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How to always finish what you’ve started – the secrets of effective project management

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We’ve all felt overwhelmed by the looming prospect of a complex project – whether that’s in construction marketing or elsewhere. Project management specialist Cesar Abeid has a proven strategy to help you achieve ambitious goals with confidence.

cesar-abeid

 

“If it can work for me, it can work for anyone,” says Cesar Abeid, an inspirational businessman, author, speaker and podcaster, who transformed his life by studying the art of project management. It gave him the muscle to achieve things – big things – that would never have been possible before.

A lot of us have probably started projects that we’ve never finished. And Cesar counts himself as one of them – albeit one of the converted.

“People either overthink what they need to accomplish and therefore never do it. Or they simply start doing it without any plan in place and then they fail,” he says. “What you need to do is find a happy medium.”

So how does Cesar recommend we avoid being overwhelmed and tackle our construction marketing projects in an organised, intelligent way?

 

Creating something unique

“First, it’s important to understand what a project is,” he says. “It’s any endeavour that has a definite beginning, a definite end and creates something unique.

“So take something complex that you want to complete – like a marketing project, writing a book or putting together a presentation – anything that’s complex that you can’t complete with just one task. Now, the first step is to gather your requirements and define exactly what you’re trying to do.

“Your project, even if it’s not that complex, will involve a lot of different elements to get to the result you’re aiming for. So the second step is to break it down into manageable chunks. The general rule of thumb is that you keep breaking these bits down until they’re manageable and simple enough to do yourself – or delegate – in a relatively short amount of time, say a day or a week depending on the size of your project.

“A mind-mapping tool – essentially creating a diagram that visually organises information (such as Mindmeister) can help you do this. Once you’ve broken your main idea down into these sub-sub-sub deliverables, you’ll have a really clear idea of how big your project is, how long it’s going to take and how much it will cost you. Then you’re ready to start working.”

 

Peace of mind

Even at this relatively basic level of planning, Cesar believes you’re much more likely to accomplish what you need to. And it’s a technique that works just as well on smaller projects as large and complex ones.

“Because it gives you an idea of scope, timeline and schedule, it gives you peace of mind,” says Cesar. “It means that when I start on a project – big or small – it gives me confidence because I have an idea of what’s coming. It allows me to focus on my ideas and not so much on the process.”

A common problem for anyone marketing their construction projects is finding the motivation to produce the content they’ve committed to. Good project management, says Cesar, can be just the ‘kick in the butt’ you need.

“If you have a campaign that requires a number of blog posts, when you broke down your project, the wider element was probably called content writing. Under that, you probably broke it down into written content, audio and video,” he says.

“And here’s the thing. Because it fits into your wider project, if you don’t do your blog, you can’t check it off. You need to say to yourself that if you don’t do this blog post, you’ll never finish this project. Project management gives you an understanding of where this smaller part fits into your overall goal.

 

The whole truth

“If you just haphazardly say, ‘oh I need to do another blog post this week’ and don’t put any thought into the planning, then you’re not going to put any thought into the execution. Whereas if you make a commitment from the beginning and understand where it fits in the whole, it keeps you motivated and means you’ll get things finished.”

Project management has given Cesar the muscles to make him more productive and improve his life – at work and home.

“It’s helped me in so many ways,” he says. “While people might think of me as ‘smart’, I never used to be able to finish anything. I was stressed out and overwhelmed until I learned all these techniques.

“My podcast and my book are all examples of things I couldn’t achieve without this process. Now I use it to accomplish everything – from work projects to birthday parties for my kids and vacations.”

 

Here are Cesar’s five tips for stress-free management of your construction marketing project:

  1. Define your goals

    Work out what you want to achieve from your project in as much detail as you can. Don’t worry if you don’t have all the details and all the definitions before you start. Just make sure you have enough to get things moving.

  1. Break your project down into simpler, manageable parts

    Using a tool like a mind map, take the main idea and break it down into its sub-deliverables. Keep doing so until these mini projects are simple enough that you – or a colleague or supplier – can do it in a day or a week, or whatever timescale works for you.

  1. Decide if it’s for you

    This is the point where you decide if this project is actually something you want to do. It’s okay to decide not to do it – or to postpone it – if your planning helps you come to that decision. It’s not the same as quitting. So make a decision and say, ‘this is something I want to do now, or this is something I want to do later’.

  1. Do some estimates

    Figure out how much it’s going to cost, how long it’s going to take and who you’re going to need help from. Do some estimates based on all the components of the project so you know what you’re embracing before you start.

  1. Manage the risks

    The point of having a project management plan in place is to finish it within budget and deadline. So it’s important to sit down and think about what could go wrong. It doesn’t have to be extensive. Just think of the issues that could arise that qualify as impactful and probable. Come up with five or ten risks that are highly probable and if they did happen would have a major impact. And think of a one-line contingency for each that you could implement if it were to happen. It will give you a huge amount of peace of mind and help you get the job done.

 

Cesar has some further words of wisdom for any marketer who’s keen on accomplishing more in their role.

“Once a year, think of the goals that you’d like to achieve in the next 12 months,” he says. “Look at them as a sequence of projects.

“The first year you might set yourself too many and realise you can’t achieve them. For me, I know now that five to eight is all I can handle. Putting a plan in place and knowing where you’re going with your goals is the secret.

“Also, if you have great ideas, but find you forget them, you need to have a moment of honesty. My memory’s horrendous and I finally accepted that I had a problem and unless I wrote things down in a place I knew I’d look, I’d forget them. This, combined with some sound project management methods, makes up for my shortcomings in terms of organisation and memory. And it can work for others too.”

Find out more about Cesar at cesarabeid.com. And if you’d like to learn about how you can apply his project management methods to your life and work, check out his book, Project Management for You.

Project-Management-For-You-book

Simple and Affordable Ways to Make Your Construction Website More Effective

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Digital marketing consultant Pritesh Patel discusses the common mistakes construction companies make on their websites – and shares his tips and tricks on how to increase your traffic and generate better leads

pritesh-patel-digital-marketing-consultant-gp

 

If you think your company website should be a shop window into your business, think again. That’s the view of website expert Pritesh Patel, who says this outdated myth needs to be buried for good.

“You hear the phrase ‘it’s a shop window into our business’,” says Pritesh. “But how many window shoppers do you want? Surely you want actual people coming in and buying things.”

In his role as a digital marketing consultant, with a focus on building product manufacturers, Pritesh regularly audits his clients’ websites, so he has a trained eye for the sort of errors that hold a business back on the internet.

“Firstly, it’s the mindset of treating your website as a corporate brochure,” says Pritesh. “Companies say, we’ve got a catalogue of products. Let’s just make a website version of our catalogue. That really is outdated thinking and things have moved on so much since then. There’s so much more you can do.

“Another common error is not thinking about where your website fits into your sales process. You need to develop a mindset where you’re looking at your website as something that is going to generate leads and help your business grow.”

Pritesh identifies another potentially fatal flaw as not reacting fast enough to enquiries. “If you look at your own behavior on the web, when you’re looking for a product or service, you’ll probably send multiple enquiries to multiple suppliers. Often who you go with comes down to who reacts fastest,” he says.

“I’ve come across some companies who park enquiries from the web to one side and others who respond in an hour. It’s a competitive space and reaction time is crucial.”

Other regular issues include not doing enough with your data and treating optimisation, which means employing tactics to catapult you up the search rankings, as an afterthought. “Websites collect data on usage and behaviour and track where enquiries are coming from. You should use this data to keep yourself informed about what’s working and what’s not. It helps you avoid wastage, where you’re spending money on things that don’t generate leads,” says Pritesh.

