How roofing contractors can improve their social search rankings [+video]

Search engine optimization (SEO) has been rapidly evolving over the past few years. For example, in October 2009 Google first introduced its social search strategy, and have since introduced the +1 button and the Google+ social media platform. These three things alone have to some degree minimalized the value of traditional SEO practices.

With more than a 60% market share in web search, Google remains king so like them or not, you need to play by their rules. How does a roofing contractor like yourself get the search rankings you need at a time when the rules are evolving so rapidly? Here are five things you can do right now:

Content
The first is content. Despite the rapid pace of change, one thing that has remained constant and is actually now more true than ever before is that good, relevant content is still the most important thing when it comes to SEO. Your roofing company should be committed to regularly producing high quality content.

Content Diversity
The second is content diversity. A traditionally optimized website is no longer enough to rank well for top industry keywords. In addition to text, you also need to produce video and photo content that is also optimized with proper tags and descriptions. Downloadable content like eBooks, slideshows and white papers can also be indexed, and help tell search engines that you are a producer of good, relevant, diverse content for the roofing industry.

Google's +1 Button
The third is Google's +1 button, which when clicked is a signal to Google that someone thinks your content is valuable. Just having this button on your website's home page isn't enough. Every piece of content you produce, including every page of your roofing website should have social sharing buttons, and especially the +1 button.

Social Sharing
The fourth is social sharing. Sharing content across various social media platforms has become extremely influential in rankings for all search engines, who now track how much your content is shared by others. Social sharing buttons on everything you produce (even in your email newsletters) is incredibly important to make it easy for people to do so.

Everyone Works in Marketing
The fifth is your marketing department. Content sharing is so important that everyone who works for your roofing company needs to pitch in. If all of your employees share your company's blog posts, YouTube videos, Tweets, and Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn posts across their own social networks, it turns the entire company into a marketing department.

The takeaway is that social search is here to stay. Producing good, quality, diverse content that is shared frequently by different people across social media is how you will get found online before your competitors when people in your area search for roofing services.

If you would like to discuss this further, need help getting started, or want to get your company to the next level, please feel free to email RoofPal@gmail.com any time.


This edition of the RoofPal Marketing Podcast is brought to you by KM Coatings - the last roof you'll ever need! KM Coatings has been manufacturing high quality, energy efficient reflective roof coatings since 1986. For more information or learn how to become a certified installer, please visit http://www.KMCoatingsMfg.com.

Use your roofing competitor's own marketing materials against them to win jobs

As I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed this morning, I came across this instructional video from Firestone that a roofing contractor posted to his customers to educate them as to how they install the RubberGard EPDM rubber roofing membrane systems they sell:



Full disclosure before I proceed: quite a few of my clients (roofing contractors and roofing material manufacturers) are involved with roof coatings and foam roof systems, so I am a bit predisposed to the benefits those systems tout. I also have a professional background in industrial engineering and process optimization, so I tend to look for even the smallest inefficiencies, rework, potential for process/system failures, labor and material waste, etc.

Honestly, I was blown away that a roofing contractor would share a video like this, or that the manufacturer would put it on YouTube. Here's why...

To the naked eye, this video seems like something I would absolutely want to show my potential roofing customers. Professionally shot and edited by the manufacturer, it features two well-groomed, clean-cut, seemingly caucasion roofers installing a complex yet waterproof roofing system that will last for years to come. This helps my customers to validate their decision to hire a professional roofing contractor, right? Well, yes... and no.

There are always two sides to every coin. If I am your competitor and am alternatively recommending a seamless, energy efficient low-slope roofing system such as reflective roof coatings (including restoration coating systems) and/or a spray polyurethane foam (SPF) roof system, I would be equally if not more motivated to show the customer we are each competing for work from this same video. Why? Because the flaws of your system and the selling points of my system become even more obvious when they are compared side-by-side.

After watching the video above and considering the opportunities for failure (leaks), how labor intensive it is, the cost of the materials, lack of energy efficiency benefits, the need for tear-off (landfill impact, additional cost), etc., what happens when that same customer we are competing for hears all of this while watching that video, then watches something like this, which is even amateurly shot...

... followed up by a video that explains all the other benefits such as energy efficiency, no tear-off or landfill impact, less labor costs, less expensive material costs, etc. like this one:



There are even more egregious examples such as this one on torch applied roofing systems, which show the customer you are using a lit blowtorch on their roof:



or even this one on installing an EPDM ballasted system, which shows all the complexities and potential failures of the first video, but this one adds river rock (i.e., landscaping) on their roof:



The marketing message here is two-fold:

1. Use your competitors' marketing materials against them
2. Make sure you have a rebuttal for any negatives your competitors could point out about the roof system you are proposing, and proactively address them

Don't let your competition have the final word with your customer about the pro's and con's of the roofing systems being bid. Make sure you are being proactive with great content to share, specific selling points, well thought-out rebuttals, and an explanation of the benefits, pricing, and more for any system you propose.

