What’s next? New digital communications for construction marketing

Posted on 18 May 2012 by Paul Wilkinson

On Wednesday afternoon, I spoke at the latest half-day conference organised by Ross Sturley and his energetic team from the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s Construction Industry Group (CIMCIG). The event, at the Building Centre in London, was focused on digital communications for construction marketing, and I had the final presentation, looking into the future.

Filling such a final slot is always difficult, particularly when the previous speakers include people who are already at the cutting edge of good practice. Knowing what friends Nick Pauley (Pauley Creative) and Kirstie Colledge (SMPR) were likely to cover (website design, Google Analytics, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, etc), I could be confident about omitting some subjects, but that still left subjects like search engine optimisation, apps and website design. Fortunately, there was little overlap and most of what I presented was, I think, different to what was delivered earlier.

This presentation looked at new ways in which social media and related technologies, such as augmented reality, GPS and QR codes, could be deployed both in delivering architecture, engineering and construction projects and as part of the creation, management and dissemination of content by AEC PR and marketing teams. Having been asked – at the Guild of Architectural Ironmongers’ AGM on Saturday – about Web 3.0, I also decided to take a look at the forthcoming data explosion, the semantic web and linked data, relating that to developments such as building information modelling, BIM, and the ‘internet of things’.

What’s next in digital communications for construction marketing

(Apologies to those who were at the event for not lingering. Previous speakers ate into my time and I had to leave quickly to get to Southend – which I managed with 10 minutes to spare. If anyone wants to follow up on any of the points I raised, please get in touch.)

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FCIPR

Posted on 17 May 2012 by Paul Wilkinson

I was surprised when I was contacted recently regarding a nomination to be a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR). FCIPR is the highest possible membership grade and to be awarded a Fellowship is therefore, apparently, an exceptional achievement. And today, it was officially announced that I am, indeed, now an FCIPR.

The CIPR helpfully provided a news release template for me to send out to my local or regional press, but as my client base is focused in niche sectors of business-to-business PR, marketing and technology consultancy, I won’t bother sending it out. But the words from Jane Wilson, CEO of CIPR, make pleasant reading:

The CIPR Fellowship is the most august group within the profession. Our Fellows hold invaluable experience of public relations, communications and business practice and are able to provide a unique insight into the profession and the issues facing communicators around the UK. CIPR Fellows help the Institute develop best practice standards and policies, sharing their experience and knowledge through contributing to the Institute’s working groups, panels and consultations. Congratulations to all those who have been awarded a Fellowship.

I may now have to update my business cards (latest batch only a month old! – post) and make a few tweaks to my various online profiles (changing one letter on my Twitter profile was my first acknowledgement). As I tweeted earlier: very chuffed!

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Straddling the Wikipedia-PR divide

Posted on 13 May 2012 by Paul Wilkinson

The recent debate about the difficult relationship between public relations professionals and Wikipedia (see Wikipedia, PR and CSR) has taken a step forward this weekend. My fellow CIPR members and social media enthusiasts Phil Sheldrake and Neville Hobson met yesterday with Wikipedians at Wikimedia UK‘s 2012 annual conference in London.

This is not the first conversation between the CIPR and Wikimedia – Phil invited Wikimedia representatives to talk at a CIPR Social Summer event I attended in 2010, for example – but the CIPR duo have been working with others on some new guidance for PR professionals, and yesterday they presented extracts from their draft Best Practice Guidelines for Wikipedia.  This will, in Neville’s words, be:

“… a cornerstone of plans to be developed for education and awareness-raising among CIPR’s membership about Wikipedia, PR’s relationship with it and best-practice approaches to engaging with the community to address content creation and editing.”

Better still, it wasn’t presented as a fait accomplit. The draft document will be posted on a Wikimedia page so that Wikipedians can add their comments, opinions and ideas – hopefully, helping to establish some mutual good will and understanding. Once the feedback has been considered, the CIPR aims to publish “version 1.0″ in June.

Straddling the PR-Wikipedia divide

As someone who has long had a foot in both camps, I am looking forward to there being some clarity about how PR people can contribute to Wikipedia. As a CIPR member, I have long been irked by the well-publicised actions of some people to ‘massage’ Wikipedia content to favour their companies or clients (I have blogged repeatedly about it – in 2007, 2009, 2011 and earlier this year, for example), often feeling ashamed at some of the misguided edits attributed to public relations people.

As a Wikipedian, I have also occasionally reverted edits that were plainly made by in-house or consultancy staff to remove negative comments or add a more ‘promotional’ tone (I have over 600 articles on my editor’s ‘watch-list’ of subjects that I monitor – on topics ranging from civil engineering and architects to football, cycling and places in south-east London).