“It’s also rare that I find a construction website that’s well optimised and has a clear direction in terms of the searches it’s trying to target. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is often an afterthought after a site is launched, but it should be considered much earlier in the process.”

So what should you do to give yourself a better chance of outgunning your competitors online? Here are Pritesh’s tips and tricks for improving your visibility and generating more leads from your website.

 

1. Work out your website’s purpose

Ask yourself what your website’s there for and what you want people to do when they get there. When I work with clients, we have a brainstorm and I say ‘when I come to your site, what do you want me to do?’ And they say: ‘request a sample, give us a call, sign up to a registration area, or sign up to a calculator, etc.’ We quickly get a list of five key things we want people to do. Once you’ve got that list, you’ve got your key goals and you can start measuring how well your website is doing in achieving them.

 

2. Do some simple on-page SEO

That means updating your headers, titles and meta tags, adding links to other pages in your website and making sure any project case studies are written with a web – rather than a print – focus. In terms of case studies, companies often put the project title as their case study title. They’ll write ‘Oxford Brookes University’ for example, which from an SEO perspective means you’re optimising that page for the university, which might be students or people looking for its address or phone number. What you should be doing is aiming the title at someone looking for that particular case study, such as specialists in the education sector. So if you were supplying aluminium facades to the university, title it ‘Aluminium facades supplied for universities’. Then anyone searching for aluminium facades for universities should be pointed towards your page. Marketers try to get all creative – but you’ve just got to think about what people are searching for.

 

3. Calls to action

These are the things you want people to do on your website. They should encourage visitors to request a sample, book a course, request a call back, or whatever your specific goals are. So go to your case studies or blogs and make sure you’re always answering the question ‘what do you want me to do next?’ with a clear call to action.

 

4. Need for speed

Google rewards faster-loading websites with a better ranking, which will make you more visible. Typically, a lack of knowledge about how to upload images, for example, slows down your site. So simple things like spending a day resizing all your images so they’re web friendly will improve your page load times and have a positive impact on your rankings.

 

5. Banish the bounce

Look at your Google analytics data, lots of which is available for free (https://www.google.co.uk/analytics/) and look at which pages have high bounce rates. That means the percentage of people who go to a page and leave without doing absolutely anything. Typical reasons why pages have high bounce rates are content quality is poor, it doesn’t match what people have searched for, your presentation isn’t very good, or pages aren’t loading fast enough because of a big image, so they end up leaving. Use analytics to narrow down the three pages that perform worst. Start working on those pages and run through all the reasons why it’s not performing. Once you’ve worked out why, do some work to improve it. What you’re always trying to do is entice that one click when people come to your website.

 

6. Traffic management

Another effective thing you can do with analytics is look at your traffic. So you go to analytics and see how many people have visited your website. Then you can focus on what percentage of those visitors have done something you wanted them to do, like the number of registrations you’ve had. From there, you can track that back to which channels were behind this, like Google searches, Twitter, Facebook, green building forums or the Screwfix community. You might find that sites you didn’t even know about are giving you good leads. By measuring these actions you can better focus your marketing on the channels where you’re seeing the best results.

 

7. Generate content ideas the easy way

A great trick is to look at your keyword reports on analytics – you can search help on the analytics website to see how to do this – and filter them for all searches that start with ‘how, who, where, what, why and can’. These are all things people have searched for to find your site – and probably nine out of 10 of those will be things you won’t have answered. So it gives you quick, simple blog titles or ideas for videos or infographics or whatever you want to create. You can also track what people are searching for on your site, which will also give you great ideas for useful content.

 

8. Innovation on a budget

Tools, such as calculators, work really well on construction websites. Most businesses will have a technical department that is capable of providing a simple tool like this for your website. You could offer something like a calculator to calculate how many boards someone needs for a decking project. By doing so, you help the customer get the ball rolling, but you also capture valuable project details. By starting the process online, you can then use that to qualify your leads better.

 

Pritesh has seen the proof that better-focused, more user-friendly websites win more business and provide the ammunition for businesses to grow. “Having a more effective website, where the positioning’s right, the content’s right, you have the right calls to action, usability is excellent and it works on mobile, just helps generate a constant stream of much better leads,” he says. “What I see through analytics is that when your information is clear and easy to find, people keep coming back. If they can’t find what they want, they never come back – and go to your competitors.”

 

If you’d like to find out more about Pritesh and his digital marketing business, have a look at his website priteshpatel.me

 

How Crowd-Funding Helped Me Get My Eco Message Out There

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Cath Hassell understands the power of crowd-funding – and how it can give an idea its wings.

She raised £6,000 to get her children’s book, The Mysterious Case of the Sinking Flamingo, which teaches primary school children about sustainable water, off the ground. Here’s what she learned along the way…

cath-hassell

 

When it comes to crowd-funding, it’s often the outrageously successful campaigns that grab the headlines. 3D gaming goggles or smart watches that smash their targets in days – and go on to raise millions. But what’s the story when it comes to projects that are more modest? How does it work for you if you’ve got an environmental message that you’re serious about sharing – but don’t have the resources to do it?

Cath Hassell is the person to ask. She runs a small environmental consultancy called ech2o, which does a lot of work with schools inspiring children to get serious about the environment. Cath turned to crowd-funding to finance the final stages of a book she’d been working on about the importance of using water sustainably.

 

Decisive Push

The idea for the book had been brewing for some time. But it was her experience in school that finally gave her the decisive push to get things properly off the ground.

“With ech2o, we do a lot of work with school children and a lot of water workshops,” said Cath. “We always had stuff to use with Key Stage 2 level kids – aged seven to eleven – but we realised we never had anything for primary-aged kids of five or six.

“My background’s in plumbing and I found that if a really young child ever asked me something about water, I’d get excited and start reeling off loads of facts. But then I’d see their little faces go blank. I knew I needed something to focus my message when I was working with these younger kids.”

 

Moment of Epiphany

And so, Frankie the Flamingo, the main character in her book, was born. While it’s true the idea had been conceived some time before, it was this moment of epiphany that helped Cath finally put the feathers on Frankie.

The book’s plot is great. Frankie, an inquisitive flamingo, thinks she’s sinking and sets off to do some detective work to find out why. On the way she learns all about water, drains and sewers – and the best ways to save water.

The idea to give Frankie her wings through crowd-funding actually came quite late. The book was already written and partly designed before Cath turned to crowd-funding website Kickstarter to get the book finished and published.

Frankie the Flamingo

 

A Robust Product

“I’d already read Frankie to 832 kids before we even did the Kickstarter campaign,” said Cath. “So I knew kids were engaged with it and I knew we had a product that kids really liked. Knowing it was a robust product gave me the confidence to go out and ask people to put some money behind it.”

After choosing the Kickstarter platform to host her campaign, Cath got the ball rolling. The site asks members to set up a page featuring a written summary of the campaign, the amount they want to raise, details of rewards they offer and a video to market their project. After that, you get a maximum of 60 days to raise your total. If you come up short, you get nothing.

To prevent projects from failing, Kickstarter recommends you host an initial launch party to get your nearest and dearest contributing first. After that, it’s down to you to persuade your professional and personal contacts – as well as strangers – to back your passion and help you get your message out there.

 

Money, Money, Money

“Deciding how much money to go for was difficult,” explains Cath. “I asked for £3,000, but in hindsight I should have asked for more, as we hadn’t factored in various costs that would be involved, like paying the website their percentage and paying for rewards and postage.”

