Company: ABC
Phone: 555-555-5555
Email: [email protected]
Contact Name: Dan Stan
Website: https://surveyjobs.me
Job Type: full-time
Must be on time
Experience Required: 8 years
Benefits: Good benefits
Salary: $125,000
Address: 5738 Milmar Drive N
Country: US
City: Jacksonville
State: FL
Zip: 32207
Facebook May Be a Ticking Time Bomb for Land Surveyors
With everything that is happening with the big tech giants this week, a lot of people are thinking about the sustainability of platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. Quite a few that I have talked with are concerned not only with the future of their own personal data but also the questionable practices being used to monetize each and every aspect of our lives. I just wanted to share with you just one conversation that I had today with a student surveyor in the community.
Questions from a Young Surveyor:
"I only recently made a FB profile so that I could learn best practices in Surveying. Yesterday was horrible for me only because I could not access my notes inside FB, gathered from experiences shared by older surveyors. This has me wondering...Why do surveyors put all of their knowledgebase on Facebook inside closed groups, where it is impossible to search for anything specific and disappears everyday? In fact, they all seem to be creating competing groups, which, in my opinion is ridiculous. Isn't this further harming the profession?"
Anyone paying attention has to admit, she has a valid point. It is no secret that the surveying profession is having a tough time attracting and supporting new talent, difficulty maintaining awareness in the public eye and an even more difficultly in educating, mentoring and training new surveyors. Would it not be more beneficial in the long run to have all of our collective surveyor knowledge archived and accessible inside a site that Surveyors can totally control, like Land Surveyors United Community, where it can be organized and owned by land land surveyors, rather than Zuck? Even more importantly, where support isn't monetized? Look around you....there are no advertisements or spammers on LSU and your expertise can be not only share exclusively with surveyors, you can fully control your own groups too! This is what LSU was built for....to empower surveyors. We have low overhead and as a grassroots community, we run on member donations and traffic to our jobs board. It is as simple as that. Facebook, in many ways, has just become the print industry all over again for surveyors....privatizing the collective knowledge base. Indeed, Facebook was built for that, but LSU was built for you, the surveyor!
Just 2 years ago, there were only 9 Land Surveying related groups on Facebook. Today, there are 104 and counting. Here is a collection for you to sift though if you are interested...i gathered them all in one place for you. Why is this important? To illustrate my point that we are not working together. Every group is competing for attention from the same users, further splintering the divide.
Please don't take me the wrong way... I love the FB groups and for those who know the "square root of Arkansas" :) My favorite group The Field Crew isn't even a group that I created. You can learn a lot from the older, wiser surveyors in the mix. However, the ability to quickly spit replies and share a point of interest does not only exist on FB, yet they have made it so simple and convenient that many of us never stop to think how important the knowledge is for those who never get a chance to see the post...then tomorrow it fades into the abyss. There are a LOT of brilliant surveyors on FB, out of convenience, but there are also many attempting to build and grow group after group, essentially giving facebook all of the knowledge needed by the next generation (that doesn't use Facebook). We are killing each other while trying to compete for numbers. It shouldn't be this way. We should all be trying to UNITE surveyors in one place, so that we can have the most impact on the public and the next generation surveyor. Even if group admins would periodically archive and download the information inside groups and then reupload it to LSU into hubs, it would be far more useful to the next generation than leaving it locked up inside Zucks groups. Put it this way... LSU has one of the largest private facebook groups for surveyors on the platform. But even with over 38k surveyors, I stopped pushing the group 2 years ago because I saw the writing on the wall...literally.
Land Surveying knowledge should belong to surveyors, not Zuckerburg. There are now close to 20k surveyors on LSU but how often do you ask questions or share experience there rather than here? How often do you share a photo here inside the community, rather than on Facebook where it only gets eyeballs for a single day? What do we need to do to make this happen? Should we plaster the site with ads and sell your data to get you interested? That is of course a rhetorical question because I do not make any money off of this site and I will never sell your data. But I ask you this....If the community were to have a full blown mobile app, would you contribute more? I will build that for you if so.