Like, I suspect, many other Wikipedians, I don’t generally get into conversations with the perpetrators of these changes – but perhaps I should? If I explained why I felt their changes were inappropriate, then maybe they will understand their conflicts of interest and lack of neutrality – and maybe the advice might be more easily swallowed if it comes from someone who also has a PR background? What do others think?

Update (17 May 2012) – The draft best practice guidelines for PR were published by Wikimedia page on Monday 14 May, and have already attracted a large number of edits and a substantial conversation on the talk page. I have had a quick read-through, and have a few thoughts that I will add in due course.

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Meeting mumtrepreneurs

Posted on 30 April 2012 by Paul Wilkinson

On Friday afternoon, I took time away from business-to-business PR and marketing, volunteering to do some one-to-one advice sessions at a “Mumtrepreneurs” coffee afternoon at a primary school in nearby Welling. Around a dozen businesses took part, getting an overview of marketing from University of Greenwich lecturer Charles Oham before selling some products or services, networking and learning about each others’ businesses.

In the late 1990s, I did some small business consultancy work in SE London for Greenwich Enterprise Board, helping people integrate websites into their marketing. Over a decade later, a new generation of small part-time home businesses are a bit more web-savvy, and also alert to the power of social media – and Facebook in particular. Whether selling cakes, sweets, children’s clothing, party items, kitchen utensils or photography services, almost every ‘mumtrepreneur’ told me she found customers through Facebook (perhaps the most successful route after word-of-mouth). Localised discussion forum and blogger community sites such as Netmums and Mumsnet were also mentioned.

However, some of their websites were not optimised to help people share content (for example, I saw two websites which used Flash to display images – not great for enabling people to cut and paste photos into, say, Facebook), or to help people find  and recommend products or services local to their area by ‘word-of-mouse’. My “social media surgery” sessions turned into demonstrations of how content could be created once and then quickly shared across multiple platforms – and one small business (keen to expand beyond her local market and win some corporate customers) has already been in touch to follow-up.

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Air quality egg Kickstarted!

Posted on 27 April 2012 by Paul Wilkinson

An update. I wrote a month ago (Kickstart an Air Quality Egg) about a “crowd-funded” project to build domestic air quality sensors. This morning I learned that the Kickstarter project, facilitated by Pachube, had successfully achieved its funding thanks to me and 926 other backers. Moreover, the original target of $39,000 dollars was smashed, with the project getting over three times as much: $144,592!

Sometime in July, therefore, I should receive my fully-assembled Air Quality Egg. Expect regular updates on the air quality in London SE3. :-) And if you want to work on your own Egg, I understand they will be sold through www.wickeddevice.com soon.

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From dead pigeons and a statue of King Kong to civil engineering

Posted on 23 April 2012 by Paul Wilkinson

With attendees including three Expert Panel Chairs, staff from the ICE Library and an ICE past President (logging in online from Scotland), the Institution of Civil Engineers’ Wikipedia workshop (post), which took place on Friday, certainly captured some influential eyes and ears. And presenter Andy Mabbett opened attendees’ eyes to far more than just the online “encyclopaedia that anyone can edit”. For example, we learned about:

  • other Wiki projects, including Wiktionary, Wikiversity, Wikisource, Wikinews, and Wikimedia Commons – “the second biggest Wiki site after Wikipedia” and a database of over 12m freely usable media files
  • the availability of Wikipedia in other languages, including a ‘Simple English’ version suitable for children, people with learning difficulties or people for whom English is not their first language
  • a dead pigeon and a statue of King Kong (example articles started by Andy)
  • use of geographic coordinates for location-specific Wikipedia articles – particularly relevant to civil engineering projects, of course – including use in OpenStreetMap (“the map anyone can edit”), Google Maps and augmented reality applications (eg: Layar)
  • Use of openly-licensed content from other sources (eg: Flickr)
  • QRpedia - a mobile-friendly way of enabling access to a language-specific version of a Wikipedia article through scanning a QR code (did you know Monmouth is the location of a wiki-project driven by QRpedia – generating, ultimately, 4000 QR codes linking to Wikipedia?)
  • holding Wikipedia guest editor days or inviting a ‘Wikipedia editor in residence’ to improve the scope and depth of content about an organisation and its activities, and
  • how to get civil engineering-related articles to feature on Wikipedia’s home page.

As anticipated, there was a lot of discussion about the accuracy of Wikipedia articles, about potential conflicts of interest, and about good practice as Wikipedia editors. The article about the ICE was used to illustrate areas where content might be improved (more in-line citations of references), where more content could be linked (eg: expanding the list of ICE Presidents), and where content from the ICE archives and library might usefully be added to the Commons to help illustrate or reference relevant civil engineering articles.

