The standard describes a framework for the organisational governance, supply chain management and environmental and social aspects that must be addressed in order to ensure the responsible sourcing of construction products.

In reality certification for BES 6001 ensures a manufacturers credibility is safe guarded thus providing the reassurance specifiers, contractors and building owners rely on when meeting the governments requirements for sustainable development.

British Standards

The British Standards Institution [BSI] website goes on to clarify it’s position that…

BES 6001 is relevant to any organization that manufactures construction products from foundation products such as cement and steel to concrete pipes and blocks, windows, flooring, roof tiles, plastics, wood products.

From a marketing perspective this certification means that your public claims regarding performance are watertight. They provide the customer with the piece of mind necessary to specify your products with confidence.

Freedom of Choice

In a recent article by Building products magazine (April 2012) Keith Barker, Commercial director at Brick manufacturer Weinerberger, confirmed:

The clear benefit of BES 6001 for specifiers is the acceptance under the CfSH [Code for Sustainable Homes] that it provides confidence in the provenance of products, as well as reassurance they been assessed and accepted by BRE Global.

He goes on to say that having the all Weinerberger products accredited “…gives specifiers freedom to choose any brick on the basis of its relevance and aesthetic value to the individual projects…”.

Lost Opportunity

This is particularly pertinent for all building product listings on all building product manufacturer websites. If your products aren’t clearly marked as having reached the BES 6001 standard, you run the risk that your product won’t even be considered let alone specified in the final project.

Now is the time to clarify the benefits of your products online. Be absolutely clear about your sustainability, resourcing and performance credentials. Be open about your supply chain. But here’s a suggestion; don’t just limit that confirmation to a news release buried on your website and written by your PR agency. We recently wrote five great ways to increase your online lead generation and this most definitely fits.

Reassure Your Customers.

Your customers and prospects are looking online for many things; product performance criteria, product case studies, data sheets and so on. This ever-increasing body of content (proof) creates credibility, it’s what specifiers expect, it’s what builds confidence and frankly BES 6001 isn’t just a confirmation that your products meet today’s stringent criteria…

Your content marketing, both online and in print, should compliment your position without the fear a ‘Greenwashing’ tag. BES 6001 would appear to provide clear proof that your company is committed to improving your products. It makes your company, your products and your processes smarter and thus more attractive to potential customers. If you’ve got it, flaunt it.

Derek, it’s over to you.

BIM…..rubbish in…..rubbish out!

Okay admit it who had heard of BIM before 2011? Not many people I’m sure. Yet it’s been around for ages as a concept if you look back. I’m not going to give you a history lesson or indeed give you a definition. You can find all that out on line elsewhere look here for example:
http://www.thenbs.com/topics/bim/index.asp

This is my take on things so far, and I admit it I’m looking at it from the QS point of view too.

I see it as an exciting challenge for us all involved within the construction industry to really shake things up again. Like all things in life its small incremental changes that are happening.

So what have I learned to date?

Well there are lots of businesses in the design teams that have embraced this and are really moving forward making good use of the software. Look at @studioklaschka and what they are doing as an example. http://blog.studioklaschka.com/?cat=32

The government is pushing us all towards this: http://www.thenbs.com/corporate/press/11-05-13.asp

Contractors are working hard in the background to embrace the technology. I’ve seen it in action within a few of the largest contractors in the country, spoken to many more and surprisingly found some still not even bothered about it. Or are they scared to admit they don’t know anything about it?

Don’t be surprised in the coming months to see some interesting announcements from contractors about how far they have gone with things.

So what’s the issue with the QS then?

Well for one it will finally eliminate the need to prepare bills of quantities/schedules or whatever variant of quantification you chose.  Loads of caveats to that! I won’t go into that now, save that for later. And it won’t happen immediately. But you’ll not need a QS to do that will you?

Secondly the role of cost planning/budget advice/feasibility studies. Why go to the professional QS? The contractors will hold all the rich data in their models. With some tweaks and clicks of a mouse you can have that in hours from them. Why as a QS?

Thirdly, defects; will they exist in the future? If we maximise the design at the outset, make greater use of off site fabrication, the only risk will be the variable of the site labour installation process. No more arguments about defective work, everything as scheduled and agreed from the outset. No need for a QS then?

Fourthly, late information; will that ever be a problem? Everything will be thought through and designed in the model at the outset. Every job will run smoothly and according to plan. What can possibly go wrong… no need for expensive claims consultants anymore surely?

