To Construct Marketing, Social Media relates to one thing: ROT.
No not Rule of Thumb, Reign of Terror, Republic of Turkey or Right Offensive Tackle.
It is "Return on Time".

The scariest thing to construction industry company principals is that social media is an open faucet through which time for sales, production and billable hours can potentially gush unabated. Therefore it sometimes goes unaddressed like the proverbial elephant in the room. So how do you get comfortable with the idea that the time spent on social media is time well spent?

Expectations
Different social media vehicles will serve different purposes. While a large company may have a Communications department coordinate and manage various efforts in service of an overall marketing plan, smaller companies may use social media solely for lead generation, relationship building, just getting the name "out there" or one or two of the above. Its important to define, without tying the hands of the effort, what the organization expects from the 230, 1300 or 5000 some-odd hours spent by the end of the year on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. etc. etc.

Individual v. Organizational Use
As an example, LinkedIn does have some very definite benefits when it comes to finding someone who knows someone about something that you need help with. The LinkedIn Groups are particularly helpful for this reason. In this event, LinkedIn can make anyone better at what they do by widening their resource base. Obviously this can help the organization and ought to be encouraged. Twitter can be similarly helpful in this way. Organizational use? A discussion needs to take place over who exactly is speaking for the company including a dialog on the hierarchy the individuals that will marshal the organizational message. Obviously your company does not want 10 different "tweets" (read: announcements) from 10 different origins about what your company is doing.

Who?
This depends on the size and culture of your organization. While a larger organization with a marketing team can lead the social media marketing effort, a smaller organization may not have this luxury or resource. However it needs to follow a similar centralized model. You can take out much of the efficiency loss and worry over the social media elephant and maximize the ROT by spot picking your savvy employees, across the disciplines perhaps, who have time to take ownership of the message and stand as one voice for your business, in mind of the company marketing plan. (You do have a marketing plan don't you?)

What?
Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn et al all serve different purposes. Often, as with most marketing components or channels, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Integration of a mix that works together with your existing traditional marketing elements is the key to a social media effort. The trick is to do so in the most efficient and cost effective manner, all with a consistent message and in service of your stated goals.

This advice is worth what you're paying for it...
#1 Take the bull by the horns on the social media issue. With your social media team, discuss what you expect from the effort. Be sure to include IT department personnel and the marketing department of course. Don't build an island! Social media will work best integrated as a component of the larger marketing effort, rather than as a independent program, or worse as an unwieldy assortment of independent tiny solo programs.
#2 A Policy or Guidelines? Probably a good idea. But every company is different and it's got to work within your company culture and practice.
#3 Keep your effort moving and be consistent!

More Learning Resources:
Wikipedia: Social Media Marketing
HubSpot: List of 37 Social Media Articles
I Don?t Have Time For Social Media!
Explaining the value of social marketing
Hubspot:What Gets More Traffic Than Google? Facebook.

http://www.constructmarketing.com
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AEC Marketing: THE BIG PICTURE

1. Simple Question: What do you want?

2. What resources do you require to make that happen?

YOUR CUSTOMERS: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

3. Identify/explain your customers (See: I know I should be doing something...):

4. Can you subdivide your customers into distinct groups or segments?

5. What are the requirements of various customer segments?

6. Rate the importance of:
a. Sales response time,
b. Delivery speed,
c. Product customization,
d. Price sensitivity,
e. Service response time,
... for each of these segments:

7. Where do your customers first encounter your company?

8. Describe likely point of purchase for each segment:

9. Honestly assess the loss of past customers:

SALES REQUIREMENTS

10. Sales force and promotional approaches:
a. Appropriate size?
b. Adequate resources?
c. Clear expectations?

11. Provide analysis of how sales decisions are made:

MARKETING REQUIREMENTS

12. What is annual cost of acquiring/retaining customers?

13. What is annual marketing budget?

14. What is vision for the company's organization and development of marketing components?

15. For Example, what is Policy & Procedure for your company's contacts database?

16. For Example, what are all the current marketing components/tools in use?
a. Rate in order of potency.

COMPETITION & THE MARKET

17. What are the strengths and weaknesses of competitors . . .

18. Provide market intelligence:
a. Domestic product volume?
b. Competitor breakdown?
c. The number of potential customers and potential sales revenues?

