Blogging For Construction Marketing – Part One

This is the first blog in a two part series on Blogging for Construction Marketing. Part 1 covers the benefits of blogging, blog platforms, and features. Part 2, considers the ongoing management and implementation of the blog, which focuses primarily on content.

For many construction marketers, blogging has become one of the most important marketing tactics for several reasons. First, blogging reinforces thought leadership and subject matter expertise. You can publish very specialized content that is searchable for years to come.

Second, when implemented properly, blogging can have profound effects on search engine authority in so many ways. Consider that each blogpost builds indexed pages. Also blog titles, page titles, URL structures and image Alt tags all support SEO. The typical blogroll can build reciprocal links, and interlinking within a blogpost can build back-links. Next, social sharing (Retweet, Facebook Like, bookmarking, etc) and linking to social profiles can build search authority. Finally, throw in Header Tags, keyword tags and Google Analytics and you have a powerhouse of search engine optimization (SEO) delivered to you website.

Third, your blog can be the center of your content marketing and social media program. When integrated with other social profiles, sharing tools and counter tools, blogs can effectively “automate” content deployment. How? With Retweet, Facebook Like and now Google+ counters, content is automatically posted in these respective profiles. Even LinkedIn profiles can be integrated for auto-updates.

Fourth, blogs can generate leads in a variety of ways. How? RSS registrations capture email addresses. Links to registration pages for email newsletter sign-ups. Place offers within blogposts that hyperlink to registration pages. Blog comments often contain customer questions or requests. And finally, website analytics can identify traffic from blogs.

Despite all these extraordinary benefits, the daunting task of creating and managing a blog can be a deterrent. Our goal for this and the second blogpost in this series is to demonstrate that blogging can be manageable and extremely effective.

A blog can be defined as a website containing articles, referred to as ‘blog posts’ or ‘blogs’, that highlight subject matter expertise, industry news, or any relevant information to the audience you are targeting. These blogs often times include links and images adding value to the readers experience. Managing a blog can provide your company with an opportunity to further extend your brand and the industry expertise you have to offer, but most importantly can drive your company to rank number one on search engines. The road block that impedes the ability to manage a blog is content development, and we hope to demystify why this is so complicated in ‘Blogging for Construction Marketing – Part 2′. We will outline a process that will allow you to consistently add valuable content to your readers, month after month. As a marketing professional, we all know the first newsletter is easy to produce, but developing interesting, engaging content after that is a struggle. Blogging is no different, and that’s why having a process is so important.

Blogging Platforms

There are several options out there for what platform or software to use for blogging. The two most popular options are Blogger, which is owned by Google, and WordPress. There are several other platforms out there, but these two dominate due to both user-friendliness and features. A plethora of plugins are available on WordPress, some of which can amplify your SEO efforts, making WordPress the leading platform in our eyes. A chart discussing the pro’s and con’s of WordPress vs. Blogger can be found HERE. Keep in mind what you intend your blog to be; If intended to be a community where people come to interact and engage you might consider a platform such as Drupal, which is for building community sites. At the end of the day, WordPress offers a easy to use interface or content management system (CMS), coupled with excellent SEO-enhancing features, including Google Analytics. In addition, WordPress is extremely customizable. Not to mention, the basic version is free!

Still, costs can be incurred for design services, advanced development, hosting integration and ongoing content development. No matter what platform you choose, be ready for the next step of developing content and publishing regularly, the subject of our next blog in this series.

List of 5 Blogging Platforms

1. WordPress
2. Blogger
3. Tumblr
4. Drupal
5. Joomla (Considered a Content Management System, but can be used to create a blog.)

A WordPress Walkthrough

WordPress gives us the ability to customize a blog as much as we want. As long as a skilled developer is on hand, you can build an extremely user friendly experience. The Construction Marketing Advisors specializes in blog design with integration of social media. A thorough process of building a destination to extend your brand is important. With WordPress you are given that rich user experience, along with a robust content management system (CMS) on the backend. This CMS is so amazing and easy to learn we had to show you. Below you will see an example of a custom WordPress theme developed by CMA and the CMS that we use to publish our content.

Blog Example

1. Custom Designed Blog
2. RSS Feed Subscription and Search Functionality
3. Blog post with Title, Author, Archive Categories, Tags and Date.
4. Social Media Sharing and Integration
5. Customizable widgets tailored to target audience
6. Images hosted and search engine optimized
7. Not shown, blogroll with reciprocal links

WordPress CMS

1. Main CMS Navigation allows you to manage all aspects of your WordPress Blog.
2. Search Engine Optimized Title and URL.
3. Content publishing area; ease of uploading text, images, and videos.
4. Archive Categories; Allows users to sort through content by topics they are interested in.
5. Tags; often referred to as keywords. Help users find interesting content, as well as help SEO.
6. Not Shown – Plugin; often times they are used to help maximize SEO by amplifying each and every blog post. You can browse plugins by visiting HERE.

Important Features Every Blog Should Have

• Resource Links / Blogroll – This benefits SEO and acts as a valuable resource to your readers to find industry content
• RSS Feed – This allows your readers/visitors to sign up to be emailed when you publish a new blog. RSS = real simple syndication. We suggest using Feedburner, which is yet again owned by Google.
• Image Optimization – Images can be optimized for SEO in 3 ways; image file name, image title, image alt tag. Use strong keywords to take full advantage of images.
• Social Sharing – Add the social sharing features such as the Facebook Like button, the Twitter Retweet Button, the Google+ button, and the LinkedIn Share button. When your readers share your content it builds up your SEO and over time will drive your page rank higher on search engines.
• Call To Action – Each and every blog you write should have a purpose. Be sure to have a call to action to solicit a response from a reader. Often times these will be a link to a form the reader can fill out to receive ___ (insert offer here)___.
• Branding – Custom design should extend your visual identity and reflect company goals and vision.
• Tags and Categories – Both necessary functions for SEO and on-page experience. Users will have the ability to search your content, and sort through it based on these two important elements. Tags are keywords that explain the content of the blog post and allows users to see other content that has that keyword within it. The Categories allow users to sort blog posts by that segment so they can read all blogs on that topic.
• Utilization of Bold Face and H1 Header tags – Both of these rich text editinrg features help to build SEO. Be sure to use these, when appropriate throughout blog posts to maximize each posts effectiveness.
• Widgets on the sidebar – WordPress has a vast amount of ‘widgets’ available for use on the sidebar. Examples include Blogroll, Archive by month and Categories, Word cloud, recent Blogs, recent Tweets.
• Analytics – be sure to track and monitor your success with blogging. Before you even start blogging be sure to develop several key performance indicators (KPI’s) that you will keep track of. This may consist of total visitors to your blog, click-through to landing pages, or form registrations. Google Analytics integrates with WordPress quite nicely.
• Plug-Ins – Currently WordPress has 17,126 plug-in’s available on their platform. You can peruse through the various plug-in’s available by visiting the WordPress plug-in site HERE.

Part 2 of ‘Blogging for Construction Marketing’ covers the content development process, integrating blogging into your marketing mix, and content ideas to fuel your blogging strategy.

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