Q & A Episode 41 - The Power of Blogging: Educate, Elevate & Build Trust
Episode #41 | Q&A with Mark D. Williams | The Power of Blogging
Blogging is so much more than just writing — it’s a tool for education, SEO, branding, and real connection. In this Q&A episode, Mark sits down with Alyssa Abbott of Olive & Vine to explore the power of blogging for builders, designers, and home brands. They unpack how a single blog can answer client questions, attract organic traffic, and showcase the values behind your brand. From writing strategies and SEO nerd-outs to real client stories and AI tools, this episode is packed with honest insights on how to make blogging actually work for your business — without adding another thing to your already full plate.
Whether you're a seasoned builder or just starting to think about your marketing strategy, you'll walk away with simple ways to use content that converts curious browsers into loyal clients.
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About The Curious Builder
The host of the Curious Builder Posdast is Mark D. Williams, the founder of Mark D. WIlliams Custom Homes Inc. They are an award-winning Twin Cities-based home builder, creating quality custom homes and remodels — one-of-a-kind dream homes of all styles and scopes. Whether you’re looking to reimagine your current space or start fresh with a new construction, we build homes that reflect how you live your everyday life.
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Welcome to Curious Builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams. Your host. Today is Thursday, which is our Q and A segment, and lately, we've been asked a lot about what is the power of blogging. I've actually had a few people call in on our one to one consulting off of our website, and we've talked a lot about branding, and I love storytelling, so I thought today I'd bring on a repeat guest, Alyssa Abbott from olivin vine, and she was on episode 68 so if you want to hear about the whole story of Olive and Vine, but I've been working with Alyssa for two and a half years now, and she is the expert and the creative mind behind all the blogging that I do, both for my construction home company as well as the curious builder. And so I thought, really, rather than me just answering it in my own words, I thought we'd just record this dialog of what we found through our blogging experience, and really what Alvin vine does for other builders, designers and architects across the country. So Alyssa, welcome back to the show.
Alyssa Abbott 01:21
Hi. Thanks for having me. Mark.
Mark D. Williams 01:23
Well, let's get straight to it. This is just a 20 minute segment, so we'll just dive straight into blogging in terms of sales. What are the best ways? Because, like, why do people blog? I've been told in order to capture sales, you can really do two things, you can educate or you can amaze. And I think blogging has a unique ability to educate and tell a company's brand story. How have you seen blogging? And let's talk a little bit about kind of the power of blogging, and we'll get into more details as we get into it. I
Alyssa Abbott 01:53
mean, blogging can do so many different things. It's an SEO powerhouse, of course, it's something that a lot of the foundation of your website. It gives people opportunities to find you. Every single blog is an opportunity for someone to search a keyword and find you. So that's one layer maybe more technical, like the SEO nerdiness, but then also, it's a really huge nurturing tool. It's going to give people the opportunity to get to know you, to know your story, to hear your voice and be amazed, like you said, about your process, about your work, about just who you are, and get to know you. And so I think that's another kind of pillar of blogging. And then education, it can be a client education library, which I know that's something we've talked about a lot of times with blogging, it's an opportunity for you to answer someone's questions and to really build rapport. And yeah, I mean, they're they see you as the expert.
