Much Ado About NOTIFICATIONS: Social Media Reminders, Few New Business Opportunities
Notifications. Just the word is enough to make you cringe. They’re relentless, and we’ve done it to ourselves! Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Insta, YouTube. They’ll ding, buzz, and flash incessantly if we let them. The ADAA (Anxiety & Depression Association of America) classifies social media anxiety as the disorder stemming from overwhelming social media notifications.
How can a construction company executive get anything accomplished with this barrage of distractions coming in nonstop? But then there’s that nagging thought in the back of your mind telling you that if you don’t check them, something could slip through the cracks. Well, maybe not.
The construction industry relies on business development professionals to connect, build, nurture and convert personal relationships into profitable projects to bid on and build. These professionals must maintain relationships with hundreds of industry professionals and connections to represent their firm locally and regionally, so it’s easy to think social media can help. But what are social media and social marketing good for within the context of the construction industry? Keeping up with what other companies and professionals are up to, posting about the services a company provides and the work it specializes in, and showing off successfully completed projects. It may even be a boon to your hiring process to showcase your teams and highlight open positions, provided your social media channels are well established and properly managed. What social media is not good at, however, is actually BUILDING NEW RELATIONSHIPS… yet.
As the next generation of builders enters the industry, workplace behaviors and how they conduct business development will change to accommodate their preferences. Young professionals often express a dislike for traditional face-to-face networking, preferring to work from behind a screen rather than in person. Unfortunately, trust-building is a requirement when doing business in construction. It’s easy to say a company can perform, but as you well know, commercial and heavy construction is hard work that requires managing many complexities. Owners and their executives want to know beforehand if they can really count on you or if all your fancy marketing is just a lot of smoke. Business development works most effectively when supported by marketing automation and digital marketing professionals who work behind the scenes to make sure all the business development tasks get completed and managed.
We’re not suggesting social marketing and social media notifications can’t help you stay in the loop, but before you fire all the humans and replace them with the marketing robots keep in mind, construction marketing is still about building relationships and trust, and that takes face-to-face human interaction. Now go build something!