This past week on the Entrepreneur Architect Podcast, I shared my original 2006 business plan for Fivecat Studio. If you listened to the episode, you heard me talk about starting a blog as part of my Lead Conversion Action Plan. Shortly after completing the plan, I launched Living Well in Westchester and wrote consistently until 2012 when I shifted my focus here to Entrepreneur Architect.
Following the launch of our website and working to keep fivecat.com well represented on the Google search engine, launching the blog was the most successful marketing strategy we’ve ever implemented. Most every week, I would write my thoughts on architecture and design in “Westchester County and Beyond”. I’d share updates on our current projects and information on the latest products and materials.
Though cross-linked with fivecat.com, I wrote the blog as a personal project without a direct reference to the firm. I often shared personal anecdotes, similar to what I do today here at Entrepreneur Architect and loyal readers would feel as though they know me. They’d feel as though we’d met without ever having such a meeting. At project interviews, it was commonplace to be welcomed into the homes of my prospects as a long lost friend; an advantage that lead to dozens of new projects.
Setting up the blog using WordPress.com, a free blogging platform, was a strategy that cost nothing but my time. With a few clicks of the mouse and selection of an appropriate theme, I was in business writing my first post.
A theme is design template that changes the way your blog looks and how it functions. WordPress.com offers dozens of free templates and many more are available to purchase from third party vendors, such as StudioPress.com.
My work with the Living Well blog opened a new world of networking and friendships. Soon after launching the blog, I connected with Susan Serra, The Kitchen Designer. Susan invited me to write a guest post for her popular blog sharing my views on architects working with kitchen designers. It was very well received and lit up the comment section with a healthy debate on the subject. That post was my introduction to the online universe of fellow bloggers.
The blogging community is very supportive and sharing. Since that first guest post, I have connected and developed true friendships with dozens of bloggers throughout the world. The social benefits of blogging are a wonderful side effect of my work online.
With much success at the Living Well in Westchester blog, in 2007 I launched Entrepreneur Architect as a personal project to collect my thoughts and curate valuable information about business and entrepreneurism. I posted randomly whenever I found something worth saving and had no intent to develop the site into anything more. The site attracted a few likeminded architects who encouraged me to develop my platform in support of other architects seeking information on business success in architecture. In 2009, I launched the Entrepreneur Architect Linkedin Group, which today enjoys a private membership of over 7,000 architects and designers.
I continued to develop both blogs with my primary focus on Living Well and developing new business for Fivecat Studio. Between the website at fivecat.com and the blog, we built a thriving local brand of residential architecture. We initiated many other marketing strategies, as described in the business plan, but nothing worked as well as connecting directly with our prospects by providing valuable content specifically aimed at our target market.
Today, with my focus on Entrepreneur Architect, Living Well is unofficially on hold. Having established a strong brand in the region and serving our clients with exceptional service, our boards are full. Through the website alone and by using more traditional methods of marketing an architecture firm, such as word-of-mouth and repeat clients, our pipeline is full.
Since re-launching Entrepreneur Architect in 2012, I have learned so much about blogging. Entrepreneur Architect is a self-hosted site using WordPress.org and hosted at Bluehost.com. If I ever relaunch Living Well in Westchester, I will move the site to a self-hosted blogging platform as well. Although a self-hosted blog will require me to purchase a hosting service, it will also allow me to have more control over the design of the site and more flexibility with how the site functions. A self-hosted blog will allow me to use the site for email list building, online commerce and offer advertising opportunities to local vendors seeking to connect with my readers.
In addition to being a primary lead generator, the Living Well blog could become an additional source of revenue for Fivecat Studio. That is certainly something all small firm architects could use to become more profitable and allow us to pursue our true passion for architectural design.
Do you blog? Has it been successful in generating direct leads for new work? Share your thoughts on blogging for architects in the comments below. The more we share, the more we all succeed.
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Photo Credit: Shutterstock/StevanZZ
Hi Mark,
Just started blogging at the beginning of the year, and like you, I’m maintaining it as a personal blog which gives me the freedom to pursue what I’m interested in without the pressure to turn it into another form of company brochure. So far I haven’t experienced any lead generation but what I have experienced is a tremendous personal and professional benefit that was entirely unexpected: I feature my hand drawings and doodles on the blog, and with a personal goal to publish at least once a week I’m drawing and sketching a lot more. I also write about what I’m reading or thinking and blogging has forced me to be more critical about what I read.
Thanks,
Wayne
Mark,
I have long been interested in technology. All the social media opportunities interest me. I have always understood the value of writing and sharing information with others as a way to increase your relationships, connections, and “sphere of influence”. I use to be editor of the local AutoCAD user’s group newsletter (TAG – Triangle AutoCAD users Group). We would send it out to AutoCAD and many third party vendors. The connections came in very handy when you wanted to get invited to some of the parties at the A/E/C conventions. To me the most important things if you are going to attempt to do a blog are content and consistency. As you know, you must have content that people are interested in and you must provide them with a reliable schedule so they know they can return on a consistent basis to read new information. As you also know, it takes a tremendous commitment to be consistent. After talking with Marica McKeel, I decided to try my hand a blogging. I really don’t do it to get new clients, although that would be a fantastic benefit, but after being in the profession for over 25 years, I just felt I had some things to share. It’s all about baby steps and then improvements, right? I do not code, so I was looking for a “drag and drop” solution.
After hearing about SquareSpace for so long I joined for a year, but never produced a web site. I then found Weebly. I pay $72 for two years and can have up 10 Pro sites. My blog is on one of those sites and they do have templates for blogging. An inexpensive solution for someone who is just getting started. I as most people who respond to you, truly appreciate you openness and all that you share. Thanks and keep up the good work.
Side note: My CPA wife could not originally figure out that arcadtect & arcadtecture, which I use, came from architect(ure) & CAD. Opposites attract, right?
Once again, Mark, thanks for your encouragement and for the reminder to attend to our blogs. My business partner and I had started web logs separately as well as under our firm’s web page but have let them languish at times. We’ve used the free Blogspot and WordPress, as well as a hosted GoDaddy site (pleased with them and looking at BlueHost, now to host paid WordPress continuations). We can track direct leads to my website http://www.DrawingBoardAtlanta.net, his website http://www.GregMix.com and our joint firm’s http://SoutheastStudiosInc.com , but we haven’t yet found a link from any of our blogs, probably attributable to our inconsistent postings. This brings us back to what you wrote here — an encouragement to post. ASAP!
Mark,
Such a great idea. How niche would you suggest a blog become? For example, my blog Local Practce http://www.localpractice.wordpress.com will focus on “small-scale change through sustainable living”. I feel this directs my audience to my passion for environmental responsibility, but also gives me flexibility to post my projects, as well as other, more tangential topics. However, I find it tough to read blogs that jump all over the place to different topics, or blogs that are so personal that they are more of a private journal. What are your thoughts on bringing a little too much personal (potentially mundane) content to your blog.? Thanks again.
My business partner and I have been blogging regularly (once a week on Tuesdays) for a few years now and we cleverly named it. The name of our company is AcV2, so the blog goes out on AcV2sdays (hence the Tuesday post day) http://www.AcV2architecture.com . We enjoy having the outlet and it keeps our social media profile up. We receive a lot of prospective project inquiries from our online presence and the blog is another way to have clients “meet us”, understand our voice, who we are and how we do it.
Thanks for the conversation!
Guest blogging is brilliant way to connect with more people around the world. Just like The Kitchen Designer, I also run a website named as kitchen design buzz which could be your next target to feature on. 🙂