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Since its launch two weeks ago, Google+ has added 10 million users and expects to add another 10 million before the weekend.  Unlike Twitter and Facebook, which have both been established social media platforms for several years, Google+ is somewhat of a fresh start.  My ‘circles’ are still fairly small, participation and posting is significantly less active than either of the aforementioned platforms, and there seems to be a general confusion of what to do after you get a login.

This presents an opportunity.  An opportunity for someone active in their industry to carve out a big niche before the competition gets on board.  At the moment, Google+ isn’t allowing business pages, but they are allowing businesses to sign up now for when this feature goes live later this year.  This is a feature that Facebook has had for a few years now, and everyone and their brother’s companies have one.  On the B2B side, most of these pages are pretty generic, are predominantly ‘liked’ by the friends of the page’s creator rather than customers, clients, and vendors; and after the first month of going live, have very little activity or interaction from people other than the page’s creator or the employees of the company.  And almost none of them have converted a sale from their Facebook page.

What I envision the upside of Google’s business page to be, is that people searching on Google for a product or service will find your company’s Google business page.  They will find it via a search that recognizes keywords and terms that aren’t identical to your company name the way that Facebook’s search does.  In an industry like construction, I’d be surprised if a project owner or homeowner goes to Facebook prior to Google when researching a GC, subcontractors, material suppliers, etc.   (my rose-colored glasses aren’t thick enough to think that they won’t go to their existing networks of humans prior to searching the internet…but I digress)

The other upside I see, is that many companies block employee access to Facebook.  If all your online marketing eggs are in the Facebook basket, how is a project manager, CEO, CFO, or other important decision maker going to find you?  They won’t.  They’ll find your competitor that has a Google business page.  As time goes by, Facebook will still lead the B2C side of things because people follow and support local businesses that promote deals, coupons, special events, etc.  I believe Google will be the differentiator for professional services and big-ticket transactions.

Before writing this post, I reached out to a few friends who are early adopters of new technology (the kind of people who camp out at Apple stores).

A few comments that are relevant to this post:

–Our company had us all get Gmail email address so we can utilize the Gchat feature for interoffice dialogue.

–We already do teleconferencing, and the Hangout feature’s ability to have 10 people/cameras on a call will save us $$ on IT

–Facebook is blocked at my work, Google is not

–G+ is a fresh start.  It’s much easier to segment my contacts than it is on Facebook

This platform is brand new.  Google has a track record of failed launches (google buzz, google wave), but has had recent success with Google Music and the initial reaction to Google+ has been positive.  Like any new technology, it will have detractors and people who refuse to spend the time to understand it.  In the long run, I think this would be worth betting on.  Especially if you are a Business to Business company.

If you’ve got any thoughts one way or another, I’d love to have a conversation with you about it.  Please post in the comments below or look me up on Google +

It’s coming folks!  The weatherman is calling for temperatures in the upper 90′s-low 100′s to end the week here in Connecticut, and if you’re stuck working outside, here’s a few suggestions to stay safe:

Drink Plenty of Fluids

During hot weather you will need to increase your fluid intake, regardless of your activity level. Don’t wait until you’re thirsty to drink. During heavy exercise in a hot environment, drink two to four glasses (16-32 ounces) of cool fluids each hour.

Warning: If your doctor generally limits the amount of fluid you drink or has you on water pills, ask how much you should drink while the weather is hot.

Don’t drink liquids that contain alcohol, or large amounts of sugar—these actually cause you to lose more body fluid. Also avoid very cold drinks, because they can cause stomach cramps.

Replace Salt and Minerals

Heavy sweating removes salt and minerals from the body. These are necessary for your body and must be replaced. If you must exercise, drink two to four glasses of cool, non-alcoholic fluids each hour. A sports beverage can replace the salt and minerals you lose in sweat. However, if you are on a low-salt diet, talk with your doctor before drinking a sports beverage or taking salt tablets.

Wear Appropriate Clothing and Sunscreen

Wear as little clothing as possible when you are at home. Choose lightweight, light-colored, loose-fitting clothing. Sunburn affects your body’s ability to cool itself and causes a loss of body fluids. It also causes pain and damages the skin. If you must go outdoors, protect yourself from the sun by wearing a wide-brimmed hat (also keeps you cooler) along with sunglasses, and by putting on sunscreen of SPF 15 or higher (the most effective products say “broad spectrum” or “UVA/UVB protection” on their labels) 30 minutes prior to going out. Continue to reapply it according to the package directions.

Schedule Outdoor Activities Carefully

If you must be outdoors, try to limit your outdoor activity to morning and evening hours. Try to rest often in shady areas so that your body’s thermostat will have a chance to recover.

