Is Anyone Listening?

Do you “tweet?” Have you been “friended?” What about “linkedin?” If these terms are new to you, welcome to the online world of social networking.  For many utility contractors, social networking is a new, somewhat untested form of communication fraught with equal parts fear and promise — fear of the investment necessary to gain the promise of new revenue growth. But, what is the real purpose of social networking and does it make sense for your business?

Social networking is the development and fostering of new and continuing relationships. It is an electronic forum that augments the networking functions you already participate in at association and other industry events. But, instead of only catching up once a quarter, social networking allows you to increase the frequency of your communication to remain engaged while never leaving your office. Just like face-to-face interactions, social networking only achieves results when the communication goes both ways. You need to be able to measure the impact of your message and know that someone is listening.

As social networking is a component of your overall communication strategy, a carefully crafted plan is necessary to achieve your desired results. The following steps will help you build an effective social networking plan:

1. Set Realistic Expectations

What do you want to achieve through your social networking activities?

When the concept of electronic messaging was first released into the business environment, owners automatically viewed this approach as a way to increase revenues. After all, tapping into a potential customer base would result in new revenue sources at a relatively low cost of acquisition. But as the early adopters found out, the new gold never materialized. Now, business owners realize that social networking is a way to remain visible and relevant to interested individuals, so when the circumstances warrant, your name is the first that gets a call. The expectation is not focused on correlated revenue growth, but on readership interest. How many people read your message? How many new ideas were communicated about your business? These are the realities of social networking.

2. Define Your Target Market

Whether you sell a product or a service, your first step is to define your target market. Who will buy your offerings and why?

A similar exercise is necessary for your social networking efforts. Casting a communications net out to a diverse population that has no affinity for your product is akin to whistling in the wind. Your message is lost and your efforts are annoying to the end-user. Think about all the junk e-mail you received today. These are, at best, examples of communication strategies that have gone awry. The business owners have followed the shotgun method of communication — sending out their message blindly in hopes of hitting any moving target. For these neophytes, their message is lost and their business is doomed.

The better approach is to utilize the network already developed for your business prospects. Remember social networking is more about retaining a visible position in periods where face-to-face interaction is not feasible. The same messages that you communicate at industry functions need to be the focal point of your social networking strategy. In time, when the circumstances allow, these business prospects already attuned to your offerings will come to call.

3. Stay on Point

The most effective social networking missives are those that state the new or unusual viewpoints.

If effectively supported, these new ideas form the basis for engaged readership — again, the real foundation for a social networking strategy. Conversely, sending out messages that repeat the obvious do nothing more than clutter the airwaves and, simultaneously, relegate your future messages to the electronic trash can. In fairness, no one cares whether you are sitting in an airport (again!) or waiting in line (e.g., the most common thoughts communicated on Twitter!). Being different pays dividends in the social networking world.

4. Less Is More

Some social networkers send out missives every few hours and some on a daily basis.

The secret is that sometimes less is more. The fewer messages you send out, the better chance you have of engaging your readership. After all, if you saw a rainbow every day, the phenomenon would have lost its allure and your attention after a few weeks. The same is true with your social networking approach.

Obviously, your target market will provide you with the necessary feedback as to the ideal frequency of your messages. To obtain a readership baseline, send out your messages on a monthly basis. Overtime, begin to play with your frequency (i.e., weekly, daily) and calibrate your readership count rates with your monthly baseline. Significant drops in readership indicate a too frequent message occurrence, while sustained levels reinforce the stability of your message to market.

5. Measure Your Successes

For social networking to be effective, there needs to be an opportunity for readership give and take.

You need to know who is reading your messages and the impact those thoughts have on your population. Granted, the largest population of readers in the social networking world are referred to as “lurkers” — individuals that read your messages but choose to remain invisible in the Internet community. Yet, knowing that your message is hitting an audience is a necessary tenet of communication success.

The good news is that many social networking sites provide ways for you to measure message effectiveness. In the case of electronic newsletters, links in the text provide a detailed record of who clicked a link and how long the reader stayed on the referred site. Modern websites provide extraordinary levels of visitor information. The goal is to link your message to another source that can definitively measure click-through success. Another trait that many social networkers have learned is to ask a question to their readership like a voluntary electronic survey, if you will. By seeking responses, the social networker is engaging their audience to participate in the debate and become part of the discussion. At the same time, the social networker is finding out who is listening.

