Emily Lamb was given some odd looks when she first tentatively asked her construction firm colleagues – most in their 50s – about joining Facebook.

These days, the same estimators and surveyors jump at the chance of sharing a post on LinkedIn or Twitter, having been converted by the marketing manager at RAP Interiors in Maidstone.

“It’s completely different from when I first started,” said Miss Lamb, 26, who looks after all the social media and online work at the office design business, which employs 20 people.

“They can’t wait to share things now because they get excited when I tell them their post has been seen by 150 people.”

Construction is not an obvious sector to use social media but director Julie Anderson swears by its advantages.

She hired Miss Lamb in favour of several marketing experts because of her enthusiasm for Facebook and Twitter.

“If one job had to go here it wouldn’t be that one,” said Mrs Anderson, whose husband Rick founded the firm in 1988.

“If it was between an estimator and her, the estimator would have to go. You can’t stop doing these things.”

While many peers in construction scoff at Facebook and Twitter, Mrs Anderson believes her company was able to take on 11 new staff last year and win dozens of contracts because of relationships built over time by networking.

Since hiring Miss Lamb, the company’s Twitter followers have grown from 200 to more than 4,500 in two years.

“You have got to be shouting out there all the time but you can’t just say ‘we do great refurbishments,’” said Mrs Anderson.

“You have got to share all the latest products, information and designs. That is why it is a full-time job.”

Saga, the over-50s holiday and insurance company, plunged headfirst into social media three years ago when they hired David Knockton as social media manager.

Today, the Folkestone-based company interacts with more than 150,000 users on Facebook, 25,000 followers on Twitter, 100,000 followers on Google + and many thousands more on various other channels like Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Mr Knockton said: “When I started, the good news was no one was saying bad things about Saga on social media but the bad news was no one was saying anything about us.

“Many businesses say ‘how much money am I going to make from it?’ but they won’t make money from it straight away. Social media is about building relationships...” - Zoe Cairns, social media expert

"We had to start creating those conversations and did that by creating newsworthy articles and interesting comments on latest research that we knew people were talking about on social media, which was relevant to our over-50s audience.”

Like the construction sector, the over-50s market doesn’t immediately strike as the most appropriate group to interact with via social media, a myth Mr Knockton is quick to dispell.

He said: “The over-50s are the fastest-growing demographic on Facebook.

“They are using social media to share family pictures and see what their grandchildren are getting up to.”

Zoe Cairns, an international social media speaker, said companies can often be too narrow-minded about what they can get out of social media.

She said: “Many businesses say ‘how much money am I going to make from it?’ but they won’t make money from it straight away. Social media is about building relationships.”

Miss Cairns, who runs ZC Social Media in Strood, has 24,000 followers on Twitter and has spoken at events around the world, including the KM Group’s online conference Digital in Kent, the latest of which took place this month.

She launched her own event GetSocialKent at the Mercure, Maidstone, in February to deal with popular mistakes made by companies on social media.

She said: “Small businesses need to be doing stuff which bears results so it is no good going on there just because everyone else is. “You need to plan what you want to achieve.

“Companies often don’t have a strategy in place. They start posting on Facebook and Twitter and don’t know what their goals are.

“A strategy identifies what you want to achieve and what platforms you should be using to reach customers. It also helps you measure what you are achieving.”