In the end though, Cath’s decision didn’t prove costly as supporters backed her to the tune of £6,000, doubling her intended target and bringing Frankie to life.

She puts her success down to some creative thinking on the rewards she offered – as well as effectively building a buzz on social media.

“In terms of rewards, I knew we had to offer more than just the finished books,” said Cath. “So we had a good think and also offered people the chance to donate books to a school of their choice, or for me to go into a chosen school to read the book to children. We also gave away some of the original illustrations, as well as prints. This broad range of rewards worked really well.

Frankie 2

 

Twitter Chatter

“I also think we used Twitter really well, which proved a great way of generating interest in the project. We’d found several corporate sponsors before we started the crowd-funding campaign, so I used them as a starting point for our Twitter posts.

“So I’d start with a Tweet that said ‘@ (then the username of the business) is already supporting the Frankie the Flamingo Kickstarter campaign – and now you can do it too!’

“The sponsors would then retweet it, which meant their followers would hear about it. We did that throughout the campaign, always highlighting people that had donated, and they then retweeted, which built a really nice buzz. And because we also had great pictures from the illustrator, we also tweeted those. So we did use Twitter a lot and I think we used it well.”

Overall, Cath admits she found the experience both exhilarating and, at times, slightly dispiriting.

 

Totally Addictive

“It’s really addictive,” she said. “During the whole thing, you’re getting alerts on your phone telling you somebody has donated and how much they’ve pledged. When it was over, I really missed that.

“One thing I found difficult was when someone I knew really well didn’t put money in. That sort of rejection I found really hard. On the other side of that, you find people you don’t even know giving you £200. You think ‘oh my god, that’s so nice’. It feels like real validation of what you’re doing.

“But you need to be prepared for your emotions to go all over the place.”

Frankie 3

 

Here’s a selection of Cath’s best advice for anyone embarking on a crowd-funding journey:

1. Have your project as complete as possible before you kick off your campaign

Once you’ve raised your money you feel a huge amount of responsibility to your supporters and you really want to fulfil your obligations. I noticed with a lot of projects on the site, particularly children’s books, that people had written them, but they hadn’t tested them with loads of kids. So I think it’s important to show it’s more than just an idea – you need to be able to show your idea is real and robust.

 

2. Be realistic about the amount you’re asking for

If you ask for £3,000, you need to remember that even if you raise the full amount, you won’t receive all of it. The site takes a percentage and you may also need to pay for extra rewards for your supporters and the cost of sending items out to people. Factor all of those costs into your decision about how much to ask for.

Frankie 4

 

3. Research the tax implications of crowd-funding before you start

I’m quite good at maths, but was shocked how dumb I was at doing the maths for Kickstarter. I decided to do it through my business, ech2o. As a company, we charge VAT. So we now have the issue of whether we’ll have to pay the VAT on our Kickstarter money. I think it might have been better if I’d just gone for it personally. For now, it looks like we’ll spend it all, but then we’ll still have to pay tax on that income. HMRC has clocked on to all the crowd funding money floating around, so my tip would be to research tax properly and really get your head around it.

 

4. Think creatively about the rewards you’re going to offer

Having chosen £3,000, we then had to think about the rewards we’d offer people in return for their donations. If we’d just gone ‘one book for this amount and 10 for that amount’, it’d be boring. So we decided to mix and match. Our range went from £10 for one copy of the book up to £500 for a corporate sponsor where you got your logo featured in the book. In between, we had rewards where we’d donate books to schools of your choice. Or I’d go into a school of your choice to read the book. We also offered original illustrations, as well as prints. It worked really well and all our rewards were chosen.

Frankie 1

 

5. You don’t have to have a really wide network on social media – but it helps

When I started tweeting, I only had 270 contacts on Twitter. But my contacts were great at retweeting my posts, which meant we ended up creating a good buzz. If you have a really good Twitter and Facebook page, it will definitely help you have a successful campaign.

 

6. Make your crowd-funding web page fun

Everything around Frankie the Flamingo is fun, so our Kickstarter page reflected that. So if you’ve got a fun product, make your crowd-funding page fun as well. We also included nice pictures of children reading the book, which was pretty powerful. So if you have interesting photography use it. It’s also important to make a good video. Ben, from Regen Media, kindly produced our video for us to support our project. I think having a professional video really helped our campaign.

the frankie fans 

You can find out more about Cath’s work with sustainable water at www.ech2o.co.uk.

Why Great Design Deserves Great Photography

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Beautiful buildings can almost market themselves. But you can put a much bigger audience in the picture with the right photography. Jessica Taylor, from Architype, tells us more…

 

Jess

 

The idea of a picture painting a thousand words is never more relevant than in the world of architecture. However pioneering, dynamic or forward-thinking a building project is, people will only give it the attention it deserves when they see it for themselves.

Someone who understands the power of pictures is Jessica Taylor, marketing assistant with innovative architectural firm Architype. Jessica describes great photography as ‘priceless’ for the business. It provides a golden ticket for building better media coverage and eliminates the need for expensive paid-for ad campaigns.

To understand the true power of great photography, it’s important to delve a bit deeper into Jessica’s role with Architype. As a vital cog in the marketing department, she’s required to get projects published in the media, submit convincing award entries and bid for new business. Without good photography, her job would be significantly tougher. So it’s no surprise she’s a passionate advocate of the trade.

 

©DennisGilbert/VIEW Wilkinson Primary School. Dennis is great at capturing the vibrancy and uplifting design of our education projects

©DennisGilbert/VIEW
Wilkinson Primary School. Dennis is great at capturing the vibrancy and uplifting design of our education projects

 

“Architype strives to deliver high quality in our buildings,” says Jessica. “So we want to do them justice with quality pictures. It’s an opportunity to familiarize a broad audience with your project and give a very real impression of what that building is like, so it’s high priority for us.”

With architectural photography there really is no place to hide. But if, like Architype, your designs are uplifting and inspiring, then good photography will bring out the best of that. And this can bring tangible benefits to your business. More than you might imagine, in fact.

“Our recently completed University of East Anglia (UEA) Enterprise Centre building has received a huge amount of media attention,” says Jessica.

“We commissioned a professional photographer and the images were absolutely fantastic. They led to us having an awful lot of coverage and we captured new media streams that we wouldn’t necessarily always capture.”

 

©DennisGilbert/VIEW UEA Enterprise Centre, An important focus for this project was the use of alternative low carbon materials and Dennis did a great job bringing out the textures and materiality of the finished building

©DennisGilbert/VIEW
UEA Enterprise Centre. An important focus for this project was the use of alternative low carbon materials and Dennis did a great job bringing out the textures and materiality of the finished building

 

Jessica is sure that this photography was the catalyst for the project being publicised in four different countries, landing four front overs and more than 10 feature length articles.

 

©DennisGilbert/VIEW UEA Enterprise Centre. Bringing together the colour palette, forms and spacial connections inside the Enterprise Centre

©DennisGilbert/VIEW
UEA Enterprise Centre. Bringing together the colour palette, forms and spacial connections inside the Enterprise Centre

 

“The photography was the difference between it being a news item in an industry magazine or something that developed into an in-depth extended article because the photography was really good,” she says.

“Obviously, it is largely about the design merits of the building that forms the real meat of the content, but we do live in a very visual world and people like to see amazing imagery. Good photos are the first thing to capture peoples attention and for magazines in particular, it’s important for them to project themselves as glossy enterprises; if you’ve got great pictures you’re helping them to do that.”

Jessica couldn’t be more certain that investing in good photography delivers an excellent return on your investment.