VISION

19. Describe the company 12 months from today:

20. Describe the company 5 years from today:

http://www.constructmarketing.com
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Let's try and make a strongest statement this year!!! (Earth Hour web page)

I was recently asked whether there is such a thing as the perfect in-situ soil test, probably in response to a presentation that I had given a few weeks earlier, in which I enthusiastically described the advantages of CPT. The answer is obviously no: there is no single test that provides the most reliable information on the various soil parameters for all soil types. Having said that, CPT is generally speaking a very appropriate testing method in soils other than rock and gravel, providing good data on a very wide range of soil parameters. As such it is clearly the most versatile in situ soil test available. What is even more important, especially here in North America, is that CPT provides information on more soil parameters than SPT in all soil conditions other than gravel. Moreover, for those soil parameters that can be derived from both the SPT and the CPT results, CPT provides generally more accurate results and the results are available within minutes after the test was done (before the test equipment leaves the test site). In other words, CPT is a very useful test to provide an all-around characterization of the soil in a very short period of time. Not perfect, but in my opinion by far the best in the class of in-situ soil tests.

What benefits do Geo-Institute members receive?

? The Geo-Institute provides numerous networking opportunities through conferences, meetings, and task forces to entice professionals to exchanges ideas with colleagues.

? Geo-Strata magazine, a bi-monthly practice-oriented magazine is free to members.

? Geo-Institute members receive free periodicals and discounts on geotechnical publications.

? Access to www.geoinstitute.org allows you to keep current on industry news, coming events, calls for papers, and more.

? The opportunities to post resumes in a searchable database for easy access to employers.

? Many other publications produced by the institute throughout the year.

(Source: content.geoinstitute.org/members/membership)

To join, please fill out the form located at:
http://content.geoinstitute.org/files/pdf/Geo_IndividualSTUDENT.pdf

President: Adam Lobbestael

Vice-President: David Saftner

Secretary: Mustafa Saadi

Treasurer: Erik Ventura

Faculty Advisor: Adda Athanasopoulos-Zekkos

Contact: gi-officers@umich.edu

http://www.geoengineer.org/blogs/media/blogs/UM_G-I_GSO/UM%20Geo-Presentation%20Flyer-Jedele10.pdf

January 21, 2010: Larry Jedele, Vice-President Soil & Materials Engineering, Inc., "Geotechnical Lessons Learned and Solutions"

The University of Michigan's Geo-Institute of ASCE Graduate Student Organization was founded in 2009 to provide geotechnical graduate students with professional development and social opportunites. Our monthly meetings include speakers from academia, government, and industry, including student speakers from the ranks of our members, and focus on current geotechnical research, professional ethics, and the state of the practice.

Anyone that uses the CPT acknowledges that when dealing with data interpretation Dr. Robertson's published research is always the basis for such a task. Since first published, the non-normalized SBT chart is used by many users to retrieve information about soil type behavior, although the successor SBTn chart (normalized SBT) is known to be more reliable.

Dr. Robertson constantly listens to CPT users so he decided to update the original 1986 chart so that it will be more directly comparable to the normalized one. The obvious advantage of the SBT chart is that it can be used real time. The chart is formed using raw CPT data, cone resistance qc and friction ratio Rf. These 2 variables do not depend on previous knowledge of soil unit weight and ground water conditions that are not available during the CPT. By post processing CPT data one may review the SBTn chart and retrieve information on how confinement pressures alter the interpreted profile.

One more time we are extremely honored that Dr. Robertson revealed to us the updated plot so that we can update the software and test its behavior. When CPeT-IT gets the final approval from Dr. Robertson we will immediately release an update so that our users may benefit from this new feature!!!

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!

http://foboni.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/risk-based-decision-making-in-mining-webcast/

In February 2010 we will be presenting a 3x2.5hrs webcast on Risk Based Decision Making (in Mining) from Vancouver, B.C.

There is still time for us to modify the Table of contents to follow your wishes.

Let us know if there are particular themes you would like to see covered, and we will custom tailor the course as much as possible.

Just contact us and let us know...