The challenge now is to build on this learning and the obvious enthusiasm of the core group of attendees (which included experts on structural engineering, health and safety, municipal engineering, offshore engineering, and water engineering), and getting more editors contributing to civil engineering content on Wikipedia. Potential next steps include:

  • hands-on workshops on editing Wikipedia articles and creating and using Commons-based media
  • briefing sheets for ICE members on good Wikipedia practice and relevant resources – including internally the online recordings of the workshop
  • holding a Wikipedia guest editor day at One Great George Street (OGGS)
  • marking many of the paintings and other images at OGGS with QR codes (potentially valuable to visitors when the ICE building hosts London Olympics media this summer).

Having helped organise this first workshop, I am hoping we can maintain some momentum  and get at least one or two of the above steps completed in the next 2-3 months. In the meantime, if any other architecture, engineering or construction organisation (whether a membership body like the ICE or a private company) would like to know more about extending coverage of their discipline, history, people or activities across the Wiki projects, please let me or Andy know.

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Events need great topics, good organisers – and some due diligence

Posted on 23 April 2012 by Paul Wilkinson

Two topics in construction IT are currently almost guaranteed to attract good event audiences: building information modelling (BIM) and mobile IT.

Winning with BIM

The UK government’s strategy to promote BIM as a means to better collaboration, lower project costs and carbon reduction, and setting a target for achievement by 2016, has concentrated construction professionals’ minds, and since the end of 2010 events about BIM have been sold-out, standing-room-only affairs up and down the country. This week, the topic has been extended by CIMCIG (the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s construction industry group) whose “Winning with BIM” conference in London on Wednesday is looking at the marketing implications of BIM (disclosure: I am a speaker at this event).

Making IT mobile

Riding the mobile IT wave is COMIT, with whom I have been occasionally involved since the mid-2000s. Over the past year, the organisation has been restructured, given a more commercial edge, and has begun to work with partners to further develop construction industry interest in mobile information and communication technologies – some of which interface with BIM. On this topic, COMIT ran a successful mobile IT event in London last November, and it was involved with a sell-out Building Centre/Woobius Built Environment Apps Awards event last month.

With Constructing Excellence, COMIT was also a partner for a mobile IT event in London next month, but the 25 May event has just been postponed (I learned through a COMIT email received this morning), despite the surge of industry interest in the topic. Why?

Well, it seems the event was being organised by ICT4Construction, whose previous conferences on document management in October 2010 and on construction collaboration in March 2011 have been criticised by me and others for inadequate marketing and organisation. I understand from COMIT that, despite the event being just five weeks away, no contract had been signed with the London venue, no event sponsorships were in place, and – apart from the organiser’s website and some emails (with a mispelt flyer, see above) – almost no event marketing had taken place. To the relief of COMIT and no doubt other event participants (which included several COMIT members), following a crunch meeting on Friday morning, organiser Recep Saffet apparently cancelled the event over the weekend, avoiding a marketing and PR disaster for partners and those due to speak.

First Strategy folded

Upon hearing the news, I had a look at the ICT4Construction website, which confirms the event has been cancelled. The website’s “small print” suggests disorganisation extends a little further. The website footer mentions an Orpington-based company called First Strategy Communications Ltd, which was incorporated in October 2008 with Recep Saffet as the sole director. Its Companies House records suggest it never traded (it submitted ‘dormant’ 2009 accounts in September 2010), but it received payments relating to the October 2010 event (the PDF brochure stated: “Make cheque payable to ‘First Strategy Communications Ltd’”), and I have spoken to sponsors from the March 2011 event who told me they also paid the company. In November 2011, the company was served with notice that it could be struck-off, and the company was formally dissolved on 14 February 2012.

Due diligence

I organise, participate in, attend, tweet from, live-blog, photograph and write about events frequently (I wrote about a social and mobile business event I attended earlier this year, for example). Event management is a key discipline for successful marketeers and PR professionals, and is often done in partnership with other businesses. In the construction sector, there are many experienced individuals and businesses running major exhibitions and conferences, but I think the ICT4Construction example shows that care may be needed with less well-known organisers. However good the subject or the programme, potential event partners, sponsors, speakers and delegates might be advised to check the background and track record of the people or companies behind the event, and perhaps review any online feedback (blogs, Twitter, etc) there might be about previous events they have organised.

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Clippings adds company profiles and ‘collaboration’

Posted on 19 April 2012 by Paul Wilkinson

Clippings.com, the Pinterest-style architectural and interior design scrapbook service I wrote about in February, has launched a company profiles service (and has a new logo).