My point is this.... Why not take advantage of the experience and expertise of the surveyors inside the community, where you can easily see the credentials of the other surveyors you communicate with? You can control the groups (hubs)the same way and with a lot more capabilities...all you have to do is ask and you can control your own hub. There are hub groups inside this community for every location on earth, all operating in unison. When associations and organizations are having a hard time getting people to their events, I say stop paying sub-par web designers to build stupid wix sites which never get found by search engines until years after the event has passed. Instead, simply be more active in your local hub and share your important announcement and events where they not only can be found, but also where you can send a notification to surveyors in any location. There is no reason to re-invent the wheel everytime you need to get important information out. The hard work of creating the platform has already been done for you. The only thing left for you to do is use it.
I know this may seem like a plug coming from me but I didn't build Land Surveyors United to be the king or controller of anything. I don't make money from the community and I will never sell your information. I built this community so that you, the land surveyor can easily find and post jobs, find equipment, share stories, support one another, organize locally, attract new customers for your business, train new surveyors and celebrate the retired surveyors of the world, who hold all of the knowledge needed if we are to ever fix the problems that exist, due to decades of not being connected and organized. Yet, this type of thing may never be fully appreciated because surveyors have seemingly become too comfortable with being taken advantage of by the current ways of doing things on the internet. This shouldn't be the case.
It appears as though the situation has quietly gotten so bad that surveyors have become disoriented when someone actually goes out of their way for over a decade to build a solution to their problems, if it isn't funded by advertisements. Why haven't the big print magazines and manufacturers mentioned this community in all of this time? Because I do not buy ads on their sites and I will not allow their advertisements dominate the sidebars of our community. I simply do not feel like monetizing the support issues and troubles of land surveyors is an ethical way to do business.
So again, this young surveyor I spoke to today has a valid point. Business as usual is no longer sustainable, considering the problems that business as usual has caused the surveying profession as a whole. Every organization seems content with being an island in itself, getting nowhere fast. New surveyors feel like a lonely island too. They don't even know what to do, many times, until they see how negatively more experienced surveyors react to certain things shared on Facebook, at times bringing out the worst in all of us.
Some surveyors in the field appear to believe that there has never been a better time to be a surveyor. But for surveying companies, the challenges are just beginning. The public has never before been as confused about the role of a surveyor as they are today. They are confused about having to wait 14 weeks for a survey and usually wait until the last minute to have a survey performed, as a necessary evil. Most of the time when my phone rings, it is someone trying to fix a problem caused by an inexperienced surveyor. The vast amount of fraud that circulates creates trust issues for which anyone rarely recieves closure. The splintered state of communication between surveyors and the public display of character bashing and nonprofessional disagreements only add fuel to the fire of thier confusion. Couple that with the unfortunate popular notion that any person with a GPS phone can locate anything and we have a recipe for disaster which must be mitigated. This situation will never be remedied and will only get worse if the surveyors of the world rely on Facebook to solve the problem. It will never happen because facebook does not have your best interest or future in mind when they make their decisions..
For 15 years, even before Facebook, Land Surveyors United has had a mission which can be found in the name. The importance of being able to find what you need to improve your surveying career should not be buried inside FB, monetized by the big corporations and blocked off inside now hundreds of small competing groups, all trying to game an algorithm for your attention. This is of course, my humble opinion. However, over the years I have met countless others who also read the writing on the walls -pun intended.
She concluded: "Too many surveyors are stuck in the past. It just seems lazy for everyone, knowing the challenges faced by the profession, to put their faith in FB to usher in a new generation. FB is great for sharing photos, but I need a mentor. My generation doesn't even use facebook...it's for old people. Let's bring everyone together and face these challenges as a community. I believe the way surveyors share all of thier hard earned insight and experience on FB to be total collective self sabotage, in the highest form. I will be sharing what I learn on LSU with other surveyors because it feels horrible knowing that FB and other sites with heavy advertising are making money off my support needs."
your thoughts...
Almost 6 months ago, I had a vision. That vision was to devise a way to extend the same experience that my Dad (who sold and supported Land Surveying Equipment) had when we first began building Land Surveyors United. Over the course of about 9 months he went from a struggling local survey supply company to a global company serving land surveyors around the world during the worst period of economic recession 2007-2008. That experience changed everything for him and now that same experience of building a community around your Products and Services is now available to Vendors inside the community. We've removed all of the ads and distractions from the site in order to place focus on our Marketplace Hubs. Now that Dad has moved on to that big jobsite in the sky, I want to help you build the same type of experience...he would want that.
