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Balfour Beatty tops contractors’ social media rankings

10 Feb 17 An independent audit of the social media reach of Britain’s top construction contractors has put Balfour Beatty at the head of the pile.

Balfour Beatty has more than 8,000 Facebook followers
Balfour Beatty has more than 8,000 Facebook followers

Balfour Beatty has more Twitter followers and Facebook fans than any other UK construction contractor. It also comes out top on Instagram.

Kier, BAM and Willmott Dixon also score highly. Vinci and Keller, on the other hand, are barely even trying.

The study was conduct by digital marketing specialist Arvid Linde of Bournemouth-based LexisClick. He analysed the social media presence of the Top 20 contractors, looking at their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube activities. LinkedIn was excluded as a given in the corporate world.

Regarding Facebook, Arvid Linde says: “Balfour Beatty stands out in terms of content format. They are using their 8K-strong Facebook following to gain extra subscribers to their Youtube channel. Even their CTA button links to a video instead of the more traditional B2B approach to use ‘Contact Us’ or ‘Call Us’ as the Facebook CTA.”

He adds: “Carillon is using their Facebook stream to showcase various professions and to promote apprenticeships. Morrison Utility on the other hand are taking a much more fun approach to their Facebook campaign.”

Kier gets credit for launching a mini site to help tell ordinary people about civil engineering and building bridges. “Unfortunately, they’ve gone about it the wrong way,” he says. “The minisite is hosted on Blogspot – one of the un-coolest social sites ever conceived. I’d get it if they had built it in Tumblr because then they’d at least enjoy some interaction from other platform users.”

Those companies that use Instagram are generally doing a reasonably good job, Mr Linde says. “What they lack, though, is a good mix of topics. Balfour Beatty is good at instagrid, ISG can make their staff look fun and relatable, Murphy Group have allegedly the most beautiful bulldozers in Britain while Laing O’Rourke and BAM have a special talent for delivering top-notch urban photography. If you mixed the five, you’d have a perfect B2B Instagram account. On their own they're just not good enough to warrant thousands of followers.”

His full analysis can be seen at https://www.lexisclick.com/blog/builders-cracked-construction-industry-social-media

Company

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

Youtube

Total reach

balfourbeatty.com

8347

49557

1023

451

59378

kier.co.uk

1916

47021

454

49391

bam.co.uk

3088

41753

183

242

45266

willmottdixon.co.uk

40614

263

40877

laingorourke.com

36034

370

573

36977

carillionplc.com

4798

30074

422

35294

macegroup.com

28150

392

28542

costain.com

1574

23338

101

25013

mitie.com

4690

17392

599

22681

interserve.com

2902

19282

305

22489

construction.morgansindall.com

20110

101

20211

wates.co.uk

16877

16877

amey.co.uk

15887

15887

isgplc.com

9286

163

133

9582

mearsgroup.co.uk

3395

5466

44

8905

murphygroup.co.uk

3210

1704

488

69

5471

bandk.co.uk

5204

5204

volkerwessels.co.uk

3186

3186

morrisonus.com

980

699

1679

vinciconstruction.co.uk

498

498

kellerconstruction.co.uk

126

310

436

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MPU

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