“Photography can be an expensive exercise, but you have to way-up what the return is on a successful campaign.” says Jessica. “For example, at Architype, we never really advertise. We don’t spend money on placing ads because we get great editorial, and we get great editorial because we get great pictures.

“So although photography can seem expensive, if you’re getting five or six articles in industry magazines because of your pictures, then it pays for itself.”

 

Jessica has learned a few useful secrets. Here are her top tips for getting the best from your photography.

1. Be organised from the start

When it comes to setting dates for a shoot, make sure you have a few options, not just one. As the shoot gets closer, find out the weather forecast and make sure you shoot on the best weather day. Your photographer will be able to help with this – most of them are better at forecasting accurately than a weather man! Permission is also important. Do you have permission to go into the building you need to shoot? If it’s a school, do you have permission to photograph the children or can you only photograph sensitively? Perhaps there’s a good vantage point from a nearby building. Do you have permission to go in and take a picture from their balcony or rooftop?

 

©Leigh Simpson Children learning outdoors at Staunton On Wye Endowed Primary School

©Leigh Simpson
Children learning outdoors at Staunton On Wye Endowed Primary School

 

2. Make a comprehensive list of what you want from the shoot

Normally I’ll sit down with the project architect and make a list of everything we need and put it into a floor plan so we have something to work to. It needs to be accurate because you need to know which side the sunlight’s coming in on and work around the building in a way that follows the light.

 

3. Be really familiar with copyright laws

You can’t get this wrong because it causes upset and bad feeling if you share photos that haven’t been paid for. Respect the photographers you work with. It’s their living at the end of the day, so it’s really important that you honour any copyright agreement you’ve come to.

 

4. Employ a good photographer and share the cost with other project partners if it feels too expensive

Cost wise, there’s not much difference between the day rate of a mediocre photographer and a specialized one. And if you can organise sharing the cost, with three or four project partners it will be much more economical.

 

5. Spend time finding a photographer that’s going to match your brand

Someone who’s interested in architecture, if not an architectural photographer. Do some research for yourself as well as listening to recommendations. Call, get quotes, compare and interview people and see what their own interests are. Talk to them and find someone who can really capture the look you’re going for.

 

6. Accompany the photographer

Lots of photographers get commissioned and do their own thing, but it’s pot luck really what the results will be. If you can afford to have someone to go along with them and work together for the day, it really pays off.

 

7. You need to be patient, because good photography is not something that can be rushed

It’s worthwhile taking your time setting up the shoot and getting the right picture rather than relying on post-production where you can see it’s been doctored. Today, people are really savvy about what’s real and what’s not, so it’s better to get the right picture in the first place.

 

©Leigh Simpson Some patience required in getting this early morning shot at Coed y Brenin Visitors Centre, Snowdonia

©Leigh Simpson
Some patience required in getting this early morning shot at Coed y Brenin Visitors Centre, Snowdonia

 

8. Try to capture a building in use

Use people to bring animation and scale to your pictures. Part of our mission statement at Architype is to deliver uplifting architecture and a lot of that is about how people operate in a building. So putting people in situ always looks so much better.

 

©Leigh Simpson The hall in use at the Willows School

©Leigh Simpson
The hall in use at the Willows School

 

9. Try to get animation from seasons as well

It’s not always possible to shoot in summer, which is obviously always more preferable. But if you have a building finishing in the middle of winter, you can still get nice shots with a low-lying sun. You just have to make the most of the situation.

And a final word from Jessica. “Last year we launched our new branding and that’s really coming into its own now. The photography we commission really complements that,” she says.

“Our buildings speak for themselves, but we have to represent them with the same quality that we design them with. Good photography is the cherry on the cake and it reflects the ambiance and vibrancy of our projects as well as their physicality.

 

“Although photography can be expensive, if you’re getting five or six articles because of your pictures, then it pays for itself.”

 

More Information

Learn more about Architype

Follow Architype on Twitter

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Free Your Mind – An Essential Tip for Better Business

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Potton’s Self Build Academy® gives away hard-earned knowledge and expertise to self-build enthusiasts – for free. Marketing manager Fae Perkins explains how an innovative, free-thinking approach can benefit your business, and its customers

Fae

 

For most of us, protecting our possessions comes naturally. If a stranger in the street asked to borrow your iPad or drive your car, you’d politely – or maybe not politely – tell them no. But there’s a growing trend for businesses to dish out valuable knowledge and expertise for nothing.

It’s an innovative way of marketing yourself – and one that self-build experts Potton are particularly passionate about.

It’s Potton’s business to design bespoke homes for self builders. It’s a challenging arena to be in, with the UK lagging behind the rest of Europe in its number of self builders. It’s in Potton’s interest to sell the self-build process to more and more people and dispel the myths that shows like Grand Designs often purvey – that it’s an option only for the elite, or an emotional rollercoaster that you have to be brave to ride.

 

Information and Inspiration

Potton had this objective in mind when they set up their Self Build Academy®. It was created to offer education, information and inspiration to aspiring self builders across the UK. It brought together a unique range of workshops, events and seminars, each providing potential self builders with the knowledge and confidence to pursue their dream. And they decided to run a large number of them for free.

DSC_0011

On the surface, it might sound like bad business to give away your time and knowledge for no fee. But according to Potton’s marketing manager Fae Perkins, it’s a reliable way of building long-lasting relationships with a committed community of self-build enthusiasts.

“The objectives of the academy are to increase enquiry levels, position Potton as a one-stop shop for self builders, deliver consistent and valuable content, and offer support through education at each stage of a customer’s project,” said Fae.

 

Building Trust

“The way we see it is that by offering complimentary information and education we are building trust with our potential customer base. It would be pretty unlikely that many people would work with us through the academy, then decide to self build with another company they know little about. If they did, we’d have done a poor job through our courses, in reality!

“It goes back to the old ‘know, like and trust’ theory. We aim to impart our knowledge in the hope of encouraging people to pursue self build and ensuring they do it right with Potton.”

The Self Build Academy® contains four core workshops and seminars, each targeted at different stages of the build process. Together, they guide self builders all the way through the process of building their dream home and help them develop the skills needed to successfully complete their project.

On top of that, Potton hosts networking events and pop-up shows to allow people to meet like-minded self builders and visit live sites across the UK. More than 1,000 people came through the academy last year and Fae thinks numbers in 2015 will far exceed this.

Photo: Chadwicks

Photo: Chadwicks

 

Finding Land and Moving Forward

“What the academy does well is aid customers in moving from one milestone to the next,” she says. “For those who would love to self build but have not found a plot, we educate them in how to do it successfully, allowing them to find land and move forward.

“For those who have placed their frame order, but are perhaps apprehensive about moving forward, we offer a seminar on preparing for frame delivery, where they also meet their dedicated Potton contracts manager, who can answer any questions and give them the confidence to progress. The academy acts as a general comforting catalyst for those going through the self-build process.”

Photo: Chadwicks

Photo: Chadwicks

As we touched on before, it also gives Potton the opportunity to present an honest image of self building, which rarely squares up with the image of high drama and emotion that, let’s be honest, we love to see on TV, but really don’t want to experience ourselves.

 

Sexed-Up Disaster Stories

“TV shows love to ‘sex-up’ self build by portraying disaster stories, diminished budgets or nightmare project management,” says Fae. “It creates viewer excitement, so they’re less likely to show a flawless build. In reality, yes, things do go wrong, but nothing that can’t be fixed. We have lots of top tips on the Self Build Academy® website – one explains the importance of planning and making decisions at the early stage, to avoid costly amendments on site.”