And what will happen to the design and build form of contract? Could this be the start of the end?

Well errr actually back to the title, rubbish in… rubbish out…

We are in grave danger of entering the era of simply accepting everything the computer says.

Without some very careful thought and planning about the road we are going down we are likely to end up with an industry full of computer operators (ok we are anyway, but in a different way).

Why do I say that?

Well it’s a practical industry, each project has its own set of unique criteria, without the human interface and challenges that we all contribute into the construction process by simply being human; we are in danger of letting the model take over.

But we are not there yet.

And there will be plenty of gaps for the QS to fill in this process, it will be a slightly different way of working for sure, but us QS’s are used to change aren’t we?

Either way, the government has given us until 2016, so there’s no rush… is there?

Thanks to Derek for this post. If you’d like to speak to Derek then you can tweet him on Twitter or leave your thoughts and comments below.

In the mean time you can also view our BIM Infographic from the National BIM Survey 2012 carried out by the NBS which also includes a piece ‘What is BIM?’ written by @fairsnape (Martin Brown).

“How many visits have we had to the website from social media sites?”

“How many of those visits turned into enquiries?”

“How many of the total enquiries were influenced or helped by social sources?”

“What value has social media sites generated via the website?”

Look no further than the new ‘Social Report’ in Google Analytics. The report can be found under ‘Traffic Sources’ tab and then clicking on ‘Social’.

Where you can find the new 'Social' report

The ‘Social’ report under the Audience tab is still there but the data within this section continues to give you more insights into the on-page actions which have occurred (social sharing) on your site and segmenting them into two segments ‘social visitors’ and ‘non-social’visitors.

What percentage of your website visitors actually share your content?

Once you click on the ‘Overview’ section you will be presented with a wonderful visual like this:

An overview of the Social Value report in Google Analytics

So what are we looking at here? Well we can quite easily see that 341 conversions or enquiries occurred on the site generating a value of £341 (for this example, each enquiry is worth £1). 75 of those enquiries had some sort of social site referral be it Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook before the visitor submitted the enquiry. Key thing to remember here is before. 55 enquiries were as a direct result of a visitor being referred to the site via a social media website. These enquiries can be directly attributed to Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and the value in £££ generated.

What’s the difference between Assisted and Last Interaction?

Before we go on let’s clarify the difference between ‘assisted’ and ‘last interaction’ conversions. You can also read this post on ‘Assisted conversion in Google Analytics‘ which explains it in more detail.

Assisted Social Conversion: Where a social site was an influencing source in the enquiry process.

Example: Joe visited my website after seeing a tweet on Twitter. 2 days later he Google’s my company name and visits the website and submits an enquiry. Therefore Twitter is classed as an ‘Assisted Conversion’.

Last Interaction Conversion: An enquiry which is submitted upon the last visit to the website where the visitor was referred via a social media source.

Example: Joe visits the site after Googling my company name. 2 days later he visits the website as a result of clicking on a banner ad on another website. The next day he see’s my Tweet on Twitter and clicks on the link where he then goes onto sign up for my newsletter. As you can see, Joe converted after clicking on my Tweet on his final visit therefore Twitter is the last interaction.

Overview of how social influenced conversions

The above number show you how many visits have been generated in  a specific time frame and the numbers relating to all social referrals, enquiries or goals actioned on the website and then the goals resulting from social media sources.

Which social sites generate the most traffic?

You can also view which social sites generated the most traffic:

Which social sites generate the most traffic?

Which pages generate the most traffic from social sites?

We can also see which pages generate the most traffic from social sources, with further enhancements you can also view the sources for each page too. Some posts may generate more traffic from LinkedIn than Facebook or LinkedIn depending on the type of audience and which networks they are more involved in.

Which social sites generate me the most enquiries?

Finally we can see which social media sources played a part in generating enquiries and which sources generated enquiries.

Which social sites influenced enquiries? Which social sites generated enquiries?

What the above table shows is that Twitter played a part in 24 enquiries but was the source of 38 enquiries. Key thing here is being able to say which sources ‘influenced’ and which sources ‘directly’ generate conversions/enquiries/goals.

So, whilst I go dig deeper into the reports, I shall let you go away and measure your social media performance.

Any questions please do leave a comment.