If you have any questions or would like some assistance developing marketing packages that address these points for the roofing systems you install, please comment below or feel free to email me at RoofPal@gmail.com.

How roofing contractor social media connections affect search results

-
Everyone's search results in Google, Yahoo! and Bing are different based on not only where they are searching, but also by who they are connected to on social media. This is because search engine algorithms assume that because you and I are connected, my content should be more influential to your search results than the content of people you aren't connected to.
-
For example, if you follow @RoofPal on Twitter or are friends with 'RoofPal Chris' on Facebook and do a Google search for 'roofing article writing', several articles I have written for roofing contractors will come up in the first few pages.
-
Using Conklin Roofing Systems Independent Business Owner Randy Patton as as example, the first three listings in his Google search results are RoofPal articles because we are connected on multiple social media networks. But if you are not connected to RoofPal in any way and do a Google search for 'roofing article writing', some of my articles will come up, but not nearly as many.
-
So what does this mean for your roofing company?

1. Roofing contractors can now directly influence the search engine results of the people they are connected to, even when they aren't looking for your company.
2. Traditional SEO practices are no longer as important as they used to be. My top results for a search term will be different than yours even if we are in the same geographic area because we are connected to different people online.
3. There is now a greater incentive to grow your social networks as large as possible. By simply connecting with a prospective roofing customer, you are effectively getting free targeted advertising because your content often will rank higher than your competitors who aren't connected to them.

The takeaway is to connect with as many of your existing and prospective customers as you can on all the social media platforms you participate on. To make this work even better, put a link to your profile page for each social network you participate on in the footer of your emails, on your blog and website, and anywhere else it makes sense.
-
This edition of the RoofPal Marketing Podcast is brought you by Monkeyrack - the ultimate extension ladder stabilization tool. The Monkeyrack improves ladder safety practices by securing any 1A industrial grade extension ladder through to a standard 2” receiver hitch. For more information and for pricing, please visit www.MonkeyrackProductsLLC.com.
-

What should roofing companies blog about?

Here are five things to keep in mind when writing posts for your roofing company's blog:

1. Know who you are you writing for

Don't try to make a blog post appealing to everyone. Each blog post you write should be targeting a very specific demographic, such as "commercial facilities managers who may be looking for alternatives to re-roofing", or "homeowners who don't know what to do after a hail storm", etc. Try selecting 10 of your existing customers that most represent your target audience, then write blog posts with them in mind.

2. Write about what your customers care about
Your blog posts should be focused on answering questions that you believe your existing or potential roofing customers have, or solving problems they may be experiencing. For more on this, please also see my blog post titled 'Is your roofing website optimized for the wrong things?'. Start by writing down 20 common problems your customers have with their roofs and write about those (service work, new construction, re-roofing, etc.).

3. Write like a real person
Your blog posts should be your perspective on a particular topic, and in your voice. People don't connect with mass amounts of information - they connect with you, the author of the blog. Have a personality. Make an occassional joke. Don't be afraid to be yourself.

4. Allow and encourage interaction
Offer your blog post readers an easy way to contact you, enable them to comment on your blog post and encourage them to do so. Also make sure there is a way they can share your blog posts with their connections on social media.

5.Don't hoard information
Don't be afraid of your competitors stealing your ideas. Provide your honest insights on roofing issues and how to resolve them. Let your customers understand your thought process in recommending solutions for them using real-world examples.

Blogging is an investment
Don't be fooled - blogging is hard, time-consuming work but if you think of it as a long-term investment and are patient for the results to come it will really pay off. I recommend posting 1 or 2 blog posts per week. Trust me, there is no shortage of things to talk about if you really think about your customers' problems, how you met them, the last 20 jobs you did, etc.

If you have any questions about blogging for your roofing company, please feel free to email me at RoofPal@gmail.com. And if you have a blog already, please feel free to leave a link to it in the comments below.

Social media helps test email subject lines to improve open and click rates

If you are looking to improve the open and click-through rates of emails your roofing company sends to out, one idea to increase the likelihood of success is to use social media to test out potential subject lines.

Email subject lines are a major influence on whether or not someone even opens an email in the first place. They can either entice someone to click it or prompt them to delete it completely unread - or even worse, clicking the dreaded SPAM button (for more on preventing people from flagging your emails as SPAM, please see my blog post titled "Reduce Spam Reports of your Marketing Emails").

