergraduate and graduate students in many parts of the world, but few occasions have been as rewarding as this one for elementary school students. The children were excited to learn about ways in which they can protect the planet and build a better future." - Pablo La Roche, HMC Architects

related: HMC Architects, HMC ArchLab

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.

HMC Architects' Social Media Story Telling

HMC Architects' Social Media Timeline As with any learned skill, story telling on social media takes practice. When we started working with HMC Architects in June 2010, they had already established themselves as one of the top architecture firms to follow on Twitter. From the start, they used Twitter to connect with and share knowledge and resources with others in the AEC industry and this approach continues to serve them well.

However, the firm's blog was simply an extension of their newsroom -- predominantly announcements of new projects, press coverage, new hires and promotions. In July 2010, the firm started creating content that told the stories of its work and its professionals largely by interacting with employees behind its firewall through an internal blog to mine for stories that readers might find interesting on their external blog.

Over time, HMC was able to learn from the blog and Facebook posts that prompted people to respond and share.

We created this timeline of HMC's social media path to illustrate the many lessons they learned over the years of consistently publishing content and ideas and closely monitoring what worked and didn't in terms of engaging their readers. Social media requires an ongoing process of trial and error. Even though their storytelling has matured and is effectively engaging readers, HMC continues to try new things.

There are lessons here for anyone starting or evaluating their social media program, perhaps, the most important message is that social media success takes time and consistent posting to understand what your fans and followers want.

What are some of the events that have shaped your social media strategy?

A large format version of this timeline is currently on display in the "Presenting Architecture" exhibit at the American Institute of Architecture San Francisco Chapter.

Early Praise for "Social Media in Action"

Mark Zweig, founder and CEO of ZweigWhite, gave our book, Social Media in Action, an early read and had this to say! “Wow” is all I can say when it comes to the content of Amanda Walter’s and Holly Berkley’s new book, “Social Media in Action: Comprehensive Guide for Architecture, Engineering, Planning and Environmental Consulting Firms.” This book is chock full of helpful information and explanations of all of the social media options available to design firms today. There’s a lot of help here for those who want to understand all of this stuff and how it ties together marketing-, PR, and brand building-wise for any firm in our business. The specificity of instruction will give anyone—novice or master alike—a clear direction in how to use these communication tools that are revolutionizing our professions and industry today. One of the great things about this book is that it is so much more than just the informed opinions of the authors. It it based on significant primary and secondary research. The authors’ conclusions and advice is well-grounded—sure to help convince the most skeptical architect, engineer, or scientist of the rationale for what they need to do.

Launch Pad

I always love this time of year for its illusion of a fresh start. Like so many of you, I’m looking to 2012 in terms of all the new endeavors that will be debuted. From our book Social Media in Action(which will be out in March) to the projects and events we are working on with clients - a strong start doesn’t necessarily predicate success in the end, but it certainly helps. This past year, I’ve had a good vantage point to two very successful launches that have sparked some new ideas for my own work, so I figure some of you may also find value in a peek behind the scenes. The two are very different. The first is a new online journal that explores the concept and practice of landscape urbanism – aptly named Landscape Urbanism. The next is a new approach to showing a products’ sustainability by Perkins+Will and Construction Specialties (C/S). One is a grass-roots approach for an entrepreneurial venture and the other a splashy PR opening for well-respected brands.

Landscape Urbanism

“We wanted to tell people what we were doing even though we weren’t finished yet,” explains Landscape Urbanism Founder Sarah Peck. In March of 2011, she launched a beta, “coming soon” site that conveyed a simple “About Us” message, let people know how they could participate and asked them to sign up for email updates. “We kept it really simple: a visual page with two ways that people could interact: find us online or sign up to be notified of the site’s launch." At the same time as the beta launch, Sarah also began the @LandUrbanism Twitter account and a Facebook page -- and then she begged friends and family to like the page, since pages need 25 fans to secure its name. Immediately Sarah began positioning the journal by sharing content related to landscape urbanism and posting periodic updates on the website.  By the time the site launched  in September she had accumulated more than 300 Twitter followers and 250 Facebook fans.

Over the next few months, Sarah teamed with Editors Eliza Valk, Nicholas Pevzner, Stephanie Carlisle and Julie Canter and reached out to every corner of their networks for contributors from academia, leaders of reputable professional practices large and small as well as entrepreneurs behind other networks and movements that could offer useful insights to her audience. When the site launched, they had a good first issue and a strong line-up for the second issue, which was just released last month. Five days after the site went live, Sarah invited the almost 500 email subscribers to visit the site.

With a new issue each quarter, Sarah created a framework that would support frequent updates. This keeps the site fresh for return visitors and helps with search engine optimization. Landscape Urbanism has three ways for readers to get information.