The biggest point I took away from the conference was this, even if you decide to not read the rest of this post then the least you, as a marketer, can do is take this thought away with you:

“Don’t chase after Google’s algorithm, chase after your best interpretation of what users want because that is what Google’s chasing after” Matt Cuts – Feb 2011

This quote was plastered on a slide which Stefan Hull, from Propellernet, was presenting and it really made me think and ask a few questions of what I do as a Marketer. Is what I am doing in terms of SEO correct and ethical for my clients? It bloody well sure is. Stefan spoke about one of Google’s latest updates codenamed ‘Panda’ and how SEO’s and marketers should be focusing on giving users what they want rather than spending time beating (or gaming) Google. I completely agree with this. We at Pauley Creative believe in writing quality content which is written to add value, shared and linked to ethically which in turn will get us high rankings. We don’t write copy and then pay for bad links to gain short term success. We’re in it for the long term. He also asked for any marketer who uses paid links to game Google “Does your CEO know about this?”. A survey conducted by Propellernet found that 60% of SEO respondents paid for links, 67% say paid links work and 10% said their boss did not know what they were doing. Blimey! Wait till things go wrong.

The flip side to this is that ethical SEO is hard work. Understanding what users want and then writing good content, gets shared and which adds value does take time. Time is sometimes what clients don’t have, they have deadlines in which to show success. This is where the marketer shy’s away in my opinion. Do marketers want short term success or long term success? Longer term means more work, you earn your success. Short term success means less work, you can basically buy your success.

The next big question is “Will social signals replace links?”. I’m not personally in a situation yet to answer that with a direct yes or no, but it’s certainly fair to say that its social influence is growing as a ranking factor for search engines. Both Pierre Far (Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google) and Dave Coplin (Bing) stated that the number of followers is just one of many signals used which also include the speed of sharing and the reach of sharing. Wow! This is big. What does this mean then for the marketing department? Create ridiculously good content which get’s shared…and gets shared fast! Social Rank?

Which then nicely brings me onto my final key take-away which is ‘Authorship’. As we move online there is lots of ‘anonymous’ content around and there are also lots of bad links around. The one differentiation is ‘trust’. Do people trust what you’ve written?

Not sites linking to each other, but authors linking to each other

How will Google or any other search engine know this link carries trust? Answer = Authorship.

Who wrote it? Who linked to it? Who shared it? = How should it rank.

Very nicely put by James Carson who I had met during the day.

I have been experimenting over the last few months with ‘Authorship’ of content and those of you who may have searched Google for various construction or marketing search terms may have seen this within search engine results pages in Google:

Authorship of your own content in search results pages

I think it’s a bit too early to say for me as to whether it’s been a success or not but it certainly has increased click throughs to posts which I have written. However, am I a trusted source? A huge opportunity for the PR and Journalism industry here to strengthen your own personal brand as well as the content you write and who you write it for.

Here’s what it looks like when you search for something in Google:

Content Authorship provides a signal of trust

Ok, I have a bazillion notes which I need to re-read and if I do find any other key points I shall blog about them soon but in summary here are my key points frmo the conference:

• Write and produce awesome content, nobody links to or shares mediocre content
• Get social, if not your company then at least you, it’s already one ranking factor
• Remember, all SEO’s are NOT qualified. There are no degrees or accredited qualifications. (yet).
• SEO is not a checklist activity, it takes time to build up a brand and employees as trusted sources
• Don’t let your content go stale – keep it updated and revisit regularly
• Content is still waiting to be discovered by your users
• All of the above points are all about QUALITY CONTENT!

Hope this gives you some food for thought about how you approach SEO and content writing. I do hope marketers in the industry focus on quality content rather than chasing Google.

P.S – Apparently we are not too far away from your wine cupboard tweeting you are out of red wine. Web 3.0.

Certainly within the PR industry there is significant rumination going on at the moment – PR professionals are desperately trying to anticipate the platforms that journalists might be trialling, hoping to stay one step ahead so that they are ready and waiting should a journalist come looking for them, and yet still trying to cover all bases by email broadcasting news in the more traditional way.

I met a PR professional at an event a few weeks ago who confidently told me “Journalists always prefer me to tweet them now (rather than phone or email) – I never email anybody any more”. But how true really is this? Can we rely on our audience using Twitter alone to source their news stories, or do we need to try and spread our efforts between maintaining social media alongside more traditional communication methods?

Many of the journalists I work with share a Twitter feed with their colleagues – between a team of them they will manage an account on behalf of their publication, as opposed to having a more conventional ‘personal’ profile for engaging with the Twitter community and researching their stories. To what extent has social media changed the way in which the media work?