Potton’s free spirit has brought lots of benefits to the business, including building greater trust in the brand and creating new business leads.

“People generally trust brands that are transparent and give value for money, and we achieve both through the academy,” says Fae. “We want to portray to our future customers that we are experts in our field, so we have no problem standing in front of a room full of people and covering topics such as energy efficiency, scaffolding requirements or why you should opt for timber frame as a structure.”

DSC_0054

 

Bring Your Dream to Life

“We’re also fortunate to have four, soon to be five, fully furnished show homes at our Self Build Show Centre in St Neots. This is a real asset to our brand and allows people to visit the properties and imagine what it would be like to live in one. I think when you’re investing such a large amount of money, the biggest purchase of your life, it’s definitely important to see, feel and experience the end product.


“The academy also does a good job at bringing new people to Potton’s door. Prospects feel comfortable in the academy space as it’s not a sales one. It’s hard for us to accurately measure the results, but we know it’s working hard for the business.”

 

Innovative Marketing Solution

Overall, Fae feels offering free training is a sound marketing solution in today’s multi-media marketplace.

“We welcome all self builders to the academy, not just those building with Potton, so it may put our brand in front of someone who hadn’t heard of us,” she says. “If they then decide to build with us, or come to us for their next build then the academy has done its job.

“The academy has definitely forced us into creating much more worthy content. We still have a way to go, but have populated the academy website with blogs, top tips and resources. I think it has also played a part in strengthening our place in the self-build market, enhancing our position as market leaders and experts. We are fortunate to have a staff team with a vast amount of experience and knowledge, and we are capitalising on this and sharing it.”

 “People generally trust brands that are transparent and give value for money, and we achieve both through the academy.”

If you’d like further information on the courses and events offered through the Self Build Academy, visit www.selfbuildacademy.co.uk

 

Top Tips for Creating Consistent Content

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Consistency is just as important as quality when it comes to content marketing. Ben Adam-Smith from Regen Media explains how improving your systems can make this important aspect of modern business more manageable

System running smoothly 

Frequency and consistency are essential ingredients in any content marketing strategy. Viewers, listeners or readers will quickly drift away if you fail to give them what they’re expecting, when they’re expecting it.

Ben Adam-Smith produces a flurry of content for both his businesses – Regen Media and House Planning Help. From podcasts to blogs, there’s always something new to work on and squeeze into his busy schedule.

 

Personal Choice

Ben believes the frequency of content you produce should be personal to every enterprise. But when you set it, you need to stick with it.

“Frequency is something that you set yourself,” says Ben. “It could be once a month, once a week or once a day. You don’t have to go overboard straight away – but once you’ve set your frequency, you really should keep to it. You’re setting expectations with your viewers or listeners. You’re telling them when they should expect something from you.”

Ben had never had any problems meeting frequency until last year, when his now one-year-old arrived. It’s a reality that many businesses face when personal situations change or you decide to increase your output or frequency of content.

“Having a baby exposed holes in my systems,” says Ben. “It’s the same for other businesses too. Maybe you do have time to do all the things in your content strategy, but it often gets to the point where you can’t do it all yourself. You might be okay if you just produce really simple content. But if you’re keen to increase quality and value, then you get to a point where you have no more capacity. It becomes so difficult.”

 

Systems Equal Success

Ben solved his content conundrum by assessing his systems and working out how he could delegate certain processes. He sums it up with a quote he heard at Podcast Movement 2015 from entrepreneur John Lee Dumas: “Systems equal consistency – and consistency equals success.”

“Looking at my own systems exposed that they’re all very dependent on me,” he says. “So I needed a strategy where I could be involved to a much smaller degree. It’s difficult, because you want to do it all. But if you want to build your business, you have to accept that you can’t.”

Ben broke down his processes and worked out how other suppliers could deliver different parts of the puzzle.

“For my podcast, you have the researching of guests, the interview, editing, and writing up show notes. When you break it down you realise there are plenty of efficiencies you can make.”

 

Relinquish Control

The part Ben found it hardest to release the reins on was the editing of his podcast.

“I worked in radio for a long time and always did my editing myself, but the way I like to do it takes a long time, so now I’ve finally hired an editor. You realise, ‘okay it may not be exactly as I would do it’ but it’s up to me to feedback – and it means you can get the content out there when people expect it.”

It’s this balance between quality and consistency that Ben feels is particularly important.

“Of course, quality is important, but there’s something really important about consistency too,” he says. “For me, it’s just as important as quality. So if you’re just starting out, the quality may not be there straight away. But we’re all on a learning journey, so it’s important to get out there and produce it regularly. You shouldn’t expect it to be amazing straight away. Just do it – and you’ll hone your art over time.”

 

Here are Ben’s top tips for getting on top of consistency:

 

1. Find your sweet spot

When you’re starting out, don’t try to do too much in one go. Build up slowly and get a feel for the work that’s involved. By doing so, you’ll find your sweet spot and work out what you can deliver consistently, without compromising on quality. Just like producing too little content, producing too much can also be counter-productive. Ultimately, you’ve got to look at your business and your goals. Understand why you’re doing this.

 

2. Simplify your processes

If you need to produce very frequent content, then it’s a good idea to simplify your processes. You don’t want it to become a chore, otherwise you’ll take the fun out of it and people will notice. Maybe you could leave out editing all together and broadcast the full interview. Or perhaps you could just provide a summary of the show in your show notes, rather than more elaborate ones. You need to create a plan that’s workable and allows you to meet your frequency requirements without losing your enthusiasm.

 

3. Group important tasks together

Think about which tasks you can group together and also those you can automate to reduce the time spent on them. For example, if you spend a lot of time organising interviews – going back and forth to find suitable times – there’s a useful app called ScheduleOnce. It allows you to share your calendar and shows your contacts the time blocks you have available.

It also takes a lot of time out of your day if you can do lots of the same task at once. I love doing one-on-one interviews, which can be time consuming with travel etc. So at the International Passivhaus Conference, I went a day early and did a number of face-to-face interviews in my hotel room all on the same day.

 

4. Delegation

Take an inventory of tasks that go into content creating and consider which ones you really have to do. Quite often there aren’t many. If you have the resources, then get people to help you. I found it hard to let go with editing – but if you want to move your business on, you have to do it. Finding good people isn’t difficult. Websites like Elance, Upwork and PeoplePerHour all have user rating systems so you get a good sense of what people are like. But it’s important to remember that you get what you pay for.

 

5. It’s okay to take a break

If you have a change of circumstance, like starting a family, I think it’s okay to ramp down your content creation. On the whole, people understand. Also, if you’ve lost enthusiasm – you might even hate what you’re doing – then there’s no shame in stopping that particular aspect as you’ll still have learned a lot along the way. You have to remember that this is work. You’re choosing to do it to further your marketing, so if it’s not working, there’s no shame in stopping.

 

How have you delivered consistent content to your community? Please share any tips and tactics that have worked for you.

How Can Building Firms Get More From Twitter?

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With the right Twitter strategy, you could be providing better customer service and hooking up with new clients in a matter of weeks. Su Butcher from Just Practising gives us her tips on how to get the most out of the platform

Su-Butcher

It’s not easy to get your head around hashtags and tweets. When something seems so impenetrable, it’s easy to feel it’s irrelevant to your construction business. But Su Butcher, from social media consultancy Just Practising, is here to challenge those misconceptions. If you’re ignoring Twitter, you might be missing out on an easy way to support your clients better – and find new ones.

Su advises construction companies on how to use the Internet to achieve all sorts of business ends. And she’s seen companies of all shapes and sizes get rapid and lasting benefits from using Twitter.