Pace Yourself

If you are not accustomed to working or exercising in a hot environment, start slowly and pick up the pace gradually. If exertion in the heat makes your heart pound and leaves you gasping for breath, STOP all activity. Get into a cool area or at least into the shade, and rest, especially if you become lightheaded, confused, weak, or faint.

Stay Cool Indoors

Stay indoors and, if at all possible, stay in an air-conditioned place. If your home does not have air conditioning, go to the shopping mall or public library—even a few hours spent in air conditioning can help your body stay cooler when you go back into the heat. Call your local health department to see if there are any heat-relief shelters in your area. Electric fans may provide comfort, but when the temperature is in the high 90s, fans will not prevent heat-related illness. Taking a cool shower or bath or moving to an air-conditioned place is a much better way to cool off. Use your stove and oven less to maintain a cooler temperature in your home.

Use a Buddy System

When working in the heat, monitor the condition of your co-workers and have someone do the same for you. Heat-induced illness can cause a person to become confused or lose consciousness. If you are 65 years of age or older, have a friend or relative call to check on you twice a day during a heat wave. If you know someone in this age group, check on them at least twice a day.

Monitor Those at High Risk

Although anyone at any time can suffer from heat-related illness, some people are at greater risk than others.

• Infants and young children are sensitive to the effects of high temperatures and rely on others to regulate their environments and provide adequate liquids.
• People 65 years of age or older may not compensate for heat stress efficiently and are less likely to sense and respond to change in temperature.
• People who are overweight may be prone to heat sickness because of their tendency to retain more body heat.
• People who overexert during work or exercise may become dehydrated and susceptible to heat sickness.
• People who are physically ill, especially with heart disease or high blood pressure, or who take certain medications, such as for depression, insomnia, or poor circulation, may be affected by extreme heat.

Visit adults at risk at least twice a day and closely watch them for signs of heat exhaustion or heat stroke. Infants and young children, of course, need much more frequent watching.

Adjust to the Environment

Be aware that any sudden change in temperature, such as an early summer heat wave, will be stressful to your body. You will have a greater tolerance for heat if you limit your physical activity until you become accustomed to the heat. If you travel to a hotter climate, allow several days to become acclimated before attempting any vigorous exercise, and work up to it gradually.  Info from http://www.bt.cdc.gov/disasters/extremeheat/heat_guide.asp

An acquaintance sent me a link to some humerous, and somewhat gruesome injury prevention posters from Russia.

Original post from www.buzzfeed.com

If anyone reading this speaks Russian, please post what the text on the posters says.

A little more hard hitting than the “carol forgot to wear her safety glasses, and now she doesn’t need them” posters.

Speaking of safety posters, don’t forget to post those OSHA 300A logs in your office and at any worksites from Feb 1 to April 1.  If you need guidance on how or why you need to do this, the Construction Risk Blog has the answers.

Wrote a couple new posts on the blog at Construction Risk Advisors.com  about what GCs and Subs can do to strengthen their contracts and improve their additional insured language.

General Contractors

http://www.constructionriskadvisors.com/construction-risk-blog/bid/57637/Additional-Insured-Issues-for-Connecticut-General-Contractors

Subcontractors

http://www.constructionriskadvisors.com/construction-risk-blog/bid/57571/Additional-Insured-Tips-for-Connecticut-Subcontractors

Happy Holidays!

Prior to my life in the insurance business, I worked on several chairlifts around Colorado.  Around this time every year, I get a little wistful that I’m not going to be spending my winter outdoors.  Since this is going to be the first “cold” weekend in CT, here’s some pictures of some new construction being done at The Canyons, in Park City, Utah.  In a way it embodies both construction and skiing…opposite sides of the spectrum for my hobbies and career paths.

In two days, it will be the 9th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, The Pentagon, and Flight 93.  Here’s some pictures that depict the progress we have made in rebuilding.  Please send your thoughts and prayers to those who lost their lives and their family members that survive them.

If you want to leave a comment, please keep it positive.  Any comments relating to politics, conspiracy theories, or mosques will be deleted.

http://radioviceonline.com

http://www.nysun.com

http://t2.gstatic.com

http://www.nydailynews

http://theramblingfool.com/Ground%20Zero%20construction.jpg

http://radioviceonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ground-zero-winter-2010.jpg

Never Forget.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/20070223wtc.jpg

http://ootp.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/ground-zero-salute_100526-n-5878l-074a.png?w=600&h=400

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:oQxZlA_FepWMyM:http://votestrike.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/twintowers.6524227_std.jpg&t=1

A little Monday self promotion…spent the last two years handling the social media responsibilities at my company.  By no means a full-time job, but still a project that gets at least a few hours devoted to it every week.  Anyways, just had my first article published in a national insurance publication, the PIA 2010 National Agency Marketing Guide.  The PIA (Professional Insurance Agents) is an industry group that provides information and marketing for insurance agents and brokers who work locally, specifically “Main Street USA”.  Because of this small business focus, social media is becoming more and more important as more and more people are accepting and embracing it not only as a communication tool, but also as a way to market and grow their businesses.  Thanks for reading.

