Yesterday, I had conversations with several competitors in the Best Construction Blog competition as we prepare for the next issue of the Design and Construction Report. I?ll frame these observations into the article for which I will write the first draft tomorrow. This morning, however, lets look at some consistent points.
- The successful bloggers report that they have discovered useful business from their endeavors, but few have quantified it with specific sales/lead data.
- Blogging, they say, requires some time and effort, generally between two and 10 hours a week depending on the subject, frequency, and approach the bloggers take. Most write their own material but one uses a freelancer (who also accepted the interview call).
- The biggest measurable indicator of ?success? for the blogging is increased website traffic. There are other soft indicators like client engagement, better relationships, ?humanizing? the business, and so on, but these move down the line (for the people I interviewed) into areas that are felt rather than specifically measured.
- One blogger (I will discuss this story later) reported significant and immediately measurable results from the Best Blog Competition. I expect the others will see significant advantages from the publicity in the Design and Construction Report.
These stories, to some extent, echo my own experience with Blogging. As I noted earlier, I doubt that people will engage our services for multi-million dollar construction projects or sophisticated home renovations purely and immediately because they read our blogs, or for that matter, any single piece of marketing material or approach. They will of course check word-of-mouth and previous client references and here I am reassured that blogging makes sense because at least a few of the successful bloggers said one of the main values of the blog is to keep in touch with their previous clients. The blog gives them a reason to send emails and connect ? but not to sell.
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