  1. Essays – released collectively as a theme-based, quarterly issues
  2. Strategies – visual representations of over 30 built and unbuilt projects from students and professionals, with weekly additions
  3. Blog— content contributed by the community with new posts each week

To promote each issue, Sarah and Eliza use Hootsuite to schedule tweets promoting one essay each week and Facebook updates to promote the posts with the most compelling images. “I typically schedule the tweets and updates all at once, on a Sunday. Once everything is scheduled, I’m free to use Twitter and Facebook to look for posts that inspire me and that our audience will also be interested in – to engage or reshare content from other sources like Sustainable Cities or Next American City”, says Sarah. “If I find it interesting or good, it’s an indicator that others will too.”

Organic growth—especially when the social web is involved—takes time. By starting the Landscape Urbanism presence well before the first round of content was ready, Sarah began her journal with a healthy readership. Lots of outside contributors also gives her an extra bump of exposure as each author usually makes some effort to share what they’ve written with their own network. In the end it’s the ability of any site to stick with it that will determine success.

Transparency Label

C/S and Perkins+Will recognized the need for the building industry to be as responsible to the consumer as the food industry is, so C/S and Perkins+Will teamed up to create a label that details the complete make-up of a product. The idea is a very good one, but done in isolation it doesn’t make much progress toward transforming industry practices. The firms saw this announcement as an opportunity to lead the industry in a broader change.

They needed to get the word out about the label – not to the public, but to other green-minded product companies and design industry professionals. But where could they find lots of these people in one place? The answer was clear, GreenBuild 2011.

Attended heavily by industry leaders and press, the venue allowed C/S and Perkins+Will to make an event of their announcement. They hired Jessica Appelgren of Blue Practice PR to pre-release the announcement to key reporters that cover green products and design in advance of the conference with the understanding that they would not publish anything until the press release was distributed on October 5. As a result of early outreach, the label generated a string of articles on the day of the announcement in high profile blogs on Fast Company, Huffington Post and Forbes and in the days following in Contract, GreenSource, Inhabitat and GreenBiz.

C/S also showed their first label for the MBDC Cradle to Cradle CertifiedCM Entrance Flooring product PediTred® G4 and launched a companion website, developed in partnership with Perkins+Will. The label is symbiotic to the "Precautionary List" developed by Perkins+Will in 2009, a list that highlights chemicals listed by government agencies as having negative health issues and the classes of building materials where they might commonly be found. In November, Perkins+Will launched amicro-site devoted to transparency that incorporates the 2009 Precautionary List.

Social Media played a large role in the announcement’s success. At a large conference like GreenBuild, Twitter topics linked to the conference hashtag have a great influence over the conversations in the halls. Blue Practice ensured that the social media managers from both C/S and Perkins+Will were prepared to tweet links to the transparency label articles when they hit on the first day of the conference by sending the links to the teams with suggestions for the 140 characters of accompanying text. Every time a new piece emerged online, the links were tweeted by multiple sources referencing the GreenBuild hashtag, creating a metaconversation about the role of transparency in green building at the conference.

Now that the first label has been unveiled on one product, C/S plans to roll it out to the company’s entire entrance flooring division product line in 2012. Perkins+Will continues to push for an industry transformation through transparency and offers support to other companies interested in adopting a label.

A successful launch is ultimately about finding the right audience. Landscape Urbanism planted seeds months in advance to create a grassroots following and an organically grow its readership. C/S and Perkins+Will targeted the influencers. Reaching out to these handpicked individuals weeks before revealing their label to their intended audience. As a result, the new label reached a significantly broader green-minded audience than those who attended GreenBuild. No matter what you are launching in 2012, don't forget about social media. It's an important tool to add to your marketing and communications mix. It can’t replace direct contact with members of your personal network, big industry events or traditional PR, but its ability to amplify your efforts makes it an important part of any strategy.

THE Marketing Event

I had the good fortune to be invited to moderate a panel on social and media for 8th annual The Marketing Event hosted by the New York chapter of SMPS expertly organized by Lauren Hlavenka, Nancy Kleppel.  This year they teamed with Chris Parsons of Knowledge Architectureand expanded the topic to include technology, knowledge management and a focus on the economy. There were three tracks for the event so I can’t speak to the full event, but the sessions I sat in on were really useful.  Chris kicked off the event with his keynote address that set the stage for the remainder of the day.  Chris is half way through a research initiative studying the social media efforts of the top 500 AE firms.  At this point, he’s looked through all the blogs, Twitter feeds, Facebook and LinkedIn pages and he is now in the early stages of interviewing each firm for insight into why they chose their path.

If you have the chance to see him present – and he seems to be speaking everywhere these days – I highly recommend it.  This guy is smart.