Building a following takes just minutes per week. Don't worry, it certainly won't take you 14 years to build your following because thousands of land surveyors have already been UNITED inside the community- so all you need to do is tap into that target audience. In fact, most of our Marketplace Hubs already have at least 30 or more followers even though they are only a couple of months old. However, building a following doesn't happen automatically. Although most of the hard work has already been done for you (ie. cultivating a community of close to 17,000 land surveyors), it is up to you to get the followers to your hub - with a little help from us of course. You can gain followers every week by simply posting regular updates to your Hub's Forum, sharing photos and videos of your operation and products and reaching out to your followers inside the community. You should run your Marketplace Hub just like your business, welcoming new members when they join your hub because they are most likely your new potential customers. The Hub Developers Hub has many tips and tricks for ways to use your hub to get the attention your products deserve.
For Vendors Who Already Have a Marketplace Hub
There are several Marketplace Hubs with a lot of followers, yet the Vendors are not regularly posting updates. In fact, I see quite a few that have questions and comments from members that have never been replied to. If you are the vendor in charge of these hubs, you are missing out on potentially a lot of money as well as followers.
Here are a few ways that you can make your Marketplace Hub take off:
- Post a link to your Hub from Your Website (Reciprocal Linking will get you authoritative traffic)
- Treat your hub like a Support Forum for your company and draw in new customers by supporting the products and services you sell
- Post at least one special deal for LSU members inside your forum every week (this attracts new followers to your hub)
- When you post a link to your hub, add =join to the end of the URL (example: https://landsurveyorsunited.com/hubs/hubs=join )
- Share photos of your products in action or demonstrate a service you provide in a video
- Post photos of events or conferences that you attend where your products are on showcase
- Use the description area for photos and videos that you upload to embed payment buttons and embed documentation and or stories about your products.
- Ask questions to your followers and see what they are interested in seeing more of
- Keep an eye on your "Members" page inside your hub. Connect with those who follow you.
- Post Manuals and Guides for how to use the products that you sell and why they are important
- Add an events page to your Hub and schedule some live streams or webinars for Members to attend
- You can also automate post to your Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin through your Hub by using RSSGround to send a post to other profiles everytime you post to your Forum, Photos, Videos, Events, etc.
- Craft a top notch About Us page for your Hub and tell your followers about your company history and your committment to supporting what you sell to surveyors.
- Add a Podcast page to your hub and host a weekly podcast interviewing your customers
- Remember this: when you post, you are not only addressing those surveyors who are already following your Hub, you are also talking to potential customers who will see your post and follow your hub. Posts that offer something special for Land Surveyors United members will always be cross- promoted by us to our Facebook Page (55k followers), our Twitter and our Linkedin Groups.
- Create a Flow of information that never stops by posting to your hub often. You will organically attract new followers over time.
For Vendors Who Want a Marketplace Hub
Forget banner ads! How about a dynamic living Hub community where you can sell your products and services for a fraction of the cost of what you would pay for expensive banner ads. In fact, you won't even be charged until your hub begins to see traction and customers!
In other words, we are officially reversing the traditional Banner Ad Model. If you are tired of throwing your money away on banner ads or print advertising hoping for clicks or calls, this is the solution for you. We'll set up your Hub, brand it according to your website or preferences and import your social media profiles for you. All you need to do is be ready to learn something new, willing to answer questions about your products from customers and followers and share new deals and specials with the community a few times per month. Marketplace Hubs can also have a dedicated mobile app built for helping you quickly post to your Hub while making shopping on the go much simpler for land surveyors in the field. Contact Justin with any questions you might have.
Visit Vendor Marketplace Presentation
Request a Vendor Hub to be set up for your company
Marketplace Hubs Now Have Dedicated Apps
We have now made it easier than ever to quickly add content to your Marketplace hub by developing individually branded Mobile Apps for your hubs. Your app will make it super simple to add posts, upload photos and videos to the Hub from anywhere, on the Fly!
To get your Marketplace Hub App all you need to do is 2 things:
1) Send us your request for your Hub to be set up and we will build both the Hub and the App for you.
2) Schedule a short video call with the Land Surveyors United team about all of the cool things you can do with your hub!
We are excited to add your company to our Marketplace and look forward to hearing from you! Once your Vendor hub is set up we'll send you an email to follow the Hub. We'll then make you admin of the hub and you'll be able to completely control the backend and all of the pages inside the hub. Pretty cool huh!
Reach out.. contact me with any questions!
