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BUSINESS NEWS LJA ENGINEERING OPENS TWENTY-SEVENTH OFFICE IN ROUND ROCK, TEXAS LJA Engineering, Inc. has experienced a steady expansion of locations throughout Texas due to a significant demand in services. Since its founding in 1972, LJA’s mission has been to provide high quality, innovative, and cost-effective services to our clients. LJA has opened a new 10,000-square-foot, 58-person office in Round Rock, Texas, offering a comprehensive depth and breadth of services in their twenty-seventh location. “LJA’s presence has called the Austin area home since 2004, responding directly to client requests and a robust economy. With the new Round Rock location, our five full-service offices in the Central Texas region can best connect our talent and depth of resources with clients to serve their specific needs,” says Kenneth Schrock, PE, vice president of LJA. Consistently ranked locally, regionally, and nationally as a top engineering firm, LJA will locally serve Williamson, Travis, Hays, and Bexar Counties clients from the Round Rock office, as well as the firm’s existing offices in Cedar Park, south Austin, west Austin, and San Antonio. With this new location, LJA continues to provide full engineering, planning, surveying, GIS, and construction management talent

need to be tracked and adjustments need to be made based on factors of success or failure. Unfortunately, because social media is free, many AEC firms treat it like a veritable dumpster for all things “marketing.” Without a schedule, a plan, or any measures of success, many firms are posting terrible images of unsuspecting new hires mixed in with unrelated projects, charity events, in-office parties, and even announcements about the weather. Worse yet, most firms abandon all graphic standards when it comes to social media. I’ve seen firms with five pages on the proper use of their logo have Facebook accounts with terrible quality images, 500 different fonts, 50 different clashing colors, and inconsistent graphics. Last year, I would have advised firms to dip their toes in the water when it comes to social media. Something, after all, is better than nothing. Today I wouldn’t say the same thing. I would say this is a real marketing channel that people are paying attention to. It’s as important as almost anything else. Exercise a strategy. Have standards. Show some restraint. Stay committed to your branding. Do all these things and then tell me how effective your social media is at getting work for your firm. You might be surprised! CHRISTINA ZWEIG NIEHUES is Zweig Group’s director of marketing. Contact her at christinaz@ zweiggroup.com. and resources from staff statewide to serve the technical needs of public and private entities in land development, rail services, midstream infrastructure, public infrastructure, public works, transportation, water resources, hydrology and hydraulics, coastal engineering, and environmental services. “We are committed to Round Rock. This office will enhance our ability to offer unique solutions and high quality services to our growing client base, positioning us to take our talent and resources wherever and whenever they are needed. LJA continues to grow our footprint, family, and brand. We look forward to building civilization and creating better lives for staff, clients, and the communities we serve,” says Calvin T. Ladner, president of LJA. The new LJA office is currently open and located at 2700 La Frontera, Suite 150, Round Rock, Texas 78681. LJA Engineering, Inc. is an employee-owned, full-service consulting engineering firm. With 27 offices across Texas and Florida, LJA offers 750 experienced civil, transportation, midstream, rail, and coastal engineers, plus hydrologists, environmental specialists, planners, landscape architects, construction managers, GIS designers, and surveyors.

Zweig Group’s 2018 Marketing Survey of AEC Firms is a benchmarking and advisory guide to industry firm marketing activities, budgets, marketing department organization, staffing levels, compensation, and investments in marketing systems and infrastructure. The topics covered in this comprehensive report are: ❚ ❚ Marketing staff. Data on marketing departments at firms of different sizes/ types, along with experience, education, compensation, and expectations and sales goals for various marketing related job roles. ❚ ❚ Proposals and sales. A full breakdown of proposal actives and hit rates by firm type, size, location, and other factors. ❚ ❚ Marketing systems. Data on the prevalence of various marketing systems and data relating to their use. ❚ ❚ Promotion. See what most firms in the industry are doing to promote themselves, along with a full report on statistics of what is working and what is not working. ❚ ❚ Marketing expenditures. Data on marketing related expenses including actual figures from the previous year and budgeting for the future. ❚ ❚ Strategies. Data on the use and effectiveness of a variety of marketing approaches. ❚ ❚ Challenges. Data on what respondents feel have been marketing challenges and victories for their firms over the past year. Visit bit.ly/2M1e88a to learn more.

CHRISTINA ZWEIG NIEHUES, from page 3

actively liking photos posted by other Instagram users; 62 percent of firms are not actively re-tweeting; and 58 percent are not sharing content from other Facebook users. Only 63 percent of firms said they strategically post different kinds of content to social media in an effort to increase engagement. “Without a schedule, a plan, or any measures of success, many firms are posting terrible images of unsuspecting new hires mixed in with unrelated projects, charity events, in-office parties, and even announcements about the weather.” When asked what kind of content generates the most engagement, 59 percent of firms said “pictures.” Ironically and unfortunately, one of the least effective forms of engagement, job postings, was one of the most common types of content published (80 percent).

With any marketing method, metrics

THE ZWEIG LETTER November 5, 2018, ISSUE 1271

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