Rodney and Steve Teaching / pic by @shanegibson
Last week Steve Jagger and I completed some in house training at BuildDirect in downtown Vancouver. BuildDirect is an online supplier of building materials. They have everything from siding to ceramic tiles supplying materials to real estate developers and your average home owner.
We spent three days at the BuildDirect office and taught on three topics.
Day 1 – Online Video
Day 2 – Twitter
Day 3 – Facebook / Blogging
What did we take away from the 3 days together?
Observation #1 – In a company like BuildDirect with 50+ employees Social media is everyone’s job. It is not just something that you delegate to the Social Media director. Everyone needs a Digg account. You can all be on Facebook and Twitter is not just for the CEO. Take Zappos as an example, they have a twitter page for all their employees. It serves to give a store with no front door a human face and presence. If you have a team, even if it is a small team, get everyone on your team involved.
Jeff Booth, CEO of BuildDirect Posting to Twitter
Observation #2 – For a company to embrace this social media space, there should be a push from the top down. It was very encouraging to see the co-founders of BuildDirect in all of our sessions. Jeff and Rob were very engaged and often times facilitating the discussion on how this company could use twitter to engage their market. To be successful in social media the leaders of the company must believe strongly in the effort. Simply dipping your toe in to test the waters will not do. I was impressed that the Co-founders were right there leading the charge.
Thanks BuildDirect for having us. We enjoyed the 3 days spent at your office. If you’d like to track BuildDirect’s move into the social media space, you can follow them on twitter at http://twitter.com/builddirect and you can follow their Co-founders Jeff Booth at http://twitter.com/jeffbooth and Rob Banks at http://twitter.com/robertbanks or check out there growing Facebook Fan Page
Thanks a lot for the write up, guys. It was a very valuable set of sessions. We took away a great deal from it, with the points above really hitting home. With social media, everyone needs to be involved. We are in the building materials business, but since we’re doing business on the web, we need to be in the social media business too. You guys have helped to get us mobilized.
Thanks again, guys.
Rob Jones.