3 Social Media Twitter Tools I Recommend for Construction

The construction industry is known as a technology laggard, but not all construction companies take a wait and see approach. In the social media realm, many contracting firms have decided to get involved early, primarily being driven by the business development and marketing folks. They want to use LinkedIn to further develop their contact base and find prospects hiding in the contacts of their associates. Linkedin is the public version of customer relationship management (CRM) for B2B and for some, the only computer-based CRM available.
What really astounds me is the misunderstanding of what social media brings to the table. Smaller firms are more nimble at embracing these technologies and still Twitter is the most underutilized tool in the bunch. Twitter seems to have an identity crisis when you talk with construction CFOs, CEOs and CIOs. Now that Google, Bing and Yahoo are searching tweets, Twitter should become part of your search engine optimization strategy at least.

Here are the 3 most useful social media twitter tools for construction, or for that matter any business:

1. Blogging. Once a week someone at your firm must have something they could share that could help: Establish your brand, identify a new business niche, further the relationship with a client, improve the communications with your suppliers or empower your employees.  Why not blog about it and establish yourself as an expert!  Blogging will  assist in attaining higher search engine rankings and gives you the ability to create a unique voice.  Why is this a Twitter tool?  Because when you publish your blog article it should immediately post to Twitter.
2. Twitterfeed or Feedburner.  Feedburner has been around the longest and was aquired by Google long ago.  They recently added the Socialize function to “push” your blog posts to the Twitterverse automatically.  It doesn’t have some of the reporting options that Twitterfeed does, but I suspect that will arrive shortly.
3. TweetBrand.  I was so impressed I became an affiliate of theirs.  What it does is further your branding within your tweets.  There’s a timeline entry for every tweet that says how it was posted (via Twitter, Ping, Tweetdeck, LinkedIn, etc).  What if instead it had your company name that hyperlinked to your company website or URL of your choice?
   

   Stop giving away your Tweet Real Estate

For the B2B and B2C (Business to consumer) Facebook is also something to consider.  If the AGC of America, Turner Construction and ENR all have Facebook pages you’d think that there must be value there right?  As a social media strategist it still surprises me that so few construction  firms have even tried to dabble with social media tools.

Perhaps you think social media is a waste of time, that your employees would lose productivity, that there are only teenagers out there using Twitter to “instant message” their friends.  But social media can be used for much more.  What are your favorite tools?  Can’t wait to hear your comments.

Why not try out TweetBrand and tell me if your like it as much as I do.