Unfortunately, the photo uploader didn’t work as well as planned, so here’s the link to the .pdf

Your clients are calling me. I too, work for an insurance broker.  If you’re reading this you might also.  Recently, a new strategy has emerged for retaining business that seems to work well for the broker, but irks the buyer.  That strategy is locking out every available market five or six months prior to renewal.  Sure, this strategy works well for the people on the selling side to prevent competition from quoting an account, but how is it going to work out for you in 2011?  In the last 3 weeks, I’ve met with several of “your” clients to discuss their construction insurance and risk management programs.  If the meeting went well, we would discuss marketing the account when their renewal got closer.  However, several of these accounts had already been heavily marketed (6-7 markets by the incumbent broker) many months prior to said renewal.  Not sure if the brokers and agents responsible for this extremely are aware that this tactic does not sit well with their clients.  Just yesterday, I got a phone call from a prospect that I haven’t spoken with in over a year and he offered me every market except the incumbent.  Because these types of calls don’t happen very often, I inquired why he wanted to go this route, and he responded very matter of factly that “he is sick of his agent blocking every market so far in advance that no one else has an opportunity to improve his insurance situation”.  At this point, I could have been greedy and asked for every market we represent, but didn’t.  Being a specialty contractor, there are only so many markets that understand and offer a product for the type of work his company performs.  I have a feeling that a lot of agents send in half assed submissions to every carrier just so they can make their client feel that they went above and beyond, when in reality half of the carriers they supposedly sent submissions to flat out denied it just because of the type of work the insured does.  But that isn’t the message portrayed by the agent at proposal time.  They will try to spin their marketing efforts into a story about how much work went into marketing the account solely based on how many carriers they approached.  This approach works right now because contractors have too much to deal with just bidding work that they don’t have time to send rescinding BORs to carriers.

Here’s how we(my brokerage) differ.  We don’t market every account we have to every carrier we represent every year.  Instead, we spend our time making our clients safer and more profitable.  Instead of leaving the fate of our client’s insurance pricing in the hands of our carriers, we work PROACTIVELY to prevent and minimize claims and market the accounts strategically to carriers that have experience with and have designed special programs for contractors that address the risks specific to their industry or trade.  Two reasons why we do this:

1. If the underwriter is experienced in construction, he or she can price the account more accurately, preventing large price swings year to year.

2. If an underwriter sees the same account every year and never has a realistic chance of winning the business, they become less and less interested in spending time reviewing the account(assuming they don’t flat out deny quoting it because of all their time the agent has wasted in the past)

If you’re an agent using the market saturation technique, it has probably worked for a few years now and will work for most of your fall and winter renewals.  However, I’m not calling your clients begging to quote.  YOUR clients are calling me because they don’t like how you’re handling the marketing of their account.

If you want to learn more about our strategies for making contractors more profitable, check out our website at Construction Risk Advisors.com

A few months ago, before the iPad came out, I wrote a post about some potential applications that contractors could use it for.  It wasn’t a very strong post, but after actually handling one, it would be way too distracting for anyone to use at a jobsite, office, or anywhere else where productivity is needed.  I initially suggested we get the sales team at my company them to do our presentations with instead of using laptops, but realistically, if someone ( a prospective client) had never handled or used one, it would be very hard to pay any attention to a powerpoint when instead you would be playing with an iPad.  Down the line when people are much more accustomed to fancy, touchscreen technology, it might be a useful sales tool or a way to expedite some processes on construction job sites, but for now, in my humble opinion, it is a distraction.  Anyways…

I was just reading an article in Constructech Magazine about smartphone technology for contractors.  Nothing groundbreaking.  But good to see a few app developers working on an underutilized section of the marketplace.  However, not extremely excited about a magazine article that focuses on the ‘ruler’ app for smartphones.  It was featured in the initial TV ad for the iPhone almost 4 years ago, and in using it at home to hang pictures, isn’t all that impressive.  Basically, if I paid you to build a building for me, I’d hope you would use more advanced tools.  As smartphones and their applications become more advanced, I don’t doubt there will be an upswing in construction technology, but not holding my breath at the moment.  Sorry to be critical, if I could think of a better app idea for contractors, I’d be doing that instead of blogging/whining.

To sympathize with the app developers, I wouldn’t want to be blamed for phones or iPads that get broken because of jobsite use, or for being a distraction that leads to a drop in quality or productivity on a construction site.  Fingers crossed that a laser level enabled iPhone is available on verizon soon.