“The construction industry is built on relationships between individuals,” said Su. “And Twitter is also about relationships between individuals. Everyone in construction works with people they know and gets introduced to people they know. And they recommend people they know. It’s a very networked industry.

“Many construction companies and individuals use LinkedIn to connect and talk to people they know, but it’s quite a closed network.

“Twitter, on the other hand, is much more open. It’s also important, because it’s such a large network. The last time they published statistics, there were 15 million active Twitter users in the UK.

“It’s a very useful tool for professionals to meet new people, to learn and carry out networking conversations more effectively.”

Who’s Your Audience?

Before you decide whether Twitter’s right for your building business, you need to work out who your audience is, where they are and which platforms they’re using.

“One thing I do with clients who want to know what type of social media to use is recommend they do an audit,” said Su. “This can tell you where your audience is and what they’re doing there, so you can decide what platforms to use.

“It’s also important to look at these platforms as part of an overall strategy for using the Internet – as everything is connected together.

“For example, people get hung up on Twitter only having 140 characters, but it doesn’t. You only need to include a link and you could connect to anything on the Internet. It has no boundaries.”

So what are the secrets of using Twitter effectively for construction companies?

  1. For individuals

The first way of using Twitter is as an individual, rather than having a company or branded Twitter account. An example of an individual who uses it really well is Ming Cheng (@ArchitectMing). He’s an architect who works for a large practice in London and is involved in product specification. He uses Twitter to talk directly to product manufacturers. If he has a quick question about a product, he asks it on Twitter. It’s very convenient for him to do that, because he can just leave it with them and wait for a reply. He doesn’t have to sit there on the phone waiting for a response. Essentially, he’s offering product companies an opportunity to have a conversation. Some companies respond to this well – and some don’t. But when you’re on Twitter, you really need to be prepared to have the conversation. If someone asks you something and you don’t reply, they can get a bit miffed. And if you ignore people, they might go and talk to your competitor instead!

Screen Shot Ming Cheng

  1. For companies to publish

Whilst individuals are the key building blocks of Twitter, there is a role for a company account. An example is publishing useful content; writing useful stuff should be part of your social media strategy. You should be making things that your target audience will be interested in talking about and sharing. An example of a client who does this well is SIG Design and Technology (@SIGDesignTech). A core part of their strategy is blogging about roofing to an audience that doesn’t know too much about the technical side of the subject. So they use Twitter to share blog posts and invite conversations about them. It also acts, from a brand point of view, as a place where people can ask questions. They’ve had a lot of success using Twitter to support their blog.

Screen Shot SIG

  1. As a company hub

You can also use a company account as a hub for individuals on Twitter. A good example of a company that’s doing this is Celotex Insulation (@Celotex). Celotex use their branded account as a central hub for all things happening around the country on Twitter. It includes several of their staff, their technical people, their sales people and all marketing activities. If you look at the tweets and replies, you see they provide technical advice directly via their Twitter account. Equally, if you have a group of people trying to achieve something, such as promote an event, Twitter is marvellous for sharing information about it. You can tweet from the account leading up to the event, during it and after it, and if people have questions, they can come and ask you directly. The branded Twitter account acts as a beginning point for people to talk to you and your organisation.

Screen Shot Celotex

Having worked with a broad spectrum of businesses, from one-man band architects, to SMEs and now much larger firms, Su has a great template for building an engaged following. It’s a blueprint that can generate new leads and deliver on business goals in a matter of weeks. Here’s her seven-point plan for getting the most out of Twitter.

  1. Begin with your goals

If you’re going to have a social media plan, you need to decide where you want to go. Ask yourself what success looks like, and then try to measure it in something tangible. You can set intermediate goals, for example to have more followers. When people follow you, it suggests they like what you’re doing. But also think about what you really want people to do as a result of engaging with you on Twitter. This depends on what your business objectives are. Ask yourself what success looks like generally and this will help you decide whether Twitter is best place to be doing it – and where else you should be doing it.

  1. Carry out an audit

Find out whether the audience you have and people you want to reach are using Twitter or not. Also work out whom in your organisation should be using it. Is it the marketing person or should it really be someone else? Small companies often think we’ll just give the secretary some PR and she can tweet it, but it doesn’t achieve very much because they may not be the right person to have the right conversations.

  1. Time to connect

When you know who’s going to be using it, you need to start building your network. Everyone has a network of contacts, so start off by finding and connecting with those people.

  1. Listen

The next step is to start listening to what your network is saying on Twitter. One of the really useful ways to do this is to use search. People often make the mistake of thinking they need to be on Twitter all the time in case someone says something you need to hear, but by using the right search tools you can get round all of that.

  1. Have conversations

Once you’ve found out what people are talking about, start having conversations and joining in. You’ll feel more confident if you begin by having conversations with people you already know in the real world. But because Twitter is public, what happens is those people may then introduce you to new people. And in no time, the conversations will lead to new relationships.

  1. Be useful

This is probably the most important part of the process. You can be useful in so many ways. For example, you can introduce people with common interests, or who are able to help each other. Or you can be useful through making and publishing useful content. By being useful, you will attract people with similar interests.

  1. Measure and review

Every month, ask yourself whether you’re achieving the goals you’ve set yourself. Twitter has its own analytics system, which is free to use and you can also measure Twitter traffic to your website. The things that are working, you do more of. Those that aren’t working, you stop doing.

You can find more useful resources for Twitter on Su’s website. She also runs in-house training groups for groups of 3 or more people.

 

More Information

Follow Su Butcher on Twitter

Learn about Twitter in construction

Useful resources about Twitter

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How to Inject More Personality and Passion into your Blog Writing

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Lloyd Alter is an acclaimed, entertaining and sometimes-controversial blogger. His most popular post racked up a staggering 2 million views in two days. His work never fails to deliver on personality and passion – and here are his tips on how you can do the same

Lloyd Alter

If you’re looking for advice on blog writing, who better to turn to than Lloyd Alter. He’s been blogging successfully about architecture and energy efficiency since before blogging software even existed.

Whether he’s praising the latest Passivhaus building or robustly challenging common opinion on net zero energy, his work never fails to convey his personality and passion.

The two ‘P’s are the Holy Grail of good writing. The secret ingredient most bloggers strive for, but can’t achieve. In a moment, Lloyd will share his secrets.

Before that, some background on Lloyd. He’s been an architect, developer and prefab promoter. And it was when he became the latter that he decided he needed to promote himself – and turned to blogging.

Blazing a Trail

But this was before the days of WordPress, Tumblr and Blogger. So he was coding in HTML every day, just to get his message out there. By blazing a trail in this way, he became the go-to internet expert on prefab.

Lloyd was a big fan of TreeHugger when it launched in 2004. He liked what they were doing and decided to send them some tips and articles. After a few years freelancing, they asked him to write for them full time.

“Suddenly, I was a successful blogger instead of a failing prefab salesman,” said Lloyd.

He later became managing editor, but decided to return to being a writer. “My posts attracted the most page views,” said Lloyd. “So every time I edited rather than wrote, it was costing me page views.”

Now, Lloyd’s busy career includes writing for TreeHugger, MNN and The Guardian, along with a host of other lecturing and educational commitments.

Secrets of Good Blogging

Lloyd’s unique style and left-of-centre viewpoints bring him a huge number of page views and repeat readers. So what does he believe is the secret of good blogging?

“It sounds like a cliche, but it comes down to having something to say,” he said. “You’ve got to have some expertise in what you’re talking about and you have to be passionate about what you’re saying.

