Yes, Blogging Does Matter for SMEs in the Built Environment If you run a small to medium business in the built environment, whether that’s construction, architecture, or final finishes, blogging might feel like a “nice to have” rather than a “need to have”. Consider, however, that if you don’t tell people what you know, how will they know? Right? Blogging is not marketing fluff. It one of the most practical and cost-effective tools you can use to support your digital strategy and grow your brand with intention. By sharing relevant, expert content, businesses can improve search engine rankings and attract better leads. Building trust At its core, blogging is about visibility and trust. Your potential clients are already online, researching materials, timelines, suppliers and specification data. When your business consistently publishes thoughtful, relevant content, you are creating space for a conversation with your market and it’s not with a hard sell, but with answers. It’s in that space that your brand becomes a valued partner. Online gravitas As a key element with a digital strategy, blogging improves your search engine presence, gives you content to share across your social media platforms and can be repurposed into email newsletters for your existing clients. This type of content keeps your website fresh, and more interactive than a static brochure. Search engines like Google, reward fresh, useful content, and blogging is a great way to fulfil that goal. It keeps your site active and relevant, which compounds into more organic traffic and better-qualified leads. Using the right keywords in your blogs, adds to this value over time. Talking sense With a daily onslaught of sales messages, people are wary of being sold too. A business blog allows you to demonstrate expertise without being too salesy. With your blogs you can share technical knowledge, and best practice with existing and potential clients. When you write about changes in legislation, lessons learned on site, new technologies, or project insights, you showcase your industry knowledge, and trustworthiness. For SMEs, this levels the playing field in a diverse built environment. With blogging, you don’t need the biggest marketing budget to sound credible, just real knowledge and consistency. Building a brand Perhaps most importantly, blogging humanises your business. Many businesses are built on relationships, because people want to work with people they understand and trust. A conversational, well-written blog lets your voice, values, and way of thinking come through. It helps future clients feel like they already know you, even before that first meeting. For SMEs, it’s a smart, scalable way to strengthen your digital strategy, showcase expertise, and stay visible in a competitive market. Consistency beats perfection—start small, stay useful, and let your content do the talking without the need for a large marketing budget. Summary Blogging is a practical, cost-effective way for SMEs to: Boost visibility and build trust online. Answer client questions with relevant, expert content. Improve search engine rankings and attract better leads. Demonstrates expertise and keeps your website active. A single blog post can be repurposed for social media, client meetings or internal training. Humanise your business, helping clients connect with your values. Consistent, useful blogging strengthens your digital strategy and keeps you visible in a competitive market. Ready to elevate your business? Start blogging today to boost your visibility, build trust, and attract quality leads. Share your expertise, connect with your audience, and stay ahead in the competitive built environment. Consistent, valuable content is your key to digital growth—take the first step with a series of blogs, tailored to your business. NextSpekboom camp (and a very hungry mouse)Next
The importance of being kind
The importance of being kind
An ode to 2020 hindsight
Hindsight is a powerful thing. There are so many times I have wished I knew something earlier. I wish I had known a lot more about tiling when we did some renovations to our home a few years back. Tile panel movement joints It all comes down to movement joints really. A very small thing when you look at it, but without them, I now have cracked tiles between my original kitchen, and the new scullery we built on, linking the kitchen to the garage. Effectively these spaces are two buildings built right next to each other. With knowledge gained from working at TAL, a tile panel movement joint (think slightly wider grout line filled with polyurethane rather than grout) should have been installed between these two sections of tiling to isolate them and allow for movement. Instead, we tiled right over the intersection of the two buildings, hence cracked tiles. Who knew? Not me, and clearly not my tiler. Do the research You will forgive me if I now expound on the values of asking for professional advice, and for doing research before hiring someone to work on a project. Taking this personal experience of my own tiling problems, has driven me to ask the TAL technical team about everything I wish I had known when renovating, and adding them to the DIY Tips on the TAL website for others to avoid the same pitfalls. There is a wealth of knowledge available for the homeowner such as myself, or for the DIY enthusiast, as well as more technical information for the tiler, contractor, specifier or architect. From articles written by the TAL technical experts with their years of experience, advising on best practice for large flooring installations and construction projects, to practical advice on what to look for when hiring a contractor. Beyond tiling There are lots of places to look for information, on many websites, on just about any topic you need. The point is to take the leap and ask the questions. After all, you don’t always have to have all the answers. Sometimes, you just need to know who to ask or where to look. Here’s to hindsight and to finding the answers you need. Disclaimer PS the scaled down description of a movement joint is all in my own words, and no reflection of the very clever people who work at TAL. Find the full and proper explanation of tile panel movement joints and how to construct them on the TAL website, along with a lot of other really good, technically robust information.
Thoughts on a Pandemic
It’s a strange time, this coming to the end of things. Fearing that perhaps that statement is premature. Fearing that this may be a temporary respite, albeit plagued by new highly transmissible and indeterminate variants, and not the hopeful glimmer of the end. Fearing this maybe this really is the end of a global horror show, and then what? Fearing that life will never be the same again, set against the fear that it will return to exactly what it was before. What now? What expectations and hopes are driving us into 2023? Such an important question, yet nobody seems to be talking about it. We talk about the Great War of 1914-18, the Spanish flu that followed and how harrowing it must have been to live through that. Some ponder on World War II and the horrors of that conflict, and how on earth did people come through that and start living again. Yet, here we are living in times that will garner the same musings from a world 50 years hence. How did we survive it? Will we return to our old ways, or has this pandemic forever changed our worldview and our place within it? Most importantly of all, why aren’t we talking about it? Scary times The whole world is struggling through difficult times. Besides Covid-19 and the medical after-effects of it, there is a desperate conflict in Ukraine that many fear will spill into another global conflict, we face load-shedding, and corruption abounds. There is still so much stress and unhappiness. Are we not all in a state of PSTD? Do we not collectively need a little therapy, a long holiday and perhaps a big hug? All of this going on, and nobody is talking about their lived experiences. Yes, we all were in the same time and facing the same virus, but how we each experienced the last few years is completely different. Differing perspectives Parents had to double up as teachers while still holding down a job. Some people lost their jobs and had to find new ways to keep food on the table. Others had an explosion of work, so much so that they are now burning out. What of those who in isolation were truly isolated from the world, living alone and lonely. Did anyone find that nothing changed for them, that this global event passed by with a whisper, affecting nothing, changing nothing? It seems impossible. Unexpected self-discovery We certainly learnt things about ourselves. The working mom who always felt that she would like to work from home and be with her kids discovered that actually, the break from her family that the office brings is very important to her. That she needs to step away; to think about other things and then return, better able to give of herself to her kids. Some found that the didn’t miss the hustle and bustle of the office as much as they thought they would. The discovery that a walk after work, still in daylight, instead of a commute through rush-hour traffic and arriving home in the dark was solace to a tired soul. A career focussed singleton, finding the silence of home deafening; desperate to return to the office and be part of a team. An extrovert finding that the simple joy of watching the birds outside, or playing with a beloved pet for a lunch-break instead of working through, was as fulfilling as the crowd of cherished friends. An introvert loving that there was no need to see people, interact with them, or be social other than through electronic means and at a time and for a duration set by themselves. What did we each learn about ourselves, our world and how we want to move forward? Did we learn anything at all?