I recommend before you send out a mass email or newsletter, test potential subject lines with your connections on social media. Using a URL shortening service like bitly, Google or TinyURL, post multiple times in a close period of time to the exact same page but each time have a different description or "title" to the link, and have each one use its own unique shortened URL to the destination page so you can track in your analytics which one got you the most clicks.

For example, here are Tweets for one of my own recent blog posts:

• 5 specific things to do that will help you get new #roofing customers from your social media accounts: http://t.co/kLDg3dNQ
• How you can get new #roofing customers from Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn: http://t.co/kLDg3dNQ
• 5 specific ways to get new #roofing customers from social media: http://t.co/4FSs68cN [blog post]

Each of these links go to the exact same blog post, but in my blog analytics tool I can see exactly how many clicks came from each unique subject line/link combination. The one that ultimately performs the best will be what I base an upcoming RoofPal eNews email campaign subject line and podcast title on.

For your experiment, the one that resonates most with your social media connections in terms of a significantly higher amount of click-through's is going to likely be your best candidate for your actual email campaign.

This strategy works particularly well on Twitter where people are used to seeing Tweets that lead them to click a link, but you can do the same thing on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, or any other social media platforms you participate on.

If you decide to try this out, let me know how it goes for you. If you would like additional help planning this out or even executing it, please feel free to email Chris@RoofPal.com. Best of luck!

5 specific ways to get new roofing customers from social media

There are several books and probably tens of thousands of web pages and blog posts vaguely describing concepts about converting social media connections to customers. I thought I would cut through the crap and give you 5 specific things to do that will help you get new roofing customers from your social media accounts.

Certainly there are plenty more things you can (and should) be doing to attract new business, but  this is what I came up with on a Monday morning. I hope you try at least one of these today (and if you do, please leave a comment below with a link).

1. Search for new customers

On Twitter, especially when it is raining and after a big storm, do an advanced search for key terms such as "roof is leaking", "roof leak", "need a roofer", "recommend a roofer", "recommend a roofing", etc. within the appropriate radius (i.e., your service area) of the city you are based in.

Reply to their Tweet with something like "Please let us know if there is anything we can do to help. Feel free to call ... or email ... to schedule a quick repair to stop the damage."

2. Post interesting pictures

On Facebook, posts with pictures drive twice as much engagement as text-only posts. I would recommend creating an Instagram, Flickr or similar photo sharing account, then post the best ones to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and any other social platform you are participating on. Explain what the picture is of, and why you think it is interesting.

3. Make each social media platform different

Don't post the exact same things to Facebook as you do on Twitter, Google+, or LinkedIn. Once people begin to notice, most will only follow you on one platform since there is no difference anyway. Define the purpose of each platform for your company and use it accordingly.

For me, LinkedIn is about finding new connections based on job title, industry, company name, etc. I use Twitter to share links and re-Tweet pictures of the work other contractors are doing that day. Facebook is a mix of pictures, blog posts, samples of work I am doing for other contractors, etc. I use Google+ purely for SEO benefits to my website and blog, so everything is about keyword optimization for sharing links to posts and pages.

I also reference what I'm doing on other platforms with a link. For example, on Twitter I posted recently: "On Facebook we have a good discussion about #roofing door hangers going on: http://vsb.li/R0K9mx" to entice people to check out the conversation, and if they aren't already connected with me on Facebook hopefully they would see there is something different going on there and send me a friend request. I do this kind of thing on all platforms periodically to attract cross-platform connections because some people are more willing to engage in certain ways and I want to make sure I have the opportunity to do so.

4. Be personable

Regardless of the platform, do not be robotic with your posts or responses to what others are posting. It is perfectly OK for people to visualize a real person posting updates or responding to questions.

Take the time to post originally (not from auto-posting services), Like a status, Re-Tweet, +1, and otherwise comment on things that people post (even if it has nothing to do with roofing). Social media is as much about building relationships and trust with people as it is about shouting into a megaphone "HIRE ME TO DO YOUR ROOFING!".

5. Promote your customers

While your crew is working on a roofing job, do some homework on your customer. If it is a commercial job, write up a short blog post about what you did and how you helped keep that business running without the burden of roofing problems. Describe what the business does (you can get this from their website in most cases), and link to their website. Make this more about them than you.

Before you share the post, email your customer a link - both to make sure you have everything correct, and to ensure (s)he is OK with you posting it. Assuming it is fine to post, don't forget to ask him/her to share the link on their website, in their newsletter (if they have one) and with their social media connections as well. And if you can get a testimonial from them before you post it, all the better! This works really well to show potential customers that you aren't just about promoting yourself but that you go out of your way for others, and gives the connections of your customers a chance to get word-of-mouth advertising from someone they already trust.

If you have any questions about roofing social media strategies, please email RoofPal@gmail.com. Best of luck!