This new marketing channel will allow firms to use their design portfolio to connect them with potential clients and find new work. I received an email outlining four ways Clippings could help:

1. Add your company information & portfolio to get clients inspired by your work and ringing on your door
2. Get your whole team clipping inspirational images and broadcasting your style to build a loyal following.
3. We’ll match and connect you with new clients who like your style.
4. Use our private & collaborative folders to communicate design & product ideas with existing clients more effectively.

The final point is an interesting one, as it suggests Clippings is moving into the AEC collaboration sector. Of course, Clippings is mainly about sharing images (which could include photos, sketches, plans, elevations, etc), whereas the types of construction collaboration I have tended to be look at (in my ExtranetEvolution.com blog, for example) extend document sharing to include feedback via commenting and mark-up, along with support for a wide range of project delivery processes. Two ideas occur:

  1. Perhaps Clippings could extend its private collaboration to include some simple feedback exchanges between project team members? It might integrate with or link to existing services such as, say, Woobius Collaboration – designed by architects for architects, and marketed as “simply simple” collaboration.
  2. Conversely, perhaps existing collaboration technology vendors might adopt a Clippings-type approach, and allow design firms to share files and market themselves via their platforms? This might be a useful additional revenue stream; Asite, for example, already provides a company directory, but it nowhere near as glossy as that offered by Clippings (at least, not yet!).

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Connect with FM re-launches

Posted on 18 April 2012 by Paul Wilkinson

A short email broadcast from ConnectwithFM this morning tells me the online community for facilities management professionals is being relaunched. This FM network, founded by former BIFM chairman Iain Murray, first emerged in July 2010, and was soon followed – three months later – by launch of the BIFM’s own, and similarly-named, NetworkwithBIFM (see post).

How have the past 18 months been for the two Ning-based networks? Well, ConnectwithFM has grown from 481 to 615, while NetworkwithBIFM has leapt from the 56 it had on Day Two, to 611 – so the two are running neck-and-neck, and may well share a lot of the same members.

In other news, Richard Byatt, formerly BIFM’s head of communications, has moved on and is now an independent communications consultant – “available to work on an assignment, project or longer-term basis” – see RichardByatt.com for more details.

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Wikipedia and the ICE

Posted on 11 April 2012 by Paul Wilkinson

Feel your discipline isn’t covered well on Wikipedia? Not sure how to improve matters? Follow the ICE’s lead and start a campaign to deepen Wikipedia’s coverage of your profession, its people and projects.

Building on my own interests in civil engineering, during the mid 2000s I wrote and edited many Wikipedia articles about tunnels, dams, bridges and the civil engineers who designed them and supervised their construction. However, I am a PR professional and construction enthusiast, not a civil engineer, and I sometimes wished for more archive material, or for the input of technical specialists to explain particular designs of structures or methods of construction.

At the same time, I know the Institution of Civil Engineers as a professional institution is keen to promote the art and science of civil engineering. So I have been talking to the ICE (I am on the ICE’s information systems panel) about a drive to improve and expand civil engineering content on Wikipedia. Among other suggestions, I would like the ICE to open up its archives (and encourage its members’ companies to do the same) and make them available to the public via Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia’s repository for open-licensed images and other media. For example:

  • with new content to work on, volunteer editors might also be recruited and trained in good Wikipedia practice to write new articles,
  • a Wikipedia “writer in residence” can also help institutions digitise and get more of their collections online,
  • recruitment of users to join ‘WikiProjects’ to improve content – there is already one relating to civil engineering - and
  • ‘outreach’ initiatives such as QRpedia (using QR codes to access articles via mobile devices) can help present Wikipedia information in context, and encourage more involvement – think of a QR code as a digital “blue plaque” on a building, though it could just as easily be on the hoardings around the sites of ongoing engineering projects like London’s Crossrail or ThamesLink.

By helping build a strong core community of disinterested (NPOV, or neutral point of view, in Wikipedia parlance) enthusiasts, the ICE could harness the ‘wisdom of the civil engineering crowd.’ It could use this crowd’s collective expertise to expand and improve the discipline’s coverage in Wikipedia – and promote the art and science of civil engineering – while avoiding conflicts of interest (an area where marketing and PR folk like me must tread carefully, as I’ve previously noted). The same approach could also be adopted by other professional institutions – maybe the RIBA, IStructE, IMechE, IET, etc – and not just in construction, but right across other disciplines and interests.

Wikipedia workshop

The first ICE Wikipedia workshop is being held at the ICE’s One Great George Street headquarters in London on Friday 20 April, and is being facilitated by friend and experienced Wikipedia volunteer Andy Mabbett. Places are still available – so if you are, or were, a civil engineer (or are studying to be one), please email Richard Armstrong about joining the session (it’s free to attend, but places are limited).

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