People person

Another week, another chance to hit the road to share some learnings both internally and externally. For the former I've been playing my part in the annual Kier Employee Roadshows. These took place over 9 days at the beginning of the month with 21 events organised in 16 locations across the UK. During this time, over 3,000 Kier people attended to hear about the latest financial results and to take part in discussions around the theme of innovation.

Last year I had the perfect excuse to not help out given I was on paternity leave. This meant it was time to pull my weight by attending the inaugural Roadshow in Liverpool followed by another in Sheffield. 

The bulk of the planning for these is expertly managed by our Internal Communications team. It is then up to us to ensure everything runs smoothly on the day and to liaise with the hotels, couriers and AV technicians. I am pleased to say that my shared duties of setting up the room, hosting the Q&A and MC'ing the event all went well. This all contributed to a success for what was a massive undertaking for all involved.

Then last Monday, I headed into London to present as 'The Construction Blogger' to over 100 CIM members and students. This event took place at the Saint Gobain Multi-Comfort Centre which was conveniently only 3mins walk from our London Office. It was organised by Chris Ashworth of Competitive Advantage who was presenting their latest research on the use of Construction Media. I was pleased to write an article for the social media section of this which will be shared as a guest blog post at as later date. Su Butcher, director of 'Just Practising' communication consultancy was to be the chair and we also had case studies from Will Scott of LinkedIn and Anna Hern of Ridgemount PR.

It’s a lot of work presenting at external events but I really enjoyed the opportunity to make new connections @CIMinfo_CIG yesterday #cimcig pic.twitter.com/24R4GdCqT5

— Paul Fryer (@deep_phat) October 24, 2017

I had previously conversed with all of these people via social media so it was great to meet them in person. It's a good job we all have up to date social media profile pictures! Some key takeaways from the other presentations for me were:

Ready to go!

• People don't want to hear from the company on LinkedIn - they want to hear from your employees
• LinkedIn blog posts are most effective at weekends
• LinkedIn video is definitely worth trying
• Facebook is not free - it’s algorithm requires you to pay to get traction (unless you’re a celebrity!) 

I was pleased that Su Butcher, in particular, set up my presentation so well in that we both echoed each other's points. This contributed towards making the whole event look perfectly planned and aligned! I have never presented specifically on blogging before but the feedback was excellent, as were the questions. You can view my full presentation below:

The Construction Blogger from Paul Fryer

One thing that struck me is that some of the attendees asked for magic solutions for the right length of video or exact time to post content to gain traction. If only it was that easy! For me this depends so much on the message, your audience, the medium and your brand. Whilst you may get a head start from the learnings of others the only way to accurately gather this intel is to start posting and analysing yourself. In time you'll know exactly the right messages, timings and creative executions which work.

It was a great event and should hopefully be the first of many given that it was oversubscribed and the positive feedback.

Of course, no recent blog post would be complete without a mention of our campaign 'Shaping Your World'. The aforementioned CIM Construction Group are responsible for running the annual Construction Marketing Awards in London. Each year I've been working in this industry we've been shortlisted for these but are yet to win the big prize.

For the third year running we'll be there but this time in the 'Best Contractor Marketing Campaign' category. These awards are due to take place on 30th November and I put nearly as much effort into the submission as I did the campaign creative!

Roll on 30th November. I'll be the one biting his nails and rocking back and forth in the corner as our category is announced...!