5 More Reasons Why Construction Marketers Should Be Blogging

We are always flogging the virtues of building credibility online to construction markers and the product manufacturers they work for. We discussed 5 reasons why construction companies should be blogging a while back now and that advice is still 100% relevant and appropriate today.

To give a brief overview, those 5 massively important reasons included…

1. To Show your Technical Expertise
2. To Prove Industry Leadership
3. To Voice Opinions on Recent or Upcoming Legislations and Regulations Changes
4. To Provide Answers to Common Questions
5. To Support the Reach and Measurement of your Marketing Campaigns

Digital marketing constantly moves on but these points are just as crucial now to achieving your business goals as they ever were.

This post aims to provide you with even more ammunition to take to the purse holders as to why your construction business should be blogging.

Proving your technical expertise and industry knowledge by being helpful and relevant is massively important, now more than ever.

1. Blogging Provides Others With Excellent Link building Opportunities [links back to your website content]

It’s our heart-felt belief that topical, well researched, useful content, promoted in the right way to the right audience will get shared.

Sharing [and the ability to be shared] is essential if your businesses content is to compete and thrive online.

The more external sources share links to your blog content, the more likely it is their audience will come into contact with your brand and possibly be persuaded to share your blog posts, across their own corporate and personal social media profiles, and in their own writing.

Make no mistake, social sharing and the subsequent social proof is good for your potential to rank well in search engines – but don’t assume that because a piece of content on social platforms gets lots of attention that it will automatically rank well – the point is that social platforms are great at driving ‘targeted’ visitors back to your website and that’s the key to success.

Search engines such as Google also use link building [What is link building and how can I build more links to my website?] to determine how well a page should rank in their results; the more content you provide and the more links these generate, the more likely it is that Google will see your website as sufficient quality to rank well for relevant keywords.

Generating external links by producing good quality blog content focused on your audience will gradually establish your business as an authority within your niche.

2. Blogging Provides an Opportunity for Internal link building [between relevant pages of your website]

Surprisingly, internal linking is often ignored and overlooked as an aspect of on page SEO.

However, in order to increase blog usability, internal links on a blog post allow users to directly access other related pages. It will ensure that you optimise your user’s journey by navigating them towards important call-to-actions, such as downloading a whitepaper, viewing a product page or requesting a CPD.

Similarly to external linking, creating blog content with internal links will automatically raise the credibility and usability of your site [according to Moz.com] and it’ll also help search engine spiders crawl your site.

See below how Glazing Vision have incorporated internal links within their blog post ‘What is BS EN 12101’, and the user journey this creates…

Visitors researching the European standard related to smoke and heat exhaust systems arrive at Glazing Vision’s blog post.

…from the Glazing Vision blog

Seeing as those searching for ‘BS EN 12101’ are most likely to be interested in smoke ventilation rooflights, Glazing Vision have linked this post through to another, which discusses the benefits of using rooflights for smoke ventilation. By doing this, they are guiding the user to another relatable post which demonstrates Glazing Vision’s expertise within their field.

…from the Glazing Vision blog

This post then links directly to Glazing Vision’s ‘xVent’ product page as well as various other related products that might be relevant to the visitor.

…from the Glazing Vision Blog

Not only does internal linking increase your site’s usability, but it also ensures that your blog content generates business goals by turning potential prospects into leads, as we discuss in this post How to Measure the Value of Blog Content for Construction Marketers.

3. Blogging Helps Your Business Stand Out on Social Media Platforms

All this talk about ‘linking’ leads nicely onto our next point…

Search engines have started to rely more than ever on users of social channels sharing reliable content.

Using trusted sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ to post content is a critical way to show your community and Google itself, that the links generated from your blog posts are legitimate.

For many social media users the point of sharing content on social platforms is not only about proving how well-connected they are but also to show how current and knowledgeable they are. People like sharing stuff that makes them look good and feel relevant in some way.  

Help those who influence key audiences that you target and show them you are the market leaders in your field by sharing relevant and interesting blog content designed to inform, educate, inspire and even amuse your target audience.

