With everyone connected these days, it makes sense to communicate with clients via the Internet. David Supple, owner of New England Design & Construction, in Boston, uses a blog he created in Google Blogger.
You’ll need a Google mail account to use Blogger, but once you’re on the Blogger Web page, blogger.com, video tutorials walk you through the options. You create the URL — Web address — for your blog, and Google will host it for free in blogspot, a platform for writing blog entries. Or you can opt to host it at a domain name you already own.
Tailor Made
Supple uploaded his company’s logo and tailors each blog for each client — one even has a pink striped background to match a client’s color scheme. He created an area for scheduling and posts a Gantt chart for each job with a labor schedule and a sequence of actions, including payments owed. He set up a “homework” section for clients to make selections, for example, and a link to the EPA’s Renovation, Repair and Painting brochure. Supple sets the security and viewing levels.
“Clients like it,” says the remodeler, who begins blogging at the start of the design process and posts every other day. Blogs are automatically e-mailed to clients, who can post comments or e-mail Supple, and can invite friends to view uploaded photos and read the blogs.
Blog posts go to the lead carpenter and all the subcontractors on the project as well. “Even if the blog hasn’t anything to do with [those trade partners], they get an idea of where we are in a project and when they might be needed back,” Supple says.
—Stacey Freed, senior editor, REMODELING.
