5 bad things roofers say that will prevent their growth online

Are you one of those roofers who is forever contemplating your next best move? Do you know what you can be doing to enhance the performance of your business online? If you're putting off what needs to be done, then we’re confident that you can identify with some of our chosen drawbacks.

Lingering on things in your mind for too long won't help. It's the forward-thinking companies like SCJ Roofing, Mr. Roof and Roofing Contractor who get rewarded repeatedly for nurturing their prospects and site visitors.

So, which of these statements have you said to yourself lately?

• I don't have time to interact with visitors to my website
• I don't share content on social media
• I've never engaged in a direct recruitment process on my website (over using agents or portals)
• I am not sure what content to produce for my audience
• I find it hard to showcase my best work online

Implementing a variety of connection points on your website would be a great start to having very focussed interactions with potential customers. In a world where buyers want to be serviced right away, getting a live chat solution in place helps to remedy this. There are several providers on the market, such as Tawk and Chatra. If you use a supplier like Freshchat you receive integrated functionality into their support desk software and its ticketing system.

Take into account the use of dynamic forms where a combination of clickable images and text entry fields, to qualify the demands of a prospect at the time they initiate contact. Going a stretch further afield by bringing a commenting section to your website will permit readers of your relevant content (e.g. blog posts, resources and FAQs) to provide constructive feedback.

Finally, look at providing a social sharing option so that viewers can promote multiple pages on your site to their social followers.

At times you can be resolute on the answer to the dilemma you’re facing. Albeit you are absolutely correct in how a topic of interest might be solved, the minute it's presented to your marketplace, things may be interpreted completely different. In such instances, it wouldn’t hurt to test your analysis. You could be as polite as stating that you are having difficulty deciding how to pursue a particular course of action and would, therefore, appreciate a response? Or, why not present a scenario and leave options (e.g. A, B or C).

To carry this out effectively, examine the use of ‘Twitter Polls’, which allow you to gather answers for a minimum period of 5 minutes, through to a maximum of 7 days.

Another industry-leading tool is 'Poll by Apestar' which is used by numerous companies across a wide range of industries. This tech smartly places a poll in between blocks of content in order to collect the audience’s viewpoints and opinions on the subject matter that’s under the spotlight.

There is a benefit to using recruitment consultants but this can be costly. You need to associate the hours spent conducting searches and being briefed on appropriate candidates.

If as a business you are able to verify someone as a suitable applicant via nominal engagement, you stand to be cost-effective while reducing expenditure.

Placing a careers section on your website is near enough a free means of advertising a post. If the template that you use to create the position matches your credentials, you will only ever be in receipt of incoming enquiries from budding workers who meet your requirements.

The second a marvellous idea falls into your head, ensure that you mark it down (preferably electronically). Even if it’s just jotting a few bullet points, you will have completed a substantial amount to work with when you get around to writing fuller paragraphs.

For 90% of us, it’s more than likely that inspiration hits us while we’re on the go. If you happen to be this type of person, the chances are this lightbulb moment strikes whilst you are deeply entrenched on a work task. In these scenarios, our mobile phone becomes the first port of call for noting this data.

If your reliance is on a handheld device, consider investing in a gadget which comes with a stylus/pen. This will enable you to save notes in your style of handwriting, eliminating the occasional typos which occur with an on-screen keyboard. Should you decide to advance an extra step, try to use voice recognition applications which records your vocals and autotypes the words you dictate. This function is a now native in a number operating system, and easily discoverable in both Windows 10 and Mac OSX. However, if you’re looking for an appliance which possesses these features out the box then the Samsung Galaxy Note9 with its Samsung Notes and Voice Recorder apps is a friend in waiting.

Principally, your website should flaunt what you have been involved with. If you are quirky about it you would divide your assignment into three phases. These are namely, the problem, the solution and the results. This creates a smart way of showing your audience methods of delivery.

We recommend that you use a content management system (CMS) that allows you to set pages to draft until you’re ready to publish them. With case studies, this performs perfectly because when you're either on-site or are told of the predicament the client is in, you can immediately enter this into your sites admin area. Alongside this, you can attach any associated visuals detailing the circumstances at hand. It's good to follow this same procedure to show the work you carried out, and again upon demonstrating the satisfaction that it brought on completion.

Other platforms that make it possible you to place greater focus on imagery and less on detailed descriptions are the likes of Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

By starting to think about how you’ll resolve these issues, you’ve achieved half of what’s required. Although growth may not come overnight, the day you apply a slight bit of effort, many barriers are collapsed. Better still, you’ll start to behave differently so that these obstacles don’t reoccur.

How have you found this read? Is it something you’ll share with others in your field? We’d love to hear from you, as we begin to dedicate and tailor more content for the types of businesses we’d like in our portfolio. Your reactions will be used to improve what we research in the future, so please let your ideas flow freely. Last but not least, do remember to push this content amongst your social following.