Seeing as nearly 2.1 billion people now have social media accounts, there is no doubt that part of your specifier and contractor audience will be browsing their news feed awaiting your technical expertise and guidance.

In the example below, PIR Insulation specialists Celotex have shared a recent blog post to their Twitter followers, which includes an open question and image relating to the blog post itself; both of these tactics (a compelling ‘targeted’ headline paired with a good product image) increase the chances of their message being noticed.

@Celotex on Twitter

The more targeted a following you create, the more relevant blog content you share, and the more you share that content over social media, the more it is likely to get noticed and possibly shared by the right people.

The video below is a WhiteBoard Friday by Rand Fishkin of Moz.com. In it Rand is quite clear content marketing needs persistence, consistency and hard work. And that we should not expect fast and miraculous results:

Remember the ‘Don’t make me think’ philosophy for all web interactions; it is always possible to help the process further. To ensure that your blog content can be shared by others, you should implement simple ‘share’ buttons throughout your content and at the very least at the end of your blog articles.

These icons are simple prompts to enable and guide your visitors directly to the main social sharing sites.

Example of Social Share buttons on the Pauley Creative blog

As well as this, you could consider providing a positive ‘Call-to-Action’ message that further encourages users to share and link to your blog content.

These messages could be simple and clear, for example:

‘Please tweet if you found this post helpful’

‘Click on the buttons below to share this with your followers’

Remember that the objective here is not always to generate instant leads; your blog content should be focused on two outcomes;

1. Positioning your company and converting those unaware of your brand or products
2. Providing further resource to your current customer base to help them specify your products again and again.

4. Blogging Allows you to Network with People

Blogging, and the interaction created when commenting is allowed on company posts, encourages and lends itself to building relationships.

Creating and sharing blog content is a fantastic way of reaching out to established figures within the same industry. Building such relationships will begin to prove that your business is highly regarded and trusted, which in itself is valuable as it creates genuine advocates for your business – see point 5.

There will always be people that take a particularly special interest in what you have to say. Be clever and direct some of your content towards those who share similar opinions – or in contrast, to those who don’t.

As an example, Balfour Beatty from the blog post ‘Where physical meets digital’ have formed a conversation around digital marketing. Not only are people praising its content, but others with knowledge of the construction industry are joining in, sharing opinions and conversing amongst themselves.

Taken from the Balfour Beatty Blog

Comments on the Balfour Beatty Blog

In another example below, Su Butcher, an expert in social media within the construction industry, has kindly remembered one of our blog posts and shared it to her twitter audience; despite the post being written a while back, this demonstrates how powerful good content can be – great content has a long shelf life and ROI should be considered when calculating cost per lead through this channel.

Example of Social Sharing on Twitter

Our advice is always to follow and share content from other construction marketers, specifiers, architects, contractors and professionals within the industry. And don’t be afraid to join in with conversations surrounding your industry and learn from other individuals and their own content.

These simple interactions will, in time, create a ripple of discussion surrounding your blog content, leading to a wave of competitive advantage ensuring that your voice gets heard above your competitors.

5. A Great Blog Can Be an Effective Hiring tool

Now, its time to think of the internal business advantages that blogging will bring to your business.

Not only is it a great networking tool but a fantastic hiring tool too.

Why should that future employee be on your team?

Blogs are a superb way of reflecting who you are as a business; not only will they share your industry knowledge and expertise, but they will also help to demonstrate brand personality.

Most importantly, blogging is a great way of promoting your company’s goals.

Hubspot’s post ‘Using Inbound Recruiting to Attract, Hire and Retain Top Talent‘, explains the importance of blog posts as part of an effective inbound recruitment process. Similarly, ‘Making Hiring Easier and More Fun‘ by Moz further demonstrates how blogs will help you to appeal to the right people.

In Summary

We hope this post has provided you with a few more reasons on why construction marketers and building products manufacturers should be blogging. All of which will help towards growing your businesses reach and visibility online.

Have we missed out any other great reasons on why blogging is a great digital marketing tactic? We’d love to hear how blogs have helped your business.

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