He talked about types of content that firm’s are putting out there and pulled out some of the strongest examples and examples of firms that are trying something all together different – like Perkins + Will’s approach to Twitter where just about every office has its own Twitter account to better track and connect with local people and topics that relate to their local services. (As someone with a background in big firm corporate communications, this idea makes my palms sweat as visions of every office, business line, practice area and knowledge center going public with their own brand of social media.)  As Chris says, “This is either crazy or genius and I’m still on the fence.” If you want a front row seat to his research, be sure to attend his conference KA Connect in San Francisco this spring.

The other memorable speaker that I listened to was Nancy Egan of New Voodou.  I’d been hearing about Nancy from several people for quite some time now, so it was really good to meet her and to hear about the work she does. Nancy’s session “Between Now and Next” focused on how firms are managing the recession and the bold moves that have made some more resistant to this downturn – the “keep your knees bent approach to life” as she describes it.

Nancy aims her spotlight on idea- and issue-based firms and accurately conveys that the successful firms will be marketed through a combination of the strategy, content and relationships. I especially liked hearing about Albuquerque, NM architect Van Gilbert (perhaps because Albuquerque is my hometown and not a city often associated with innovative architects).  She described how he parlayed his zoo and aquarium design experience to spearhead collaboration with representatives of some of the top zoos and aquariums in the nation to consider and publish their aspirations for the future of these institutions.  He and the others are now presenting their collective vision at industry events.  He’s also shepherding a partnership between the Albuquerque Zoo, the Albuquerque Aquarium and a high school in Bernalillo, NM to support the science curriculum development in a time of budget constraints.

In my session “Picking Your Path in Social Media”, I shared the podium with Tom Abraham from elemental architects, Jim Kent from Thornton Tomasetti and Harry Kendall from BKSK Architects  who each represent a firm of a different size and a different approach and different level of experience in social media.

Elemental has been blogging and posting on their Facebook page steadily for more than 3 years with their own defense of architecture from the cable TV do-it-yourself and Design Star impression that many Americans have of the profession and its craft.  Their blog is syndicated on at least three other blogs and they’ve amassed more than 10,000 Facebook fans.  Their profile is a testament to the accumulative effect of a consistent social media strategy.

Thornton Tomasetti’s program is driven by a strong internal communications engine – repurposing the best and publicly consumable content as tweets and Facebook posts.  They are continually exploring ways to get staff involved and shared some tactics for opening eyes of the technical staff to the type of content that would be interesting.

BKSK just started their Tumblr that is guided by the wisdom that “if it’s interesting to us internally, it may be interesting to others”.  In a few short months, they are already starting to understand the type of content that gets staff excited and compels them to contribute.  They also realized that the process of updating the Tumblr may in fact be the process that makes the firm more aware of its most interesting aspects.

The remainder of my afternoon was spent in smaller breakout sessions designed to be free form conversations on a particular topic, like “Social Media Tactics”.  I attended three of these and by the third, my creative energy was draining and I wish I’d attended the session on “Navigating the Ocean of Professional Possibilities” instead.

I left for the airport directly after the last session with a handful of new contacts and a head full of ideas.  If you have the chance to attend the 2012 version, I recommend it.

Why ULI <3s Facebook

If you are considering running a Facebook contest or competition, take a look at how the Urban Land Institute (ULI) factored the viral nature of social media into their contest rules and drummed up more than 3000 “likes,” and shareable content with little post-set-up effort. ULI is approaching a year-long celebration of the 75th year and the festivities are set to begin at the Fall Meeting.  Instead of waiting for the conference to start the buzz, the organization took advantage of its typically slow summertime, and structured the “Why I Love ULI” competition -- with a high-value grand prize of an annual ULI membership, Fall Meeting registration and an all-expenses paid trip to LA for the conference.  Using Facebook as the primary communications channel, ULI started a contest page and invited members and non members alike to post a short video (30-90 seconds) on why they love ULI.  The rules are simple; the video with the most likes wins -- which puts the responsibility of promoting the video on its creator.

This grassroots campaign launched with announcements in their email newsletter and on each of their social channels that are open to non-members: YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.  Then four weeks later, they tallied the results.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJDdyacobj8&w=560&h=315]

“We were really surprised by the production quality and creativity of some of the videos,” said ULI’s Manager of Social Media Outreach and Communications Robert Krueger. “One even featured a city mayor.” In the end there were 21 submittals (which are all available on ULITV on YouTube.) Using the unique timestamp from the Facebook post, participants marketed their video through their own social networks, mostly within their company, on Facebook, Twitter and Linked In, but also on trade-specific networks and Google+.   One participant went to the expense of sending out a press release over PRNewswire and got it picked up by the Miami Herald.

If you are heading to the Fall Meeting next week, take notice.  The winning video and the five honorable mentions will be part of ambiance.