If you've ever found yourself wondering which social platforms your firm actually needs, why your best project never got picked up by a publication, or what to do first when time is short, you're not alone. These are the questions we hear most often, from professionals at every level and across every corner of the industry. In the latest episode of As Built, we answer all of them.
The honest answer: it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Rather than chasing every platform, we recommend starting with your goals and your bandwidth. Social platforms are mature enough that nearly every generation uses most of them, but context matters. A business-minded professional might be on LinkedIn during the day and on TikTok after hours. More importantly, cross-posting the same content across four or five platforms is not a strategy. Each platform requires content designed specifically for it, and if you're not doing that, your content likely isn't being seen anyway. If you can do one platform really well, do that.
This question often carries an assumption worth examining: that merit alone determines what gets published. It doesn't. With only a handful of major architectural print publications remaining, the odds of placement are already slim. Beyond that, editorial decisions are shaped by photography quality, advertiser relationships, trend forecasting done up to two years in advance, and whether an editor has had a positive experience with your firm before. Getting published is a worthy goal, but it shouldn't be your only visibility strategy, and not getting published doesn't mean your project isn't exceptional.
We call this the "easy button" question, and there isn't one most impactful thing. The most impactful action depends entirely on your goal: new project types, staff recruitment, RFP wins, or general awareness. What matters is understanding what each path requires in time and cost before you commit to it. Marketing works through a series of levers pulled together over time, not a single tactic that solves everything at once.
*Listen to the full episode above to hear the complete conversation.*