6. The Very Best Social Networking Tool

What is the best networking tool?

The answer is not immediately obvious because it relates to the behaviors of your reader population. If you are a movie star whose hourly movements are charted by the paparazzi, a Twitter account may give you the desired exposure to your public. But, since most people reading this article are not movie stars, nor have any inclination in that profession, a more sedate tool is probably a better solution.

For social networking beginners, the best bet is to sign up for an electronic newsletter service. These providers maintain newsletter templates and good information for individuals seeking to enter the social networking highway. Once confidence and readership levels are established, look to branch out into more informal venues (e.g., Facebook, Linkedin). Depending on the size of your contact list, these venues may be an effective way to maintain viable business relationships.

7. Be Ready to Pounce

Although social networking has not achieved the immediacy of revenues promised by its providers, it has established a means to track potential customer interaction. Again, the importance of social networking is not how many people you send your message to, but how many people read it. And, like any business relationship, once you have their attention, your business development savvy needs to pounce.

In periods of acute customer acquisition (which, quite frankly, in this recession we are all experiencing), I have found that two successive readership tags prompts a direct phone call from my sales staff. After all, the individual has found two messages on point — or presumably as the electronic records indicate their continued interest. Now that the individual is engaged, the time to discuss a longer-term customer relationship is appropriate. Communication yields to revenue recognition.

8. Is It Worth It?

Arguably, social networking can be a time-intensive process that takes business resources to establish and maintain.

In a recent appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” Betty White gave a nod to Facebook as the reason she was asked to host the show. Yet, in her monologue she jested that Facebook was a “colossal waste of time” — time being a commodity that is at a premium for her these days. For some, the social networking experience can be akin to going down a rabbit hole. For others that carefully craft their approach to the market and use it as a component of an overall communications strategy, the results can open up a whole new world of potential opportunities.

But, be forewarned. The path to social networking success is not an overnight journey. For most owners, it is a process that may take a year to perfect — even longer if you don’t have an up-to-date rolodex of relationships. Most professionals that have worked through the nuances of the technologies will attest that if used for the purposes of maintaining relationships, the return is worth the price. For those expecting miracles, the wait continues.

Brad Dawson is the managing director of LTV Dynamics and has over 29 years of management consulting experience. He is a frequent lecturer to international entrepreneurial businesses and serves as a contributing writer to several national and international business and leadership magazines. He can be reached at BLDawson@LTVdynamics.com.

Costly Commutes  

Industry-Wide Survey Reveals “Staggering” Price of Traffic for Contractors

Americans love their cars, but it comes at a cost. Traffic congestion and the delays it causes are costing the nation’s construction firms an estimated $23 billion each year, according to a new analysis released in June by the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC). There is no relief from traffic in sight, association officials warned however, as Congress is months late in passing federal transportation legislation, prompting more pain for the hard–hit construction industry.

“Traffic tie-ups nationwide are sapping productivity, delaying construction projects and raising costs for construction firms of all types,” said Stephen E. Sandherr, AGC’s CEO. “Given the hardships they are facing, the last thing contractors need is to burn time, fuel and money stuck in traffic.”

Sandherr said the new analysis was based on responses from nearly 1,200 construction firms the association surveyed in late April and May. He noted that a “staggering” 93 percent of firms reported that traffic and congestion were affecting their operations. Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of firms lose at least one day of productivity per worker per year due to traffic congestion, equaling 3.7 million days of lost productivity industry-wide each year. Construction firms also reported that traffic tie-ups delay the average construction project at least one day, while one in three firms report traffic adds a minimum of three days to the length of the average project. As a result, Sandherr said that three-quarters of contractors say congestion adds more than one percent to their total costs, and 1 in 10 report that traffic adds 11 percent or more to their cost of doing business.

Given current construction spending levels, that amounts to $23 billion lost to traffic each year, Sandherr said, equal to Google’s total revenue in 2009.