A Social Digital Idea for a Local Business

I've spent so much time in Big Pharma that I'm worried that I've gotten pigeon-holed... Okay, let's be honest, my twitter name is @bradatpharma, so I've kinda done it to myself. I think @bradateverything, though... that's a little too egotistical.

What I want to do, most of all, is find a way that I can describe how what I've worked on doing in a regulated industry for the last 25 years is transferable to other industries. This time, and probably the next couple of times, I'd like to show some of my thoughts around the transportation industry and the use of social digital media. If you've got a Facebook page, a Twitter account, or run ads on Google, what do I know that can be of any help? How can The Lawrence Companies (Lawrence) of Roanoke, VA do anything of value in the social digital space? What is Lawrence doing now that seems problematic... or at least worth a discussion? Can I make any recommendations as to what I'd like to try with them to address problems I see in the transportation industry? Well, I'll do that, and end with a recommendation of what to do with one of their social digital platforms.

Transportation and trucking... admittedly, an industry of which I know only a little, professionally. Let's start with what I know.

When I was a kid, I watched "BJ and the Bear". It's a tv show about a trucker and his chimpanzee... Bear... I know, right, it's a chimpanzee, but it's named "Bear". What's up with that? Since I was that tv-watching tot, I've wanted to drive an 18 wheeler cross-country... and have a chimpanzee. Therefore, it should come as little surprise that I've gathered, at least, a few facts at my fingertips.

• You need a CDL to drive a truck. "Shocking," you may say. But, seriously, this means that you have to undergo a regular certification process for driving a whole other type of vehicle. A process requiring written and practical skills. You have to be dedicated to do this to begin with, usually to the tune of about 3,500 USD, and have to keep up your skills. 18 wheelers on the road are driven by some amazingly adept humans.
• Trucks get things to where they need to be. You may silently, or not so silently, curse that truck driver during your commute, but how do you think the beans for your latte, the gas for your car, the clothes on your back, or the paper in your office printer got to where they are? Trucking, trans-shipping, or local delivery takes trucks and truckers.
• Trucking can often be a one person business. In addition to the skills of just driving your truck, a trucker may have multiple other concerns. Truckers can only do their job 14 hours a day. This means, if somebody took 6 rather than 2 hours to load your truck... you've lost a lot of good hours just sitting around, not making money by being on the road. If you own and operate (o/o) your truck, you're constantly doing the math on depreciation of your tires, how much fuel you're managing, or whether or not you're dead-heading a leg of this trip. They're like trading ship captains.
• Truckers are aging out, and there's not enough talent backfilling. How many times do you hear a child saying, "I want to be a trucker when I grow up," and then hear encouragement for that dream. "No, Jane, you want to go to college and become an accountant." Well, trucking is one more blue collar industry where there are not enough replacements filling the aging workforce. See point 2 for why this may be a problem.

So, I know just enough to be mildly annoying on the topic. But what does that mean from a social digital strategy perspective?

Let's dig into The Lawrence Companies (Lawrence) and a couple of their social digital properties. The company describes itself as being involved in commercial and residential moving, equipment rental, data and records management, and truck repair.

First, I did the obvious... brute force searching in Google. How do those keywords stack up against their Google results? NOTE: Do try this at home, because your results may vary. In my results, I've chosen to see 100 returns on every page. In 12 searches relating to their own company description, Lawrence doesn't show up.

So, I took to Twitter... because that's my preferred platform... and they don't show up in 4 searches related to looking for drivers or the topic of transportation... Honestly, though, that's my fault for doing the search, because they haven't posted in more than a year.

Next, to Facebook. I don't like to start there because data acquisition can be such a mess. They've got 544 posts (your mileage may vary if you check today) since they started the account. Based on the post volume, I'm gonna say they started the account in 2013. We've got 235 comments, 3,464 reactions, and 1,026 shares. Pretty good for come local content.

Once you take out the typical words you'd expect from the posts, you see:

The focus on the page is on employee recognition, concerns for their drivers (i.e. tiptuesday), promoting their services, and a lot of recommendation on residential moving.

The comments that come back tend to be focused a little differently:

From this one you see those dates, and those are answers to trivia questions related to photos. There's additionally a lot of "attaboy" type comments that are tied to the employee recognition.

Of the information I see here, there are few links directly to hiring Lawrence for any of their services. There is no consistent call to action. Nor do there seem to be calls-to-action tied to specific themes.

An additional piece of information that I didn't find until I dug into the posts is that Lawrence is affiliated with United Van Lines... Okay. So, those searches previously mentioned *do* tend to mention United Van Lines, generally in the ad portion. I didn't field test any phone calls to see if I got transferred to Lawrence... maybe I should do that next.

One of my most favorite little insights actually comes from tracking those who *reacted* to posts. So, we've got those 3,464 reactions, and when you pull them and sort them by user, you see that approximately 20% of them come from current and former employees. So, you've got an account executive from North Carolina, another Lawrence executive, a few office staff, as well as a few drivers. A nice crowd, but very little consistent reach outside of corporate environs.

I'm working on a network visualization... but I'm amazed how difficult it is to gather any relationship data from FB.

Ultimately, If I take what I know about the transportation industry, I really only see about 1 and a half of those 4 points I know anything about being dealt with in the FB feed.

So, let me offer my first idea that I would love to see Lawrence try out.

It is awesome when you call out drivers for awards and performance. Keep that up. I'd love to see two calls to action on each of those posts.

1. Ask people to add their best wishes to the driver being recognized. Ask them to share it with their friends in the industry. See if you can get a wider audience to see the drivers who are really good at their job.
2. Include a call to action for prospective driver candidates to apply to drive for Lawrence.

I've got some more ideas in the bag... but I'm gonna let those brew in my noggin to see how they shake out.