Using social media in your personal life is a common practice for millions every day. How do you step into using social media for your business when you work for yourself?

Architecture firms operate in a very established field with rigid processes and procedures to ensure safety regulations are met and that structural quality is high. While their output is of extreme importance, the use of innovative marketing at architectural practices trails that of many other industries.

Pb Elemental in Seattle, however, has embraced social media in a fresh way to promote the firm’s projects, attract followers, and generate business.

“About two years ago, our receptionist recommended we put up a Facebook Page,” says co-founder Chris Pardo. “I got on Twitter at the same time. We do it to share our work without being in people’s faces.”

No Blogging, Just Building

While many businesses extol blogging, Pb Elemental prefers not to blog due to time constraints. However, many architecture blogs around the world republish and link to Pb Elemental’s Facebook Page on their blogs. From these re-postings, the firm receives inquiries from people who would otherwise never know about them. Pardo estimates that about 10% of these inquiries turn into revenue-earning projects in different locations around the United States. Pb Elemental does not practice outside the US at this time.

The firm’s fan base rapidly grew on Facebook, particularly among people who were looking to build a home. As of March, 2010, Pb Elemental had about 1,050 fans and Pardo himself had about 1,400 friends – mostly earned from the fan base.

Pardo also began to friend people who became Fans of the Pb Elemental Page on Facebook. He did this to reveal the person behind the firm, and reduce the appearance of being yet another faceless company.

He found that this gave an opportunity to show off more of the behind-the-scenes work they did, and clients felt that the firm was more approachable, trustworthy, and related to the firm as a connection.

“We receive about five to ten emails a week from people out of the blue asking us to design a house for them or asking how to buy the plans for the homes we’ve built,” Pardo explained.

Pardo described social media as a branding tool that provides a constant reminder to their audience, whereas traditional advertising provides one shot and then it is gone. That is why the firm conducts no advertising. Pardo comments that integrating blogs into Facebook works well if you have the time to blog.

Instead, they make social media a part of their everyday efforts and incorporate it into everything they do. His goal on Twitter is four tweets per day.

Facebook for Social Marketing

Pb Elemental uses social media to sustain interest and get people hooked on what they do. Pardo now tries to include more of the process behind how a final design is delivered instead of just showing photos of the finished project. This educates the potential buyer on the process of design.

Using social media also condenses the timeline, so he can post a complete sequence of photos from start to finish – a more engaging experience for his “friends.” He also provides multiple links back to Pb Elemental’s web site from the teaser content on Facebook.

Their latest project is a 10’ wide prefab house in partnership with Method Homes. The plan is to do time lapse photography while it is assembled over two days and publish this as the firm’s first video.

The interaction obtained from user comments is a key value that Pb Elemental sees in its social media efforts. Negative comments will remain but the troubling ones are deleted.

As for Twitter, Pardo began to see the light when his fiancé opened the gourmet hot dog shop Po’ Dogs. She used Twitter to communicate specials, discount codes, and events at the restaurant to attract customers. While Pardo recognized the value she gained from Twitter, he still works on how derive the best value for an architecture practice though they won a project in Houston via a tweet. They have about 450 followers on Twitter now.

About Pb Elemental

Chris Pardo is a founding partner of the architecture firm Pb Elemental. He co-founded the firm in 2004 with Dave Biddle. The firm was an outcome of their university thesis project: a residential home built for $125 per square foot. In 2005, their bank began referring them to builders who needed affordable construction methods. The firm has designed 475 projects as of March, 2010, and 340 of those have been built.

Since then, Pb Elemental has also won four awards:

• 2007 AIA Award (Commendation) for Queen Anne House
• 2008 Design Achievement Award
• 2009 Top 25 Innovators
• Chris Pardo: Top 20 Under 40 Architects

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