We are continuing our review of nominations for the 2014 Best Construction Blog competition.
While many candidates self-nominate for the 2014 Best Construction Blog competition?(this is quite okay within the competition’s rules), a third-party suggested that Michael Stone’s Markup and Profit blog is worthy of winning the competition. I agree.
Stone focuses on depth and quality in his posts, reflecting his fearless advocacy for the residential contractor who often struggles to adapt trade skills to business success. Stone’s consultancy provides practical insights based on real-life experience — he has worked in the trades. His books on contractor business management and sales and marketing are worthy of any residential contractor’s library.
Recent posts have focused on one of his biggest pet peeves — online leads and review services that skim off money from contractors, while encouraging low-ball consumer behaviours. ?His response: Show contractors the better way, which emphasises self-responsibility — that is, contractors should drive their own leads through their own website SEO and social media initiatives, rather than relying on commercial organizations to do that work for them. Stone has alliances with specialists for website management and SEO (Brian Javeline) and marketing (Michael Jeffries). Indeed, here the word-of-mouth recommendation for these specialists is justified, because they truly know their stuff. See, for example, Javeline’s suggestions video posted on one of Stone’s recent blog postings.
Stone certainly will speak his mind. You will find this posting, Where do you get your leads? where he expresses his opinions about porch.com to be enlightening, though I’m sure Porch.com’s public relations department would rather it not be published.
You can nominate blogs for the competition through January 31 at this form. ?Voting for the 2014 Best Construction Blog commences Feb. 1 and continues through March 31.