“Too many blogs simply slam things up for the page views. Because we’re an advertiser supported site, page views are extremely important, but you have to be careful. I think it’s a mistake to write something just because you think it’ll be popular or go viral, rather than saying something that you really believe.”

Challenge the Status Quo

That’s not to say that it doesn’t pay to challenge popular opinion from time to time.

“I sometimes take contrarian positions because sometimes I’m contrarian and don’t agree with the common wisdom, particularly on all this smart home technology – even on all kinds of issues,” he said. “Sometimes people come just to see that.

“But overall, the reason most people read my work is because they tell me I make things really clear and simple to understand. It’s not like an architect talking to an architect, which god forbid you never want to be in the middle of! I have the ability to take a complex subject – be it energy efficiency or Passivhaus – and make it understandable. That’s what I try to do more than anything else.”

So what techniques does Lloyd use when he sits down to pen a post?

“I see a concept, get an understanding of it and try to convey it,” he said. “I’ve become passionate about Passivhaus, for example, and really negative about net zero energy.

Good Writing is an Art

“Explaining net zero energy is really hard, because there are 50 different definitions running around. That becomes a sort of art – explaining new things to people who don’t normally read about them.

“I also just did a post about a report that patted everyone on the head because the US is using half as much energy per person as in 1980. It was based on energy use of new homes per square foot. But the size of new homes has doubled – so energy use has gone up 50%! The whole thing was almost fraudulent. We’re spending more on energy efficiency, but totally just standing still.

“So I took this subject and distilled an 80-page report into 80 words. I took the reader through the report and a bit of history. But I didn’t just report on it, I added an opinion – that it could be looked at as either a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty story.”

TreeHugger

Hold Something Back

It’s these passionate views that make Lloyd’s writing so successful. But he says it is possible to give away too much of yourself.

“I’ve had some quite vicious attacks sometimes about saying too much of what I think and not enough about the story,” he said. “But I have lots of repeat readers who come to expect this. Last week, someone said: ‘I can’t believe it, I’ve agreed with Lloyd Alter on two stories this week!’ I like it when I get that.”

Here are Lloyd’s five top tips for injecting more personality and passion into your blog writing:

  1. Don’t get mad, get even

It’s a famous phrase that I really think applies to blogging. Don’t get angry, but make a good counter point. Always look for the counter point where you can add something to a discussion that’s different. Unless you stake out an opinion that’s different, you’re probably not going to get noticed.

  1. Work from your strengths

It’s an old political line which says don’t go trying to dig out people who would never vote for your party. I used to write about anything I thought I could write about. Now, I write about design, housing and technologies that I understand – I write about what I know. I think that’s really important, especially when you get established as a writer.

  1. Never stop reading

This is important. It’s really difficult to write a lot and broaden your exposure if you don’t keep learning and reading.

  1. Never be afraid to say you’re wrong

I have half a dozen posts where I’ve totally changed my opinion on lots of things over the past few years. Other people have written things that have opened my eyes and changed my views. And it always makes a great post when you admit you’re wrong. People like it when you say, ‘you know what, I was wrong about that’.

  1. Get yourself a honking big monitor

This is a technical one, but so many people work on tiny notebooks. I normally hook my MacBook up to a 20-inch monitor. When I do have to work on a smaller screen, my productivity takes a huge hit.

The post Lloyd is proudest of is one he wrote last year titled ‘In praise of the Dumb Home’. “It built and built and continues to build,” he said. “It also got me on to the lecture circuit and led to work on MNN.”

But however experienced and popular you are, sometimes it’s hard to put your finger on why some posts capture the Zeitgeist.

“The most popular post I ever wrote was about mirrored glass tree houses in Sweden,” he said.

tv-rendering-trees

“It happened to get picked up and put on the front page of Yahoo. It got 2 million page views in two days and completely broke our site! There was nothing terrific about what I said, and nothing that really made a difference and yet it was by far the most popular.

“It’s just the luck of search and the luck of going viral.”

What Podcasting Has Done For My Business

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Mark R LePage, from EntreArchitect, explains how podcasting has given him a platform to be a positive force for change in his industry. And how having a ‘pod’ presence has brought big benefits for his business

©2013 Scott R LePage

©2013 Scott R LePage

With the right balance of personality, commitment and good content, podcasting offers those running businesses a great way of connecting with like-minded people – and can deliver significant business benefits.

One man who proves the premise is Mark R LePage, owner of EntreArchitect, an online platform for small firm architects that he runs alongside his own architecture business. Through the combined platform of a blog and podcast, Mark helps his audience of fellow architects build better businesses and better lives.

The platform started out as just a blog in 2007, but by 2009 Mark decided he wanted to do more with it. So he announced to his audience that he was going to relaunch as a blog and podcast – and turn it into something that could truly influence the profession.

Making Strong Connections

So what was it about podcasting that appealed to Mark?

“I’m a podcast fan,” he said. “I don’t watch TV or listen to much radio anymore, so much of my entertainment and knowledge gathering is through online tools and platforms.

“When I launched the new platform for EntreArchitect, I wanted to reach as many small firm architects as I could. And I knew that podcasting was a good way to not only learn and consume content, but also for listeners to make a strong connection with me personally.”

For many business owners, a lack of technical knowhow deters them from entering the podcast arena. But Mark says there are lots of resources out there to help you get started.

Getting The Basics Right

“Before you do anything, one of the hardest things is understanding how it all works, how to upload your podcast and all the other technical things,” he said. “But there are some great tutorials on YouTube – particularly by Pat Flynn of the Smart Passive Income podcast and podcast consultant Cliff Ravenscraft – which taught me everything I needed to do at a basic level to set it up.”

Among the early challenges faced by Mark were learning how to be an engaging presenter and simply finding time to do the podcast regularly. But with determination, perseverance and passion, Mark really began to build his community and assert significant influence.

“The first step was to have the mindset that you’re dedicated to doing it – that it’s influencing other people and benefiting them. You need to commit that you’re going to do the podcast on a regular basis and promise your public that you’re going to do it.

“In terms of hearing your voice and recording it, over time you just get used to doing it and get good at it. I’ve actually grown to like it and I’ve got better at it.”

EntreArchitect

Becoming an Influential Leader

Mark’s podcasts get around 7,000 downloads a month, and he’s seen some interesting developments as his community has grown.

“The main problem for small firm architects is that they’ve never really trained in running a business,” said Mark. “For decades we’ve suffered with the challenge of running a business without having the knowledge to do so.

“The podcast has helped me get this important message out there on a regular basis and it’s now having a real influence on our profession. I think the AIA (American Institute of Architects) are noticing what I’m doing. They’re recognising that small firms need assistance and they’re responding by proving more business resources.”

As well as giving Mark a platform to inspire and influence, it has also had indirect benefits on his own architecture business.

“My businesses are both very separate,” said Mark. “There’s no overlap other than the fact that my clients see me as a leader in my profession.

“When they search my name, it’s clear what I’m doing. So the leadership part influences clients. But it also benefits my EntreArchitect business as I run an academy as part of it, so the podcast helps me get the message out about the products I have to offer which support the platform.”

More Than Just a Podcast

Mark is proud of his podcast and the impact a niche broadcast can have. But he thinks anyone who’s looking to influence a community needs more than just a podcast to be effective.

“If you really want to influence a community then as well as the podcast, you need a place for that community to come together and comment,” he said. “It could be a blog that you can tie everything back to or a live Facebook page or other social media.”

Social media also plays a big role is helping Mark maintain momentum and ensure the content he puts out there is relevant and engaging.

