Community Based Business Blog Managed by You

Want to dri­ve more qual­i­fied busi­ness your way on the web? Sure you do! What is one easy way to begin this process online with­out spend­ing a lot of mon­ey? Start your own qual­i­ty blog with a group of your pre­ferred and trust­ed net­work. Here are some point­ers: What To Do

• The blog should be geared to help the local com­mu­ni­ty find answers to their house­hold questions.
• It would include blogs about: paint­ing, HVAC, plumb­ing, handy­man, sea­son­al to-dos, roof­ing, elec­tri­cal, inte­ri­or design, real estate, remod­el­ing, cab­i­netry, appli­ances, per­mits, fenc­ing, decks, floor­ing, and much more.
• Each com­pa­ny would take turns sub­mit­ting their expert blogs. If one is not a writer, he or she can either do videos or hire a writer to do all the edit­ing and posting.
• Fea­tur­ing of videos, blogs, spe­cials and a sub­mis­sion form to ​“ask a ques­tion” answered by a pro­fes­sion­al. You’d also have a form to ​“request an estimate”
• Option­al: Have live chat. This could be mon­i­tored by a third par­ty com­pa­ny or by folks with­in the network.
• Have an offi­cial name for your site and make it well designed with easy navigation
• Use a pro­fes­sion­al Word­press site (mar­keters favorite plat­form) or Expres­sion Engine, a CMS
• Cre­ate a com­pa­ny direc­to­ry for those ready to buy. Option­al to have a review system
• At a lat­er date: After this takes off, you could offer a print ver­sion of some of your arti­cles and help­ful infor­ma­tion for home­own­ers. Peo­ple would sub­scribe to your post or print­ed newslet­ter. The print ver­sion would require more work and plan­ning. Why is this impor­tant? Some folks still like print. As word spreads around town about what you are doing, you’ve got to be able to reach more people.
• Each com­pa­ny should be com­mit­ted to active­ly refer­ring and rec­om­mend­ing each other.

How and Why It Would Work

• A con­sumer could type in a key­word or search from a list of cat­e­gories to find answers to his or her questions.
• Search engines would pick up the arti­cles, videos and infor­ma­tion and over­time will push up your rank­ings. It is eas­i­er to write blogs about the entire home rather than 1 ser­vice. There­fore, good SEO results should be eas­i­er to obtain with qual­i­ty and fresh content.
• Each ser­vice com­pa­ny can fea­tures his/​her com­pa­ny each week or month: pro­vid­ing a bet­ter chance of more work. (this would be on a rota­tion schedule)
• Over­time, you will build a trust­ed brand that peo­ple will be talk­ing about.

A Relat­ed Busi­ness Example A few years ago, a com­pa­ny did some­thing sim­i­lar, minus the con­tent mar­ket­ing part (more about that in a minute). It was slight­ly before blogs were pop­u­lar, so they used pri­mar­i­ly the tra­di­tion­al approach. They were called ToFix­It. The com­pa­ny is still around and locat­ed in Phoenix, Ari­zona. It was start­ed by a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man who owned a large plumb­ing com­pa­ny. He want­ed to get more qual­i­ty refer­rals from his net­works and though the best way was to build a trust­ed net­work. In short, all the com­pa­nies apart of ToFix­It had to be referred into the pro­gram. If the com­pa­ny was approved as a trust­ed con­trac­tor (not every­one made it), they paid a month­ly fee which went towards the mar­ket­ing of ToFix­It. They used radio, TV, mail­ers, mag­nets and the web to pro­mote their busi­ness. Their slo­gan was, ​“We Rec­om­mend The Best and Toss the Rest!” They part­nered with trust­ed news anchors, talk shows and radio host to gain cred­i­bil­i­ty. They also had month­ly net­work­ing meet­ings to help each com­pa­ny get to know each oth­er bet­ter and get more refer­rals. The only thing that ToFix­It did not do till more recent­ly was blog. My per­son­al thoughts are, their blog is not too con­sumer friend­ly, but it is a start. Now all they have to do is add good con­tent that is 100% con­sumer focused, and it will increase their trust­wor­thi­ness even more. It will cut down their tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing cost as the search engines begin to pick up their qual­i­ty con­tent, hope­ful­ly pro­duc­ing more leads with less adver­tis­ing dol­lars. Con­sumers use the web to buy, but they also use it to edu­cate them­selves. If you are the source for their answers, you will begin to build a qual­i­ty rep­u­ta­tion. Next Steps Take a look at what ToFix­It start­ed: www​.tofix​it​.com Get inspired. Start your own com­mu­ni­ty based blog for your group of trust­ed busi­ness­es. Also, if you are the one start­ing it, make sure YOU own the site or at least your com­pa­ny has a slight­ly stronger edge. Why not? You’re the one with the idea, right? Have the goal of help­ing con­sumers, not sell­ing them., and the sales will come in time.