At the end of the day, an architecture firm is a business. And any business that wants to grow needs to go ahead and jump on the social media bandwagon. The question is which social media platforms are best for architects to use…
What results can an architect expect to get out of social media marketing?
For us, the primary goal of tweeting, linking, blogging, and publicizing is to bring in leads on future projects. That means creating ‘conversations’ between our various social media accounts that attract followers and fans of sustainable architecture in Europe.
A lot of it in these beginning stages is simply free advertising for us. Because we are a small studio, our advertising “budget” is somewhat nonexistent. Social media, however, is free. We also have the added bonus of jumping into a fairly limited online advertising pool in Italian, as it’s just now starting to gain momentum here as a valid marketing tool.
How much time and energy should go into online marketing for an architect?
Let’s be practical. We are two people. There are buildings to be designed, administrative papers to be filed with various town councils, clients to be pursued, and construction sites to be monitored. Time is of the essence.
However, we feel that online marketing is important enough to our long-term goals to dedicate a fairly large chunk of our week to it. Although we don’t always make it, we try to blog at least a couple posts a week between our English and Italian site. From there, we have most of our other social networking sites set up to automatically pass things back and forth. Our WordPress blog automatically tweets and updates our Facebook page. Our LinkedIn profiles pull off our WordPress blog, which is full of Flickr photos that also get tweeted.
It’s all a big mess, really. The point, though, is that we have original content that we are passing around our online network in the hopes that someone new and interested wants to build something with us.
Which social media platforms should architects participate in?
The big players apply to all businesses:
- a website or blog (we use WordPress)
- a Facebook fan page for the company, linked to frequently from our personal profiles
- a company profile on LinkedIn, linked to from our personal profiles
- a company Twitter account
- an image hosting and sharing site, such as Flickr
- a YouTube channel
These are non-negotiable. Then there’s secondary social media networks that, honestly, we don’t really have time to pursue… but we do have parked accounts with some of them:
- a social bookmarking tool, like Digg, Delicious, or Reddit
- you may want to consider an online portfolio service, such as Carbonmade, if you have time to maintain it
What social media networks are specific to architects?
Architizer is fantastic. Not only is it a very big and beautiful community of architects looking at each others work, but it also has the potential to grow into a place for investors to search for an architect for a potential project.
On a more geographically specific note, we could not do without Europaconcorsi. As registered members of the Ordine degli Architetti, we receive a free professional account. However, the free one allows you to list as a company or individual as well.
