4 Blog Post Ideas for Construction and Home Service Pros
AI is driving your customers crazy!
They crave real answers from pros like you! When people have questions and problems in their home, they don’t want to go to the robot to learn how to maintain their HVAC unit or prep their cabinets for painting, they want an answer from a person, from an expert that they can also hire.
That’s why blogging for construction and home service professionals isn’t going away anytime soon. If you haven’t made a blog post yet for your construction or home service business, you are probably overthinking it.
My goal is to provide you with 4 blog post ideas that you can implement right away. I get it, you’re working on your feet all day, and you have a life outside of work and that makes it hard to sit down and write a blog post. This post is here to provide you with topics to break your writer’s block and help your business show up better in search results and keep qualified site traffic thinking about you.
People get frustrated with home improvement projects. They turn to pros like you for help!
Why write a blog?
Blogging allows you to provide your industry expertise in the search results pages. Google ranks websites that are leading authorities in their field. A blog allows you to thoroughly flex your professional knowledge and provide real value to people interested in your services. Showing that you are an expert helps drive trust in your abilities and ultimately trust is the main factor when a home owner is searching for a contractor to solve their problems. Your services are always going to be in high demand, and AI is not going to replace home service and construction trades anytime soon.
Now that we’ve answered the ‘why’ let’s provide you with some blog topics to get your blog page started!
How to Blog Posts
If your business has a strong DIY audience, then this is the perfect topic to sink into. Sometimes this topic raises some skepticism as I get asked “If I provide a bunch of ‘how to advice’, then won’t I just be making my job irrelevant as everyone can just learn my job from my blog posts?” If done correctly, how to gives you the ultimate opportunity to flex your knowledge of your craft. The key to making a how to blog post is to pick a topic that a complete outsider that has zero experience in your industry can do. If you’re an HVAC pro, you wouldn’t do a ‘how to install a new furnace’ But you could make a post on ‘How to replace and clean air filters’. This is a simple task that most likely wouldn’t be profitable for you to accept as a job, but provides immense value for your everyday home owner.
Imagine this: You provide excellent ‘how to content’ which means home owners come to your website to learn how to do things. Then when it’s time for something beyond their scope, they are going to call you because you have been their trusted ‘how to partner’.
Let’s also state the obvious, people search how to do things all the time. Furthermore, ‘how to’ doesn’t have to mean how to make or do something. For example, it can be something like: ‘how to improve your indoor air quality’ or ‘how to choose the right paint sheens for your home’ or ‘how to set your sprinkler system’. We are using ‘how to’ to provide answers to questions you hear all the time as a professional contractor. If we pick topics that are too complicated for your average homeowner, you’ll be too niche meaning your post won’t be displayed in search results.
People ask example for programming a sprinkler system
To get started, go to google, and type a ‘how to’ question in Google Search related to your field. Next, look at the search engine results page and find the top result in the ‘People Ask Section’ then make a post answering that question. Reference how the top result answers that question. That doesn’t mean stealing content, but look at the visuals, and the word count. Depending on how complex the question you are answering is, you’ll want to use that to guide your word count. For example, asking how to set your sprinkler system timer shouldn’t be a 2,000 word post.
Also add a short how to video to your post. Like this one!
Product Review Posts
We all work with a ton of vendors and use multiple products everyday in our work. As a professional in your field, use a product review blog post as an opportunity to really flex your knowledge and expertise. When choosing the product you want to review, you want to make sure it is something that your target customer uses. For example, if you are a residential HVAC provider, you probably don’t want to write a review on an industrial unit unless you are really trying to go after more commercial HVAC jobs.
When choosing a topic, check and see if it is something people are interested in. Check the ‘people ask’ section to first see if your question is common and then pay attention to the phrasing and scan through the first top 3 results that answer that question.
Here’s some examples:
Painters - do a paint or stain review
What is the best Sherwin Williams Exterior Paint? - review one or two of them that you use.
What is the best tape for masking windows?
Helpful Tips and Maintenance Advice
Are you looking for a way to engage your customers between services? You want people to constantly be thinking about you. Even when they don’t need you yet. That’s why creating short, to the point maintenance and helpful tip content is golden. You want to be the main go to in your field for your customer. That means they aren’t going to your competition to see how to maintain things.
The more often people are on your website, the more likely they are to reach out to you.
You can also create content around helpful project tips. Think DIY home projects. I like to use sites like Pinterest to look up project ideas and then provide content for my customers on how to achieve those. For example, this could be helpful: landscaping tips to improve curb appeal (if you are a landscaping company, that’s a popular topic) as a painter it could be: tips for refinishing patio furniture. This is perfect for summer and seasonal projects. When you are in the drafting phase, keep any seasonality in mind.
Simple tips, maintenance and home improvement advice go a long way in providing customer value. Because no one wants to feel like just a salespitch.
