Monthly Update: January 2018

In early January reThink Wood formally became Think Wood.

This change was spurred in part by the proliferation of wood buildings across the U.S. It’s clear that architects, engineers, builders and designers no longer need encouragement to rethink wood, they now Think Wood. Read more here.

By using emergent digital tactics and building strong, long-term relationships with the media, Think Wood helped softwood lumber and the wood industry command a strong share of voice and exposed Think Wood messaging over 617 million times throughout 2017, outperforming competitors by solid margins and despite an increase in negative communications from the concrete industry’s well-funded Build with Strength campaign. Share of voice is calculated as the percentage of content and conversations about an industry compared with competitors, including in key industry publications.

In 2018, Think Wood will continue to elevate wood and proactively promote content that touts the proven benefits of building with wood.

Wood, Naturally continues its cost-effective strategy of paid support for digital content, targeting homeowners where and when they are searching for information in order to make informed building material decisions. Reviewing social and search analytics allows Wood, Naturally to constantly optimize and increase performance and the campaign’s overall return on investment.

Given the strong performance of project videos on social media, Wood, Naturally ran influencer Jeff Devlin’s How To Build A Wood Bar video on Facebook in December. The video outperformed other December content in both views and link clicks, producing over 91,000 views, 16,000 link clicks, and 110,000 engagements.

The campaign is also working to enhance search engine results and marketing. For example, “wood projects” was recently the top-performing search term, generating 23% of clicks, followed by “wainscoting” and “paneling for walls,” indicating consumers’ seasonal shift to interior projects. In part by improving search marketing and through social media posts, Wood, Naturally drew over 40,500 visitors to its website in December, a 75% increase from the previous quarter. The website’s Idea Center, with professionally staged and shot images of wood home projects, was the top-performing page.

AWC offers two complementary guidelines that can help designers and code officials with conventional construction details for one- and two-family dwellings – Wood Construction Data (WCD) 1: Details for Conventional Wood Frame Construction and the Wood Frame Construction Manual (WFCM).

WCD 1 touches on the International Residential Code’s (IRC’s) prescriptive framing provisions and offers a comprehensive summary of rules and guidelines for wood frame construction, including a series of figures that illustrate proper framing techniques. Download WCD 1 for free at: http://awc.org/codes-standards/publications/wcd1.

WFCM offers a more rigorous and prescriptive structural design methodology aligned with the loading requirements of the American Society of Civil Engineers load standard, ASCE 7, which addresses wind, seismic, and snow loads across the U.S. WFCM can be used, for instance, when the IRC requires an engineered design for higher wind speed zones. View WFCM at: http://www.awc.org/codes-standards/publications/wfcm-2018.

The American Wood Council (AWC) spearheaded the launch of a Construction Fire Safety Coalition, intended to bring together construction sector groups interested in improving construction site fire safety. Coalition partners believe that through heightened awareness and sustained job site fire prevention, the frequency and severity of construction fires can be reduced. The coalition will work to make other stakeholders aware of the many great resources available for training, inspection, and best practices. More information is available at: www.constructionfiresafety.org.