11 Secrets to Blogging about Building Science (or Any Topic, Really)

About a decade ago, I read about a new book that Stephen King had just published. It was titled, On Writing, and I was puzzled about why he’d want to write about writing. I mean, the guy’s a fiction writer, not an English professor. I never read the book, though I probably should, but somehow, just the fact that he wrote it really lodged itself into my brain.

Now, having done a ton of writing in the past year and a half, I understand. I’ve always done a fair amount of writing in my life – letters, emails, test questions… In grad school, I wrote refereed journal articles (and even had one published in Physical Review Letters) and a dissertation.

But I didn’t really consider myself a writer. All that writing was just the stuff everyone does in their lives and work. With the Energy Vanguard blog as well as other writing projects I’ve done recently, however, I’ve started to think of myself as a writer, and I feel the kind of compulsion that I imagine Stephen King felt when he wrote the aforementioned book.

So today, I write about blogging and pass on some of my tips. Before I get to the tips, though, let me update you on how blogging has helped grow traffic to our site and generate business. Back in January, I wrote about the first nine months of the Energy Vanguard blog and showed a chart of our organic search traffic. Below, is the updated chart, showing our search traffic through the end of July.

As you can see, we were getting pretty much no organic search traffic when I started in March 2010, a little over 4000 visitors at the end of January, and last month we were just shy of 10,000 visitors, just from organic search. Most of this traffic finds us because of the blog. And yes, we do get business from some of the people who find us this way.

Ready to find out what my secrets are? Here ya go!

1. Know your stuff. You don’t have to be an expert in everything. You do have to be good enough to back up what you say.
2. Find the juicy topics. What’s controversial in your field? What myths get perpetuated that you can help dispel? Power attic ventilators and thermostat settings are two recent ones that have been juicy for us.
3. Write about what you’re doing. In our recent HERS rater class, we made some field visits. I got two articles from those visits: one on paint peeling from the ceiling and one on radiant barriers.
4. Start with short, simple articles. If you look back at the early articles in the Energy Vanguard blog, you’ll see they’re generally short and sweet. Keep writing short ones when you’re established, too, like this one I wrote on building science.
5. Take a lot of pictures. I can’t tell you how many of my articles resulted from me just looking through my photos. If I’m ever stumped on what to write about, which is rare, this is one of my fallback methods.
6. Use good photos in all your articles. A digital camera isn’t expensive. Keep one with you always. The article I wrote this week on panned joist return ducts wouldn’t have been nearly as good without the photos.
7. Explain the fundamentals. A lot of people are looking for the information you have. I’ve done this with air conditioning and radiant barriers recently.
8. Use lists. People love to read lists: 7 habits, 16 random thoughts, 3 reasons, 4 products…and of course, 11 Secrets to Blogging about Building Science (or Any Topic, Really). You’re reading this, aren’t you?
9. Write about results of research papers. I’ve done this several times, most recently with the accuracy of the most-used home energy rating software.
10. Identify the topics and keywords you want to focus on. I think if you look through the titles of our blog articles here, you won’t have trouble finding out what ours are.
11. Find your voice. I don’t know why, but for some reason, a lot of people try to sound like someone else when they write. The most effective blogs, I find, are the ones where the person behind the writing shines through. Here’s a big hint: Write like you talk. Another big hint: The apostrophe is your friend. In other words, use the same contractions you use when speaking. I wouldn’t’ve said that if it weren’t true, ya know.

Those 11 tips are a good starting point. Of course, you also need to be consistent. Since I started the blog, there hasn’t been a single week when I didn’t publish at least one article. You also need to promote your blog and each article you write. If you’re not on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, you need to be.

There you have it. Now go out and blog!