Early last year I decided I couldn’t hold off any longer getting on the Social Media train. My Queen Anne House had been the AIA/Northwest Home Magazine Home of the Month the previous November, and I was about to give up hope of ever getting any work out of it. Which seemed strange at the time, since in the past it was published projects and recognition such as this which was the source of most of my work. It finally dawned on me that the old-school style of marketing I’d always counted on just wasn’t working anymore.
So, about this time last year I contacted Rory Martin, whom I’d worked with before in re-designing my website, to bring me up to speed with social networking. He developed a multi-step plan, involving setting up a Facebook page for my company, setting up a blog, optimizing my LinkedIn profile, and doing some search engine optimization. In addition, I created a profile for my business on the Houzz website (http://www.houzz.com/pro/jim-burton/jim-burton-architects).
For a few months I didn’t notice any improvement, although Rory showed me the analytics of how many people were seeing my website etc. Finally though, starting about four or five months after I’d started working with him (which was as long as he told me it would take) I started to see some real results. I began getting potential clients calling again. And interestingly, it seemed like I got actual jobs from these more often than in the past. In other words, I think some of this social media gives potential clients a deeper, more genuine sense of who I am, what I do and how I work, than an article in a design mag ever could. I also found that when someone did contact me after, for example, seeing my blog, I was the only architect they were talking to, whereas more often than not in the past I would be one of several architects that potential clients were interviewing.
And I’m getting some new recognition, which is really surprising me. I’ve been told by LinkedIn that I had one of the top 5% most viewed LinkedIn profiles in 2012. I was featured in a Houzz Ideabook (online article) about how design in Seattle responds to the environment (http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/4184745/list/City-View–Seattle-Design-Reveals-Natural-Wonders). And Jim Burton Architects was chosen as a Houzz Best of 2013 winner, in the Customer Satisfaction category!