Research published last month from Text 100 is particularly insightful. 72 journalists from a mixture of sectors were interviewed about the use of social media in their professional lives. The goal was to understand how these new channels affect the way journalists do their jobs and whether this has an impact on the way PR professionals should engage with them.

All of the participants interviewed are full-time professional journalists working across a range of different media, including print, web and broadcast. So this is quite a broad spectrum snapshot, but I hope we will still find it useful.

Here are some of the top line conclusions from the Text 100 report:

• On average, a journalist will use 2.6 different social media channels every time they research a story
• Over 40 per cent of journalists use a Facebook account to manage their professional relationships whilst also is the least preferred initial method of contact
• 86 per cent of journalists use a Twitter account for work
• 85 per cent of journalists welcome PR approaches through their Twitter profiles (I’d like to know what the other 1 per cent of journalists use their ‘work’ Twitter profiles for if not for researching stories…)
• LinkedIn is regularly used to search for industry experts and spokespeople for interviews, also 84 per cent of journalists are happy to be approached about a story over LinkedIn
• Journalists still rely heavily on traditional email news circulation and telephone approaches from PR’s
• Wikipedia is cited as a useful resource for background information on a story

When researching a news story, journalists prefer using the following channels (in the following order):

1. News releases (used by 72 per cent of the journalists questions)
2. Company websites (used by 71 per cent)
3. Official corporate blogs (used by 63 per cent)

In fact, only 53% of journalists will look at an official corporate Twitter feed when researching a story… could this be a direct representation of how many corporates have an official Twitter feed – or perhaps those who are using to actively provide useful information to their followers? It would be interesting to compare this to an analysis of corporate Twitter users.

Essentially there are two different things to consider if you’re trying to communicate with journalists using social media. Are your target publications/journalists actively using social media channels? And then secondly, whether you are using those channels in an engaging, informative way so that you become a trusted source of information. If you’ve put time into considering both of these questions, then you might find this research helps you in your corporate communications.

Interestingly, I’d love to know whether construction industry journalists working on trade titles follow these same patterns, or whether our industry sector is different for some reason.

The PR industry hails the interactive, content-rich ‘social media news release’ (SMNR for the geeks) as the future of news across B2B and B2C sectors, but obviously the success of the SMNR depends solely on uptake of social media channels by journalists. We already incorporate many social ‘friendly’ elements into our client’s news releases, but I wouldn’t say that we’ve found the demand for a true SMNR within the construction industry just yet.

A true SMNR will be hosted in a dedicated ‘media centre’ to offer journalists a one-stop information source about a news item, or company.

An SMNR will also ideally incorporate the following information:

• Re-tweet friendly headlines & easily identifiable, tweet friendly facts/figures (perhaps the top three would be boxed out in an eyecatching way in a ‘copy & paste friendly’ format)
• A YouTube hosted video showcasing, giving content choices to the publications
•  Access to a bank of high-resolution images which are easy for journalists to download and share
• Easy access to supplementary information, such as company profiles, employee biographies etc

I’d say that we’re just about sat on the brink of change, and it’s important to keep your ear to the ground so that you continue to communicate with journalists in their preferred style. What are your personal experiences of communicating with journalists? Do you know whether your PR agency is active on Twitter to build and maintain their journalist relationships?

We’re undertaking some research of our own to follow up on this, so watch this space for more blog posts soon.

Long tail keywords are the search phrases with 4 or more words (this differs from site to site but 4 is a good figure I’ve found in the construction industry). Typically, someone (Architect, Contractor, Engineer) who uses a long tail search term are looking for something much more specific and those who are using 3 or less maybe considered as a researcher or someone who is familiar with your brand and will form as part of ‘the head’.

The below diagram explains this a little better:

Too much time focusing on the researcher where competition and volume are high

Target those who are looking for something specific by creating specific content

The example search phrase(s) I’ve used in the diagram are from a recent I audit I did for a tap manufacturer and found that majority of quality visitors were those who were using longer search phrases and were easier to convert, but they still wanted to rank #1 in Google for silver taps. This is ok but it would take quite some time time for them to rank on page 1 as their site was relatively new and they hadn’t built up an online profile compared to some pretty well known established brands with authoritative sites within the market. By creating content which is specific to what someone is likely to search for they are more likely to click on your search result, consume your content and if it answers their question more likely to convert into an enquiry.

Anyway, there’s one thing missing off the above diagram which is very important and that is……….conversions! Conversions being the enquiries, registrations, downloads, subscriptions or sign ups that happen on your website.

Does long tail search traffic generate more enquiries than short 2 word search terms?

