If you are a contractor and have doubts about whether or not a blog would increase your online visibility; listen to Chuck Taylor. He is director of operations for Englewood Construction Inc., a commercial construction general contractor based in Lemont,Ill., a southwest suburb of Chicago.  I met Chuck at the Construction Writers Association annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, where Englewood Construction received an award for the construction industry’s best blog.

Their commercial construction blog, Hard Hat Chat, has brought in new business and opportunities for Englewood Construction. “There has been a return on investment that we never anticipated,” said Taylor.

Before starting the commercial construction blog, the company’s visibility on search engines was low. But with updated, quality content that provides valuable information to their market, Englewood Construction’s online visibility has increased dramatically. According to Taylor, the blog has helped place the company on the short list with national retailers and hoteliers they were not previously pursuing. In fact, they recently won a job from a major insurance company who initially found them through the blog.

The Biggest Concern:  Coming Up with Content

At the onset of the blog, Taylor was concerned about where the content for the blog would come from. He quickly found out that it wasn’t a problem at all. “We take for granted what we do on a daily basis,” said Taylor. “What our PR firm was able to do was ask us some engaging questions, such as ‘How did you overcome those challenges?” Posts are informative, keyword rich and optimized for local search.

Taylor and William Di Santo, president of Englewood Construction, share responsibility for the blog posts along with their PR fim. Chuck Taylor typically spends about four to six hours per month on a post.  The company scaled back the frequency  of blog posts during the market downturn, but expects that they will need to post more frequently in the near future, as more firms enter the construction blogging arena.

”Based on our activity we have more to talk about,” said Taylor. ” There are more opportunities coming in and it is not going to be long before the competitions catches on.”

Englewood Construction’s blogging efforts are focused on improving online visibility, rather than building a subscriber base or generating advertising revenue. “The end game is searchability,” said Taylor. “If you are not on the first page of the search results, you are not there.”

In fact, if you are a commercial contractor, Taylor would rather you wouldn’t read this.

Give us a call to discuss content for your commercial construction blog. And a special thanks to Englewood Construction for sharing their blogging experience with us.

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