by tradesmeninsights | Jan 26, 2011 | Uncategorized
From time to time I have guest posts and today, since many of my readers are contractors, we’re going to hear from Emma Martin who writes for CB Structures, a family owned construction and engineering company. She is going to share her insights on ways to improve productivity. Enjoy.
5 Ways to Improve Construction Productivity
One of the major setbacks for any construction project is a loss of productivity that results in delays and loss of funds. And yet, this type of occurrence is largely considered par for the course on most build sites. While many would be quick to attribute holdups to lazy workers or inadequate supervision, it is far more common for bad planning or outright ignorance to muck up the works.
Here are five ways you can avoid delays, deal with problem areas, and get your construction project on track for timely completion.
- A dependable foreman. You can’t just leave a construction crew to police their own activities. Like any job, you need a manager on site to ensure that work is progressing on schedule, jump in if help is needed, report to higher-ups, and basically do whatever is necessary to promote an efficient work environment. You’ll need someone with experience (a background in skilled labor is just as useful as previous management) who is reliable and trustworthy. This is absolutely essential to the success of any construction project.
- Incentives. Employees who are paid well and have a stake in the completion of the structure may be more likely to give it their all. In short, you need to offer competitive wages for your crew (you could even consider benefits in addition to your site insurance since the risks of accident and injury in this profession are high). You may also want to consider giving a bonus upon completion or sale of the property as a way to get your workers in gear. Just be sure to keep an eye on quality.
- Training. In some cases, both quality of work and productivity can be gained by putting up the money to ensure that your crew (and supervisors) are properly trained. Let’s face it, construction is often a profession that is entered into without much formal education (anyone can swing a hammer, right?). By requiring your crew to sign up for instruction in carpentry, electrical, and plumbing (for example), you can ensure that they do the job right the first time, effectively cutting back on construction time and saving money down the road.
- Planning. The most common cause of stoppage in construction is waiting, and it is often due to improper planning. While there will be days when weather and other factors beyond your control compromise your crew’s ability to continue work. However, there is also a portion of waiting time that is directly associated with poor planning. Whether necessary equipment is unavailable, materials are in transit, or there simply aren’t enough people working to ensure that a project is completed on schedule, poor planning is likely the root of the problem.
- Security. Theft at construction sites is fairly common, especially when materials are left unguarded and out in the open. Instead of setting up a fence that anyone with four usable limbs can bypass, hire a security firm to provide a night-guard so that expensive copper pipes and lumber don’t simply get up and walk off the site, costing you both materials and labor.
Emma Martin writes for CB Structures, a family owned construction and engineering company that specializes in garage buildings and pole building design.
by tradesmeninsights | Jan 5, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Uncategorized
This is a guest post from Marc Levine, social media director for RiaEnjolie, a website developer for small business owners. Marc shares some best practices he uses to get the most out of social media.
Social Media Marketing Requires Focus and Discipline
Effective Social Media Marketing requires strong multi-tasking and solid organization skills. Without these two key requirements, a small business owner can be easily overwhelmed and consumed by a “beast” starved for jealous attention and fruitless labor. Social Media Marketing is a “beast” that makes no promises for success or ever feels the need to apologize for bad results, despite the best efforts of marketers. Indeed, Social Media Marketing makes the strongest possible argument for planning to working smarter, rather than simply working harder…and longer.
The Blogs are overflowing with “how to” lessons on “taming the beast,” we call Social Media Marketing. You don’t have to look very hard to find blog posts that promise great results from a one-hour daily commitment in Social Media. Is this not possible? I suppose it is; depending on a number of unique variables that begin with having a realistic set of goals and expectations. What works well for some may not work as well for others. So, don’t be disappointed if what you read somewhere was not the panacea you hoped it might be. Your situation may require an entirely different approach.
Let me tell you what works for me. I can’t guarantee it will work for you, but it may – at least – be a starting point for your own Social Media effectiveness trials. Taken together with the advice of others, some personal tweaking may result in creating a workable plan exclusively for you and your business.
In my position as Social Media Director for a growing web design company, RiaEnjolie, Inc., I am charged with contributing directly to the corporate marketing effort, as well as assisting the many small business owners that purchase their new websites from RiaEnjolie. My major goals are to increase Brand Awareness for RiaEnjolie, as well as to “converse” with our customers and prospects, so as to better understand their needs and help them in their own Social Media Marketing efforts.
These are rather modest goals with an expected ROI measured mostly in customer smiles and business compliments. For a company that is young and relatively new in Social Media, RiaEnjolie is confident that it has started in – exactly – the right place with the appropriate focus and a reasonable set of expectations. Let me explain more about our use of Social Media.
We find that Facebook and Twitter work particularly well for us. We focus most of our attention on these two sites, in addition to the regular blogging we do. If you know where your target audience generally “hangs out,” you need to go there and invite everyone else to join you. These places, along with your own Website, become your “base of operations”…your primary residence, so to speak. If one has too many homes to maintain, it becomes very expensive and time consuming. This is also true in Social Media for those who attempt too much. Therefore, if Facebook is your primary choice, you need not apologize for not participating on MySpace, as well. Just be sure to direct everyone to where you can usually be found (on the Web) and they will eventually arrive there, as long as you offer them some real value.