Let’s find out. What I have done is taken some real data with permission from a clients data and analysed their long tail traffic over the last 4 months using Google Analytics. By doing this I can see which group of keywords generate the most conversions. It  can help me answer quite a few questions too such as “where should I focus my efforts?” or “what type of content do we need to create?” or “should we be spending more of our budget on those search terms when there is an opportunity over here to beat the competition?”.

Here are my findings for Month 1. Blue line represents the number of visits to the website from the number of words within the search term and the red line represents the conversion rate as a percentage generated by the number of words within the search term.

Month 1 - Visits vs Conversions vs Length of Search Term

As you can see the site has attracted large volumes of traffic for the keywords which have 1 or 2 keywords but relatively low conversion rates. On the other side we have lower volumes of visits from search terms with 3,4,5,6+ words in the search term but nice high conversion rates. Nearly 3% conversion rates for search terms with 5 keywords! My client is very happy with this number and now says “Go get me more long tail traffic!”

What about month 2? Let’ take a look:

Month 2 - Visits vs Conversions vs Length of Search Term

Again, a pretty similar pattern, except some external brand building work caused a spike in conversions from brand related terms that month which fall into the 2 word bucket. Like the previous month, majority of conversions came from more specific search terms with 4 or more words in the search term.

What about months 3 and 4?

Month 3 - Visits vs Conversions vs Length of Search Term

Oh nice! Another 3% of conversions came from those searching for information using 6 or more words! 6 or more words!!! Do you want more of these searchers or the more of the researchers who use 1 or 2 words in their search term which may cost you so much more and take up so much more time?

And the 4th month is no different:

Month 4 - Visits vs Conversions vs Length of Search Term

The site generated over a thousand visits from 2 word search terms yet only converted around 0.5% of that traffic where as search terms with 4 words converted 2.34% of that traffic. Lower volume, higher quality, more intent, easier to convert.

So whilst you are focusing on the high volume keywords it’s important to bear in mind that there are also some lots of nice easy quick win opportunities on the other side that your competitors have completely missed. It’s the perfect opportunity for you to go acquire that traffic and convert it into a lead or an order. You’ll also find that this type of visitor maybe easier to convert rather than the researcher who may require more than one visit (returning visitor) before he/she converts into an enquiry.

So what does an increase in traffic from long tail keywords look like over a period of 12 months?

A well thought out keyword strategy together with an awesome content strategy should achieve something like the below graph (below graph is the long tail traffic to the Pauley Creative website)  which shows an increase in traffic from search terms with more than 4 words over 12 months.

Long tail traffic (search terms with more than 4 words) to website over a period of 12 months

TIP: Open up your Google Analytics and analyse the keywords beyond  the top 25 or top 50 keywords. Review them and go develop the content and publish it on your website to attract more of those visitors.

I would love to hear your thoughts about targeting those who are searching for something very specific and the conversion rates from the long tail. Are you seeing lots of ‘researchers’ come to your site and never returning? Are you seeing lots of researchers who come back and convert into an enquiry on the second or third visit?

Enjoy and if you have any other tips then please feel free to leave a comment below or let us know about any topics you would like us to cover in future episodes of MDI TV by Pauley Creative.

An important element of successful brands is consistency. This builds customer trust and perceived value because buyers know exactly what to expect from your product or service before they buy it. Companies have to ensure that these expectations are achieved, or even better, exceeded.

Tell your brand story

Every company has a story to tell but it is how you tell that story that can make the difference. Nobody can tell this story better than you because you know your brand better than anyone else. Pick out the elements and values that make your brand unique and focus on these. Creativity plays a huge part and using digital tools to develop a great brand story across a variety of online channels is how you can stand apart from the competition. A brand that shows its ‘human side’ is much easier for customers to relate to and build a relationship with.

Social media provides a brilliant platform for businesses to give their audience an insight into the brand, what it stands for, the people that work there and your company culture. Don’t be afraid to use humour or be quirky (within reason obviously) as this can help you stand out online. Essentially, people develop relationships with other people. Companies who understand this, build successful brands that are trustworthy, likeable and relatable.

Focus on your audience

The digital landscape has opened up huge opportunities for construction companies to communicate with architects, specifiers, employees, customers, supply chain members and many others online. Part of building your brand online is using digital channels to create a dialogue with these key people. Social media should be seen as a 2 way communication opportunity, not just a chance to blast out your latest product information. Think before you post and aim to share content that is of value. This can come in many different formats and should generate discussion and interest. Sure, you will be posting the odd promotional message but make sure that this is not the sole purpose of using social media.