Now that you have successfully created your typical sections you maybe wonder which value you should propose for some parameter in a single layer. First of all let's go back and discuss a little on how you should assign code names to your layers.

When working with several CPT files in a single project, you are targeting towards to the identification of soil layers that reappear in the various CPT profiles. Some of theses layers most probably will be assigned with an identical code name, for example Sand_1 layer that appears in CPT-01, 06, 08, 09 and 10. Each Sand_1 layer carries information like average values of various parameters but what you probably need is to present single values when talking about this sand layer. CPeT-IT, adopted the methodology proposed in Eurocode 7, to calculate Minimum Characteristic Values. The analysis is performed mainly for qt but the software will present you the characteristic values calculated for all estimations. By examining characteristic values you may adjust and finally propose single values in your final report.

CPeT-IT is all about interpretation of CPT data. Profiles of cone resistance, sleeve friction and excess pore pressure behind the cone tip provide valuable information over the penetration depth, that can be used to summarize soil stratigraphy not only in terms of soil type description but also in terms of mechanical characteristics. After all design engineers care more about a single parameter value rather than a series of values with ups and downs.

The typical geotechnical section module in CPeT-IT provides a way to summarize overall CPT performance in one single plot where cohesive and cohesionless soil types (mechanical behavior based on what the cone senses) are presented in the form of homogeneous layers. Extrapolating soil layers based on qt profile using only a visual inspection is not a difficult task for those with some experience but again this task may prove quite time consuming. On the other hand it is more than obvious that the cone senses changes is soil stratigraphy and captures this information in the variables that it measures. So, using a uni-variate and simple statistic analysis of the cone resistance profile, based on published work by Prof. Campanella, we created a smart tool that may assist in a quick identification of soil boundaries in a CPT profile. Although various complex and computationally "heavy" methods are described and proposed from various researchers, this simple and "light" technique turned out to have quite impressive output results. The procedure was not programmed to be fully automated in order for the user to control all calculation parameters while very quickly can fixate the values and extract the desired profile.

Although CPT equipment has changed dramatically over the years, applicability is boosted over many investigation fields and new interpretation formulas have been derived (and will continue to appear in the future) some things from the past just seem to stand there, waiting silently to be adopted and perform well using our latest technology.

http://foboni.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/crisis-forecast-one-year-later/

A quantitative prediction of duration and magnitude of the world economic crisis was published one year ago. Let's revisit the prediction http://foboni.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/crisis-forecast-one-year-later/ and discuss how this type of prediction can be used to manage your company.

All comments will be well received and discussed.
Of course feel free to do the same with all postings from my BLOG by viewing: http://www.foboni.wordpress.com

By the way, if I have enough requests, I will make sure there are postings in French and Italian on a regular basis. Just let me know!

Kind regards to you All,

Franco Oboni

http://www.riskope.com

Check out Riskope's courses an easy way to get a solid introduction to Risk and Crisis Management for Geotechnical and Mining Engineers.

Improve your skills in Project Evaluation and Risk Based Decision Making.
When delivered remotely these courses are a real bargain, and will contribute to keeping the carbon footprint of your organization to a minimum.

The concrete examples are our strenght, and the techniques we teach are proven by years of practice in the international arena for large and prestigious clients.

We are very excited to announce the immediate release of our latest CLiq beta version. This version introduces some major updates as well as fixes in the user interface. Changes made so far are listed below:

[+] Added latest procedure proposed by Dr. Peter Robertson (2009), applicable to all soil types
[+] Added two new columns in the results tabular data to present Su ratio (liquified and peak)
[-] New way to prepare overall reports by selecting CPT files to be included (or excluded)
[-] Modified procedure for strength loss calculation according to Robertson (2009)
[*] Fixed an issue in Ic plots when Ic value cannot be defined
[*] Fixed a mouse issue when double clicking inside plots (zoom function was enabled after closing the dialog)
[*] Fixed a bug when selecting CPT's in 2D map
[*] Fixed minor memory leaks

Registered users are strongly recommended to install the version in a different directory than their original copy. The software now is released in the form of an automated installer so please make sure you select an installation directory other than the directory of your current working copy.

If you are interested in working with this version please send us an email in order to provide you with the download link.