Social Marketing for AED Businesses

In our industry, where traditional advertising is often considered taboo, social media marketing has quickly become a crucial communications tool. Most successful architecture, engineering, and design businesses use it to augment their corporate media and marketing messages, reaching thousands of people each day.

When done well, it’s one of the least expensive ways to promote your business and engage with current and potential clients. Whether it’s using Instagram to show off your latest projects, Twitter to engage journalists or your peers, Facebook to announce the award you just won, or using LinkedIn to recruit the best new talent, the key to effective social media marketing is a strategy.

What are your goals and who is your audience?

You need to know what you’re trying to achieve if you want to know if your efforts are paying off. Do you want to offer more services to your existing clients, attract new clients from a different sector, make more connections with your community or industry peers, or to grow your company’s brand presence?

Once you’re decide, the next step is to think about the target audience for each of these goals:

• When are they online?

• What social networks do they use?

• Which articles do they read?

• Which images inspire them?

Get started

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by every “best social media tips” article you read online, but don’t let that stall you, make a small start and build momentum from there. You can start with as little as 5-10 minutes per day—like and retweet your favourite Twitter and Facebook posts, comment on your peers’ Instagram photos, share an interesting article on LinkedIn. Increase your engagement each day and get a feel for your voice—participate in industry conversations, follow journalists and reply to their articles, find and discover relevant enclaves within each network.

What to post

When you’re ready to start posting your own content—make it count. Current social media algorithms favour both quality and quantity, so there’s nothing ‘too good’ and no ‘too often’ to post.

Next time you have a conversation that comes to an interesting conclusion or idea, don’t just store it in your head, write it down and share it. Start to view all your conversations and interactions through the lens of an editor—you’ll be surprised where some of your best ideas come from.

Networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn will reward you for richer content, so aim to post photos, videos, and links along with your words. A well-selected stock image can go a long way to getting your carefully written blog article a bigger audience.

Instagram is a visual medium, so you want to post your very best photos. Don’t limit yourself to just your own completed projects though, interesting sketches, renders, field trips, and inspiration photos should help to diversify your content and give you plenty to post about.

Continue to post interesting, polished content to your social channels, and you’ll see growth in your followers and engagement. Use a variety of hashtags to increase views of your posts, trying different variations each time to find what works best for you.

Amplify your reach

Now you have a growing social media presence, how can you increase your audience? Try experimenting with promoted content. Promoted or ‘boosted’ content is a means of paying to increase the number of impressions and views you will receive. Pick your posts, set a budget, and let the algorithm work for you. Again, it’s best to start relatively small and experiment with images, headlines, and content types, until you’re comfortable with larger budgets here.

Converting

If you’re planning to turn your social media marketing efforts into measurable client returns, you need to ensure you’re directing people back to your website, which has clear calls-to-action—like mail-list subscriptions and contact forms. Phrase these from the point of view of the potential client and the benefits you can provide them. The more consistent the language and imagery is between your social channels and website, the more likely you are to convert your new leads.

Investigate, iterate, and improve

All popular social media networks feature analytics, so you can measure which posts are performing better than others. Use this data to constantly improve your content and create meaningful posts that will engage your target audience. Regularly review your performance against your initial goals, and course correct any time you notice that your engagement is slipping.

So, whether you’re the owner of a small practice with less than five employees, or the leader of a large multinational firm, with the right content, some care, and strategic thinking, your voice and the voice of your business can gain an audience that will reap rewards.