Engineering Inc. - January/February 2010 - 14

W e established our Twitter page as a listening post first, then we slowly engaged by making a few comments. you’re going to do is have wet feet,” says Jonathan Mast, manager of new media and channels at Black & Veatch. A firm needs to decide, for example, if it wants to interact with potential customers, current clients, employees, potential employees or decision-makers. “For certain groups of people, these are the tools they use to communicate,” says Brent Campbell, president of the WGM Group, a 30-person firm in Missoula, Mont. As younger generations ascend to positions of authority—in politics and industry— Campbell says, social media might soon become the outreach method of choice. “For some folks,” he explains, “Facebook is the way to get a hold of them.” A firm can spread its efforts across multiple platforms or focus on one or two. Black & Veatch, for example, has a multipronged social media effort. At LandDesign, Mickle focuses almost exclusively on LinkedIn. Some firms use private social media sites as a way to reach employees at far-flung offices. Others use these same tools to reach employees just down the hall. Community outreach also is a possibility. Some firms use social networking sites to communicate to local residents about how their projects will likely affect the communities they serve. And then there’s the question of management. Though setting up a company account on most of these sites is easy and free, effective implementation requires effort and planning. “To have a successful Twitter site,” says Zimmerman, “you want to send out a minimum of three tweets a day.” “Most of us can’t keep our websites updated on a six-month basis. Now we’re going to start an activity that needs to be updated several times daily?” asks Mickle. No question: Effective social media campaigns require a serious commitment—and that means time. If the old cliché rings true, and time is indeed money, are the potential benefits of social networking truly worth the investment? Engineering firms, for the most part, are just beginning to figure that out. Testing the Waters Jonathan Mast black & veatch post, Twitter lends itself to quick updates about the company or its projects, usually with a link to the firm’s website. “It’s all about the information that you provide,” says Zimmerman. “If you’re providing good information, people will follow you. If not, they’ll stop.” Firms use LinkedIn primarily as a networking and recruiting tool. The site, which connects professionals through an organic network of online profiles, helps workers stay in touch with key industry players and provides an outreach tool for career advancement and potential business opportunities. Says Mickle, “I was searching on LinkedIn to connect with economic development folks in Washington, D.C. I found someone in Alexandria, Va. I reached out to him and he introduced us to some more people. He later took a job in Louisiana. Now there may be some opportunities for us down there, as well.” Look Before You Tweet The biggest mistake firms make is jumping into these media “too deep and too quick,” says Cort Kane, COO of designDATA, an information technology firm in Gaithersburg, Md. “These are great tools once you decide what the goals of your firm are. But you want to align these tools to your firm—not the other way around.” Before moving forward, a firm must determine what it wants to accomplish with its foray into social media. “If you’re just doing it to get your feet wet, then allENGINEERING INC. JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2010 Black & Veatch, for example, spent several months researching various social media before taking the plunge. “First, we went out to Twitter, Facebook and others and secured the Black & Veatch name,” says Mast. “Then we sat down and wrote the social media policy for our organization. It took a couple of weeks, working with legal and human resources departments, but we wanted to establish the rules of the game.” After these initial steps, the firm launched a Twitter page. “We established our Twitter page as a listening post first,” he says. “Then we slowly engaged by making a few comments.” Since then, Black & Veatch’s Water Division has launched its own Twitter page, and the company has started a Facebook page to recruit college students. To make the Facebook page as vibrant and youthful as possible, Black & Veatch handed out nine video-enabled flip phones to a team of summer interns and asked them to chronicle their experiences with the firm. “We launched three of their videos on our page,” says Mast. “They’ve met with a really favorable response.” Mast says his company’s “biggest win in social media” was CEO Len Rodman launching an internal blog to communicate with the firm’s employees. “The blog had 4,500 unique visitors in the first 30 days,” says Mast. “Rodman covers a wide range of topics and regularly asks for comments about what we should be focused on. For a recent meeting with one of our senators, he asked what questions people would like him to ask.” The PBSJ Corporation also has taken a broad approach to social media. In 2008, the firm, which employs nearly 4,000 people in 80 offices throughout the United States, launched a LinkedIn page to recruit new employees. At the beginning of 2009, the firm launched an interactive employee website (www.pbsjbuzz.tv), known throughout the company as “Buzz.” “Buzz is an employee site, although we share it with some outside people,” says

http://www.pbsjbuzz.tv

Engineering Inc. - January/February 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Engineering Inc. - January/February 2010