Once you have established your “base of operations,” consider what your presence will be like once there. In other words, “when can you most often be found at home?”
They say that the single best time to Tweet is 9:00 am PST (Pacific Standard Time). They also say that the best time to get re-Tweeted is 4:00 pm EST on Fridays. These recommendations offer an educated framework to consider for “planning when to be home” in Social Media. In fact, there is plenty of free automation software available such as “Tweetdeck” and “Hootsuite” to program tweets for when you are not physically available on the Web. My recommendation, though, are to use these programs very sparingly. They are increasingly seen as very impersonal. They often come across more like annoying sales tools than true relationship builders.
Each day, I schedule about three Social Media sessions for myself. Each session runs about thirty minutes. I base my activity on peak user times reported in online studies. My online sessions are often supplemented with additional tweets and posts – throughout the day – as interesting news and tips come my way. This is why I keep Twitter and Facebook minimized on my laptop, all day.
Each morning after calling up my web browser, I open up four screens before minimizing three of them. Up and running, concurrently are:
1. Twitter
2. My Facebook Group (Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses)
3. Bit.ly (a URL shortening tool)
4 Google.
Next, I search Google News for a short list of topics to be shared with our audience.
RiaEnjolie shares the latest news and tips for Social Media, Small Business, Website Design and Charity Programs. The searches are refined to “past hour” results to help insure we are among the first to Tweet and post this news. In fact, rather than burden followers and “friends” with article links, I carefully review each item for its content value and for any quotable quotes by the principals in the article or post. Often the best quotes come from people we have not heard of before and what they have to share – in just a few words – sums up the entire article their views are contained within. Make no mistake that quotes are very re-Tweetable. Just make sure to give each quote a related category with a hashmark in front of it (i.e. #smallbusiness) so that others can search for it, find it easily on Twitter and attribute it to you, as its original Tweeter.
Beyond sound bytes, any article or post we read has intellectual value. We either agree or disagree with its contents. It is a definite learning experience for us and often the source of good debate. So, we gain something to internalize and to share with others in the form of a Tweet; a re-Tweet; a Facebook post; an E-mail to someone we know; or it might even become the subject our next blog article. And, while we are at it, we can comment on the article or the post we are reading; leaving behind our professional footprint and a valuable backlink for our own website.
With all four of the above mentioned screens available on my desktop, I essentially become a Social Media production company. I am able to create split screens and multi-task the information that I am working with in a number of different ways. At the very same time that I may be tweeting some memorable quote, I can also be expanding on the same thought with an insightful – and sometimes provocative – post to my Facebook Group audience. Thinking man’s Social Media at its best.
If a link is particularly long and takes up too many Twitter characters, Bit.ly is also open and ready to go for creating short URLs. Keeping these few platform and tool screens open throughout the day, saves time and allows for a smooth and steady flow of content from reading to analysis to publication and commenting. Since much of this also plays into analytics, measurement is also possible through Google Analytics and other similar programs.
None of this stuff is rocket science. It is mostly based on individual and collective user experience. The technology is all here and we just have to consider how best to use it to achieve our unique goals. There are even better ways to do the things I just described. I am confident you and others will find them through your own exploration, trial and error. Meanwhile, my system works for me. There is no right or wrong, just satisfaction. If you feel comfortable with a plan that gets you the results you are looking for, that’s three-quarters of the challenge.
by tradesmeninsights | Dec 16, 2010 | Uncategorized
Social media marketing is important in its own right, but efforts in the area can boost more online channels according to an article in eMarketer.com.
According to the data from B2B magazine and Business.com, marketer’s No. 2 goal for social media after brand building was increasing traffic to websites. Search ranking increased with increased social activity. If you generate more traffic, a logical conclusion is that you’ll generate more leads.
Are you utilizing social media to improve your search as part of your overall strategy?
by tradesmeninsights | Nov 4, 2010 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Uncategorized
Social media is about engaging with other people. In order for it to be successful, we need to move that engagement beyond the posts of Facebook or your blog. Yes, it’s understood that there are people behind the words, but unless you just want to be pen pals, you need to nurture them.
Once someone knows, likes and trusts you, you can go from engagement to a relationship. I know it may sound silly, but you’d be surprised how many social media folks would be happy to sit in front of a computer screen all day and engage people on social but are afraid to take it to the next level. A relationship by definition is an emotional or other connection between people.
Here are some suggestions to help you take that relationship to the next level (I sound like a dating coach):
- If someone responds to you and you start going back and forth with them, suggest an offline phone call to discuss in more detail.
- If you belong to a group or association and you plan on going to a trade show or a local meeting, let your audience know your plans, and maybe you could hook up. (People buy from people.)
- Social Sites – instead of using your logo, put up a team photo. On the about us pages, include the names of employees representing your brand. Put up profiles of team members.
- Encourage networking – if you have all this info about employees on your sites, then suggest that they promote the brand on their Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts.
These are some of my ideas. I’d like to hear what you’re doing to make it more “human.”
5 Ways to Improve Construction Productivity