Due to the large number of available channels, with new ones popping up every few weeks, it’s crucial to make sure you are only concentrating on those platforms and channels that your target audience is active on. Take the time to research, listen and identify the online behaviour patterns of your target audience and construction your marketing plan around this. If your research reveals that most Architects use Twitter and Linkedin to find information about products then why are you spending most of your time on Facebook? Don’t try and define the communication platform and medium for your audience. Instead find out where they are, what they’re talking about and build your online community there.

Empower your employees

The real power behind a successful brand are the people. Employees are the life and soul of your brand and therefore are your biggest brand advocates. This is why branding involves the whole organisation and not just the marketing department. From product design to invoicing and delivery, every time a customer interacts with your company they are part of the branding experience.

Most of your employees are probably active on social media for personal use and some of them might even be blogging. Encourage them to share your content to increase the reach of your brand as each of them will have a different network. This exposure can dramatically increase your brand awareness and through your employees, your brand culture and personality is brought to life. Due to the nature of social media and the transparency that comes with it, it’s important to develop a social media policy first which will set guidelines for your employees. Letting them know their boundaries and the type of content they can, and cannot, share online protects your online brand reputation and empowers them to use it in a conscientious manner.

Integrate everything

As I said earlier, one key ingredient of a successful brand is consistency. Your brand has to look, feel and act in the same way at every customer touchpoint and interaction whilst adding some kind of value to the buyer. The web has added an extra challenge for brands because they have to make sure their brand is now consistent both offline and online. No point in launching a new building product at a trade show or exhibition but having nothing about that product on your website when architects and specifiers visit it after the event to find out more information.

Creating multiple social media accounts can increase the reach of your brand online so that your brand message is spread to a wider audience. Direct traffic back to an online ‘hub’ (usually your website or blog) where people can find all necessary information in one place. For this to work, and contribute towards building an even stronger brand, all these social media messages and activities have to be integrated into your wider marketing strategy.

Look to the future

Online behaviour is constantly evolving and one of the major tasks for brands is to remain authentic and continue developing trust. Strategic thinking is required to adapt to the ever changing environment and ensure your brand remains relevant to audience needs now, and in the years to come. Strong brands stand the test of time because they think about the future and don’t just focus on short term results and outcomes. Gain insight into what is important to your customers by listening to the conversations they are having online and predicting how your product and/or service can evolve to meet these, and future, needs. Sustaining a strong brand requires adaptability and the flexibility to constantly learn and evolve quicker than your competitors. This can sometimes involve taking (calculated) risks, especially as technology is moving so fast and new tools and techniques are constantly being invented. You don’t want to be left behind!

A current example of this is mobile. 2012 will see a dramatic increase in traffic coming from mobile devices and tablets. What are construction brands doing about this? Have they looked at their analytics to see what proportion of website traffic is coming from mobile devices? Do they know whether engineers, contractors or architects are looking for product or installation information online when they are on site? If there is a significant proportion doing this then why are these brands not developing mobile apps and ensuring that their websites are mobile and tablet friendly? If you are still stuck in the mindset of ‘my customers don’t use social media/mobile’ then you will be left behind. This failure to adapt and innovate can have drastic consequences (take Kodak as an example).

I would like to hear your thoughts on this. How can construction companies continue to build and develop their brands online? Have you seen any good examples of brands doing this well? What happens to those that don’t embrace digital technologies?

This video is a round up of our visit to Ecobuild where we will show you some of the good uses of digital marketing we spotted during our visit.

We also conducted interviews with exhibitors to get their opinions and feedback on how they have used social media channels to generate interest in the run up to the show and during the show which will be posted up on our You Tube channel during the course of this week so be sure to check them out.

For the study CIMCIG would like to receive input from a wide range of organisations within the Construction Sector (regardless of size, location or approach to marketing) and so we would be very grateful for your participation. This is where CIMCIG need your help. Please follow the link for our online survey and answer the short questionnaire, taking about 10 minutes to complete and which will greatly help with our research.

Click the link to take the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CIMCIG

If you feel you are not the appropriate person to respond on behalf of your company, please feel free to forward the link to a colleague. Deadline for completing the survey is Thursday, 29th March 2012.

If you have any queries about completing the form please contact the Survey Research Centre on (0113) 812 1975 or email James Clark at j.clark@leedsmet.ac.uk

We look forward to receiving your response.