“I’m very active online and on social media,” said Mark. “I interact with my community every day. I also have a newsletter that goes out once a week which is very popular and I get a lot of response from that. So I’m constantly getting follow ups or responses to the things I’m publishing on social media or my newsletter.

“So there’s a constant generation of ideas just responding to these comments. On social media, people have a question and I answer it, so there’s always a topic for a podcast and new content to share.”

Mark’s Tips For Making a Podcast That Benefits Your Business:

  1. In addition to your podcast, you need a blog or other platform where you can communicate with your community – whether it’s a blog or an active Facebook group. It’s no good pumping out content to the world, but offering no way to respond.
  2. Audio quality matters. I don’t have the best equipment, but I do the best I can with what I have. I’ll invest more as I grow. The same goes for presenting. I’m intentionally practising and getting better at being on the microphone. You can have great content but if you don’t present it very well, no one will listen.
  3. Having a focused niche is important – you can’t talk about everything all the time.
  4. You need to interact with your community. You need to get out there and communicate with the people you’re trying to influence in order to gain information about whether you’re doing a good job, for content ideas and to promote what you’re doing.
  5. Build relations with other people who are doing similar things, such as other podcasters that are in a similar niche to you. Don’t see them as competitors, see them as collaborators. By helping each other you’ll both grow and the whole group can be more powerful and influential.

 

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Mark R. LePage, AIA, is Partner in Charge of Operations at the New York-based residential architecture firm, Fivecat Studio. He is also the founder of EntreArchitect.com (Entrepreneur Architect), an online resource inspiring small firm architects to build better businesses. Mark writes a weekly blog, hosts the EntreArchitect Podcast and has recently launched EntreArchitect Academy, a private online community for architects seeking success in business, leadership and life. Learn more at EntreArchitect.com.

10 Lessons I’ve Learned in my First Year as a Blogger

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Architect Elrond Burrell launched his lively, plain English blog on Passivhaus last year. So what has he learned from a year in the blogosphere? 

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Elrond Burrell is passionate about designing buildings that are affordable, comfortable and healthy to live in – and which have the minimum impact on the environment. It’s a passion he puts into practice at the firm where he works, Architype. They’re one of the UK’s leading Passivhaus and sustainable architecture companies.

He’s long been an active and outspoken participant on social media, interacting and commenting regularly on matters of environmental and sustainable design. It was this evident passion that saw his peers prompt Elrond to start his own Passivhaus blog.

“Because I was active on social media anyway, establishing relationships with others in the industry, I found myself commenting on Passivhaus and sustainable building a lot,” he said.

“A couple of people said to me that it was unusual to have someone who was so knowledgeable and outspoken about Passivhaus and suggested I do something for myself. That was what really prompted me to think about blogging.”

Conflict Resolution

Elrond loves to write. In fact, he goes as far as saying that if he had an alternative career, it would be as a writer. But if you think that made starting a blog any easier, you’d be wrong.

“There was a lot of deliberation when I started thinking about writing the blog,” he said. “It took me a long time before I published anything.

“My main concerns were about what I could and couldn’t write about in a personal capacity. The blog is a personal project, so I have to be careful not to write specifically about Architype, clients or projects I’m working on.

“That conflict between work and personal opinions was a tricky line to tread – and there are still some grey areas. It took a few months of thinking about that before I got the guts up to publish.”

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Avalanche of Ideas

Elrond’s second concern was what to write about. So he embarked on the ambitious task of scheduling ideas – one blog every two weeks – for the entire year. Each one would be based on questions or challenges he encountered around Passivhaus and would provide a few key answers.

“What always interests me is when you work with clients you hear the misconceptions and misunderstandings people have about adopting Passivhaus. So these were a great starting point.”

With the planning in place, Elrond stepped into a brave new world of blogging. And here are 10 key lessons he’s learned:

  1. Tone down your perfectionism

It always takes much longer to write than I anticipate. I’ve had to learn to tone down my perfectionist streak. Early on, I was drafting something, then editing it, then worrying whether I should have done it in a different way. What I’ve learned is that at some point, you say ‘it’s done, it’s good enough’ and you hit publish.

  1. Your schedule is sacrosanct

I decided early on to publish a post every two weeks. And having a schedule for this was important for two reasons. Firstly, it meant I did it – otherwise it was too easy to put it off. Secondly, reliable, regular posting helps people get engaged because they know something is coming. The most important thing is to keep going. Regularity is as important as the quality of your work.

  1. Collaboration is key

Working with other people is beneficial in terms of generating different quality of content. I’ve done two interview-type posts with a structural engineer and builder. I use their comments to reinforce my message, help flesh out my own ideas and get a good synergy between their words and mine.

  1. Controversial titles are good for traffic

I wrote a piece called, 10 Things I Hate About Passivhaus. It was kind of tongue in cheek and based around the film 10 Things I Hate About You. In that film, through hating each other, two characters eventually fall in love. The blog was similar. It said that in order to adopt Passivhaus, you need to get to know it first and change your mind about a few things. It caused a massive stir, with triple the normal traffic. But I’d be cautious about being too attention-grabbing. I’d rather get people who want to get involved in the subject rather than those just looking at the blog because of a controversial headline.

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  1. Be clear on your ideas

I find it easier – and I write better – if I spend time getting a clear idea of what I want to say before I start writing. I’m also a fan of writing in small chunks and then checking they all fit together at the end. So I’ll tackle the intro, make sure I’m happy with that, then each key point, and then the summary. Then I’ll give it a final proofread to check it flows well.

  1. Short is sweet

It’s really important to write shorter sentences. With technical subjects, it’s easy to have a long, in-depth style. But actually, in terms of getting people to read what you’ve written – and feel it’s fast paced and easy to understand – it’s better to write punchier sentences.

  1. Define your target readers

At the beginning, I tried to establish who my target readers were, which helps me to keep my posts relevant and engaging. I established that my readers would be either self builders, architects or design professionals looking for information on Passivhaus, or corporate clients keen to find out more. I’m also trying to provide resources that take Passivhaus back to basics to see what response I get. I want it to be an evergreen resource for people new to Passivhaus, to try and extend the blog’s reach.

  1. Book reviews boost traffic

I had the idea of reviewing Passivhaus books quite early on, where I’d take out the key points and get people to think about them. So I wrote to authors who had published an English language book on Passivhaus and asked for a review copy. It’s been great on a number of levels. You establish a relationship with the author, who’s an influencer in the sector, you get a free copy of a book you’re interested in, and you bring a new audience to your site.

  1. Ideas flow once you’re up and running

I found that once I got going, I was overflowing with content ideas, so I’ve barely referred back to my original list. It’s important to make a note of good ideas when you get them – or you’ll forget them later! I’ve got so many things to write about now, that I can’t possibly fit them all in. I’ve also learned to borrow ideas from other disciplines. Lots of Passivhaus writing is quite insular, but I want to push the boundaries of understanding Passivhaus and get it out to a wider audience.

  1. Fresh ideas grow your audience

I recently added a pop-up to the blog, which displays when it looks like you might be leaving the site. It gives people an easy opportunity to subscribe and has increased my number of subscribers considerably. I’m also using MailChimp to send a newsletter out when each post gets published. While the mail used to just be a summary of the blog and a link to it, I now write a few paragraphs of original content that share my thoughts on various conversations I’ve had or my thoughts on projects I’m working on. I refer to it as ‘insider information’ – although I don’t share any specific details – and it is an experiment to see if it entices more people to subscribe and feel privileged as a subscriber.

You can read and subscribe to Elrond’s blog at elrondburrell.com