This is the ultimate guide to how to start a blog about construction: resources, step-by-step guide, and ideas for your blog.
A blog can be a great tool for your business, contractor or not. This guide will cover how to create a contractor blog, the best blogging practices, and some ideas for construction blogs. This instructional online course about construction blogging teaches contractors and professionals how to get started in blogging.
How to start a construction log
Most likely, you are familiar with the tools required to perform your job on the job site. It’s not a good idea to start a job without first knowing the cost and what it will take to finish the job. Then, you should evaluate your ability to handle the task. It’s the same for starting a blog.
These are great questions to answer. We’ll help you answer all your questions, whether you’re creating a blog for a construction company, a blog for home construction, or a blog about niche trades.
You came to this site to learn how you can start a blog about construction. Let’s get started. These are the 13 steps that you need to start a construction blog.
Choose a topic or niche that you are passionate about and write about it
This is the most crucial step in the entire process. This is where you plan and determine the direction of your blog. Ask yourself these questions:
What do I know about it?
What are the things you know the best about? If you are a professional painter with 12 years of experience, then you might consider starting a blog about painting. Start a blog if you are a roofer with a lot of knowledge about roofing.
Once you have determined your knowledge, now ask yourself:
What are you passionate about?
You should make sure what you are passionate about and knowledgeable about is also what you know. These two may go hand in hand. You need to be passionate about the topic. If you don’t love it, your blog will suffer. It won’t inspire you, and it will become a chore. Blogging can be hard work and it may take years to see real results. For many, this will be a side hustle. You’ll have to keep working nights and weekends on it, so it is important that you love it. If you don’t, Monday or Saturday nights at 9 pm will roll around and writing will be the last thing you feel like doing.
Is my niche topic?
This is a huge question. You won’t be able to get anywhere if you try to expand a topic. It sounds discouraging, but it is better to discover this now than wait 3 years and see little traffic growth. A niche blog topic refers to a narrow topic that focuses on a single core topic. Trade is the best way to go. For example, a roofing blog or a carpentry website. The number of searches for your subject determines how small you can go. You want to find the sweet spot between being wide enough to reach a large audience (thereby increasing your rank in google) and small enough that you can still be competitive. This will allow your blog to retain a consistent theme. Jim Lillig is a former community manager at beThePro Forum, and Bosch Tools Digital & Social Media Manager. He also shares some examples of great blogs that have specialized topics.
Here are some good examples:
A blog about roofing: Where you talk all things roofing. You can discuss your favorite shingles and the biggest mistakes that new roofers make. Your favorite tools for the job. You could write endless posts, but your blog has a focused theme. As Google starts to rank your site and learn more about you, it will be clear that you are a page about roofing.
After you have decided on your topic, it is time to decide who you will write to.
Decide who your audience
Although this should be obvious, it is important to remember. Are you going to write to homeowners if you start a blog about roofing? DIYers? Field workers? Are you a business owner? Maybe you are targeting young people just starting out in the business. Maybe all of these! While you don’t have to know the details of every post (that would be impossible), you should be able to get a sense of who you are talking to. You will most likely have other contractors in mind. You speak their language and can help them with their problems. If you can help their pains and get them to visit your blog for advice, tool reviews, and other assistance, you can make your blog monetizable and have a great thing.
Determine the pain you can resolve
As do many others, I believe that it is important to not ask “how can I make money?” but “what are my pains?” This is a big difference. If you are just starting a blog to gain some tools or place banner ads all over the internet to make some extra beer money, you won’t be very successful and certainly not as happy as your potential. People will eventually catch on. If your sole purpose of blogging is to make money then readers (your potential customers) will eventually catch on. You will have poor work or posts that are centered on getting you the next free tool.
I don’t mean to be negative, but you should plan for profit and compensation. Blogs are a lot of work. You should get paid for your efforts. But it shouldn’t be your primary goal. Instead, ask yourself the following question: “What pains does my audience have that I can solve?” For example, if you are a contractor, what pains do customers or certified installers experience? If you are a tradesman or contractor who has started a blog, think about what pains your fellow contractors have. If they don’t know how Excel can be set up in a way that allows them to run estimates, then show them. You can easily break down a post to show them the pros and cons of a tool or construction estimating software.
If you can solve the problems of your audience, you will succeed (assuming that you optimize for SEO and do the technical stuff correctly, which we’ll discuss below). Your goal is not to churn out 10 posts in an hour and then sit back and wait for the money. This is not only impossible, but your readers will also see your posts as unhelpful, unloving, and unthoughtful. Google will then see that nobody is staying on your site, sharing your content, or liking your posts, and will degrade you. Focus on the pains that your readers are experiencing and how you can help them.