Regardless of the size of your firm or industry focus, your company should be blogging at least once a month. Ideally, we recommend clients blog once a week but we understand that the process of creating a blog with original content can seem daunting. At the end of the day, the fact of the matter is that blogging can help grow your business.
Here are four (obvious) reasons why architects and designers should blog:
01
Build Yourself as an Expert in Your Niche
Every architect and designer has their own point of view when it comes to design which differentiates them from competitors. Use your blog to build content around your expertise (i.e. sustainable design) in order to gain credibility as an authoritative figure of your specific niche.
02
Findability
If the blog is developed with the right information architecture and SEO, your content has a higher chance of getting found and shared online.
03
Business Development
Your prospects are doing research about you online. Just look at the data provided by Houzz. The content you publish on a blog can help build a prospect’s trust before they pick up the phone or send an email inquiry.
04
Leverage Press
Still think a PR person is the key to getting press? Think again. Editors and design bloggers do research online too. In fact, bloggers can be great brand advocates and share your content with their readers expanding your brand reach.
The benefits of blogging far out weigh the fear of actually putting yourself and your brand out there. Feldman Architecture is a great example of an architecture firm using blogging as an effective tool to grow their clientele. Jonathan Feldman created his firm’s blog Green Architecture Notes as a platform to share his passion for sustainable design. By sharing his point of view, along with insight from other industry leaders and product manufacturers focusing on sustainability, Jonathan has built a reputation as one of the leading sustainable architects in San Francisco. In addition to Green Architecture Notes, the Feldman Architecture staff now maintains a separate company blog that discusses each employee’s passion for design.
We recently completed a study on the effectiveness of architecture websites, using AIA San Francisco’s directory of residential architects. Part of the study documented how many firms have some sort of blog or newsfeed. What we found is that only 10% of 232 firms are creating blog content. Yeah, we were shocked too.
So why don’t architects and designers blog again? Share your thoughts with us.