How HVAC and LEED Professionals Use Twitter

In the span of just a few short years, social media services such as Twitter have established themselves as vital tools in the business world. Twitter is a service for posting 140-character posts about anything and everything: links, thoughts, jokes, advice, whatever. But the use of Twitter for professional purposes by people from all industries and sectors has grown by leaps and bounds. So we thought it would be valuable and interesting to take a look at how HVAC and LEED professionals make use of  Twitter, which enables them to stay in constant, real-time contact with their clients and industry peers.

One of the most common uses for Twitter among this crowd is to share links to items of interest in the media.  This could be things focused specifically on HVAC, LEED, green building, etc., as well as things having to do with the wider area of sustainability and society in general. Goodway Technologies (@GoodwayMachines), for example, tweets on building maintenance issues, industry-related events, energy-efficient cleaning practices and directs followers to their informative site and blog, Just Venting.

Green building specialist and sustainability strategist Elaine Hsieh (@elaineishere), whose various titles and duties include serving as Pacific Regional Council Chair at the U.S. Green Building Council and CSC Rep & LEED Steering Committee liaison at the USGBC Chapter Steering Committee, uses Twitter to network directly with her peers and colleagues by tweeting responses to their posts. She also tweets frequently about trending topics in the green building world, and provides her followers — over 4500 of them — with real-time updates about relevant industry events, such as the recent (November 16) Greenbuild International Forum held in Chicago by the World Green Building Council.

In addition to companies and individuals, quite a few HVAC- and LEED-oriented groups, magazines and organizations make use of Twitter. These include:

• HVAC Directory (@hvac_blog), whose content consists of links to updates (jobs, blog posts, contractor info) at the web’s Air Conditioning HVAC Directory and HVAC Blog;
• The ACHR NEWS (@achrnews) is a weekly American magazine dedicated the Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration industry.
• Maintenance Solutions (@Maintenance_Mag) is a magazine that focuses on providing maintenance and professional engineers with strategies for managing facilities effectively and cost-efficiently by tweeting about processes, procedures, testing, data collection/analysis and other important aspects of building management;
• Get HVAC Jobs (@GetHVACJobs) posts HVAC-related jobs in real-time; and
• Existing Buildings Committee (@LEEDEBOM)at the Los Angeles Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council (850 followers), which bills itself as “A Voice for LEED Existing Buildings and Operations”.

People who are interested in Twitter’s HVAC and LEED offerings should also be sure to check out the various topics that have been created using Twitter’s hashtag function. Searching for #hvac, #leed, #greenbuild, #usgbc,  and #energy will bring up tweets and conversations tagged with these topics.

If you’re interested in learning more about this subject, the best way to find people and topics worth following on Twitter is to visit some of the twitter accounts listed here. You can see who they’re responding to, what they’re talking about, who they’re following and who’s following them. There’s a veritable galaxy of HVAC and LEED folks making solid and valuable use of Twitter and all indications are that this will only intensify in the foreseeable future.

Matt Cardin
Goodway Blogging Team