Maintenance could be: 3 Tips for maintaining your furnace this winter. With this article, you are keeping people thinking about their HVAC system. That means if something does go wrong, they’ll call you because they are most familiar with your company as you are in their feeds.
There is a strategy to this though. You should be thinking about topics a couple months in advance, because Google does take time to scan/crawl your content and rank it in front of searchers. For example, It’s March and I’m working with a residential painting company and we are starting to plan for summer. Meaning that while interior painting is still going on in the summer, there is a massive switch to exterior which is also more profitable and has a much shorter season. People are thinking about and considering companies for summer right now, which is why we are making a strong blog schedule in March and April.
To summarize, you want to provide a layer of helpful tips and maintenance advice, that is helpful to your target customer base and seasonally appropriate. You also want to add a degree of planning as you want your content to be published and running long enough for people to find it. To make that easy: March/April you should be planning summer content and September/October you should be planning winter content.
Discuss Industry Trends
As a customer I want to know that my home service provider is staying up to date with their industry and not using outdated techniques and practices. This is essential for building trust and expertise. Use your knowledge as a professional to write about something you find interesting that is developing in your field. You want to pick a topic that is relevant to your customer. Keep your audience in mind and don’t write about something that they can’t understand the value. For example, when I create content on industry trends, I’m making sure it is something that my customers (construction and home service pros) find helpful and applicable to their businesses.
What are some examples?
This could be a new product line
New technology
New laws or regulations around your service.
Why is this important to your home service/construction business?
Let’s talk numbers.
90% of businesses are engaged in content marketing to generate leads. That means you are not keeping up with your competitors if you don’t engage in content marketing efforts.
Content marketing costs 41% less per lead than a paid ad. To expand on this, paid ads stop producing the second you turn them off! Content marketing like blog posts continue to work for you indefinitely!
70% of people prefer to learn about a company through an article than an advertisement. Ads are traffic drivers, but your content and website user experience are your closers.
74% of customers found that lead quality improved with content marketing. Traffic isn’t everything, do you want more poor quality leads or less quantity with higher quality and intent of booking your services.
Frequently Asked Questions:
How often should I make blog content?
You want to focus on quality instead of churn and burn. If you’re reading this, you are probably managing every aspect of your business on your own. Try posting on a monthly basis. This should give you the time needed to research, create and promote your content. That’s 12 posts a year. Blogging is a marathon not a sprint. You want to be on a cycle that works for you and your schedule. Your first blog post probably isn’t going to blow everyone out of the water, but continuing to evolve and improve your posts over time will build a solid foundation for your website visitors to explore. Plus Google favors you when you are creating content on a consistent basis.
What should my word count be?
For home services and construction blogs, you are often answering questions that home owners want immediate answers for. Keep it clear, concise and limit the filler. 400 to 800 words should do the trick. Providing a generic surface level answer doesn’t help you. But writing a life story that avoids addressing the solution doesn’t help either.
How should I promote my blog?
I promote blogs by creating social media campaigns around the main points or key take aways. Posting ‘new blog’ isn’t going to get anyone to view it. I lead with an engaging hook in my posts. For example: ‘When was the last time you changed an air filter?’ ‘Make your neighbors jealous with a new paint job’ ‘Have the best yard in the neighborhood’ Something that relates to your topic but pulls people in. I post to Facebook, Instagram and Google My Business. For Facebook and Instagram, I’ll do about 4 posts. For this article, it’s titled ‘4 blog post ideas…’ that means I’m going to post about each of these topics, and share them in my stories with sticker links to link back to my site. To summarize, don’t just post, ‘new blog’ people need a reason why they should care.
How do I start writing a blog post?
What I like to do during my topic research, is look at the top ranking pages for the blog and then create my own version of it and then make it my own. When I go to write, I lead in with a strong hook to capture the reader. In all honesty, people will mostly skim your article. They aren’t going to read it word for word. They are going to skim the article for the main bullet points. That’s why I recommend including at least 3 pictures, a video if possible and a FAQ section. This article is over 2,000 words so I’m not expecting it to be read in its entirety. However I’m banking on the hook, visuals and layout to capture my audience’s attention just long enough for them to scan my post and pick out the most relevant information for them.
Summary
You wouldn’t hire a robot plumber or robot painter. So why should your audience take advice from a robot? Last time I checked, robots can’t do construction and trade work yet so when a home owner needs advice, they’re going to go with people. That’s why blogging for construction and home service professionals is still extremely important for growing your contracting and home service business. You’ll keep people engaged throughout the year and that brand recognition pays for itself and is less expensive than ads. With this tool box on getting started, go out and try a blog on a topic you like. Or you can hire Odyssey Marketing Group to do it for you!
Stay tuned for more blog posts with helpful information designed for busy construction and home service business owners.