Mark D. Williams 02:53
It's funny you say that. So I was a little reluctant when I when we first started, you said, Hey, let's start. Let's do a Pinterest and blogging campaign, and I was thinking like, Wait, I don't do either one of those things, like, why I don't read them. But turns out our clientele, you know, largely does, yeah. And I think, as I've become a complete armchair fan of brand and storytelling, I really think brand blogging is really just storytelling. It's both through education and your platform, we try to spend and a lot of time and be very intentional about the social media that we produce. And I think the the evolution of how I've come to market with that is it lets people know who we are in the build process. We're spending anywhere from 10 months to two to three years with people, and it's important that they know who, who they're going to be partners with, and I think that video captures it very quickly. Like, do I do I want to be around these people? Are they educated? Are they funny? Are they, you know, whatever your brand story might be, right? Are they okay with Mark's dad jokes? I think blogging is the written format of that, and I think the way that we've chosen to sort of use it, and we'll get to SEO in a little bit. Is like, for instance, condensation, and I've mentioned this before on the podcast on our climate in Minnesota, gets pretty cold in the winter, so we can have a couple weeks in January where it's minus 20, minus 10. And inevitably, if a client in our clients often do, they have their homes too warm, or they have their humidifier turned up and they have condensation on the windows. And every winter, I'll get a couple calls from recent homeowners, usually not my past homeowners, that are a couple years because I've already had this conversation with them. And so you and I basically said, You know what? This is happening so often we should write a blog on it, because I'm sure they're not the only people that have this issue. And so the way I'll certainly answer their questions when they call me, they're my clients, but we took it as a way to educate and show our level of knowledge, but also maybe in the future of void that phone call altogether, because people now know how to search for it. So we wrote a whole blog about it. You helped it. I felt in the technical side, and you're such a gifted writer that basically we wrote together. And now when a client calls me, let's say the Johnsons call me and say. Hey Mark, and I'll answer the call, and I'll say, Hey, that's a great this is how what you should do this. We'll be happy to look at it. This is how you service it. This is something to look out for. But by the way, did you know that we also wrote a blog on it? And they'll be like, No, not. So they'll send them an email with it. And so I do that on a regular basis, or I talk about it. And so that's just one very specific example of how we've used it to educate our past clients, but I'm sure it's out there, discoverable on SEO. If you're a homeowner in Minnesota or anywhere in the country and you type in condensation on my windows, maybe I'll pop up and maybe you can read that. And so I think it serves, it can be one thing that serves a lot of things. As you write these what kind of feedback do you see on the back end in terms of either analytics or like, how impactful is a blog that focuses on a specific topic? I
Alyssa Abbott 05:46
mean, it can be really impactful. I was looking up some of our because I track, like, keywords, because I am a total SEO nerd, all of the analytics and stuff I'm always tracking and looking, especially for things like that. For you, we've got a lot of really high ranking in kind of the custom home builder in Minnesota, Minneapolis, the different areas, but some of those more, maybe the custom sauna, or you have, I was looking it up the you hide your outlets. We did a whole blog about how you hide outlets. And that one is like on Google, 10 is the first page. I think you're like 13 and 14 for a couple different keywords. And so if someone thinks about that, or is wanting to, you've got a blog like that. And so with with these blogs, it is 100% an opportunity for you to show up. Maybe someone's starting to think about a remodel, or starting to think about building a home, and they're wanting to gather stuff together, and they just keep seeing you pop up in more than just marks the Minnesota home builder, but he also has all of this other really valuable content that just really builds a lot of trust with people too. It's not just along with traffic, it's also that trust. Yeah,
Mark D. Williams 06:58
it just speaks to the fact that of things that we already know and we talk about, I was actually just thinking someone mentioned recently of like, how I actually have a couple of blog ideas I'll talk to you about offline that just came to mind. I think that blogging is a great way. Obviously, this is a podcast, if you're listening to me right now. Obviously we have a podcast. And I think the whole point of these Q and A's is to address questions that people ask a lot. Just get it out there and to talk about. I think blogging is a written form of that too, and we sure, we call it a Q and A, but you could also just write a blog about something you're interested in. Maybe it's something I think a lot of us builders and honestly, entrepreneurs, we struggle with very similar things, or we have success with very similar things. And it's they call football a copycat League. You see a defense work against a stellar offense, and then before you know it, everyone's using that defense, or vice versa. And I think that's true in blogging like you see, you look around the country and you see what people are doing on social media, or you see what styles are prevalent, and it's very impactful. It used to be. Years ago, a magazine would show up, let's call it Architectural Digest or dwell magazine, and usually a lot of the ideas came from the coast. And being that we're in the Midwest, it took some time, I don't know the exact time, to make its way to the Midwest. Now, with social media and the availability of videos, people, I think you can have all kinds of architecture very quickly transfer from coast to everywhere. And I think blogging, again, is a very detailed way to get there. I would also say that I think blogging is a great marketing tool beyond just showing your education. And I think let's say you're in Texas and you want to work with a specific designer or architect, write a blog about them, and it's a little bit like complimenting someone else's kids. No one is going to be upset if you say, Oh man, your daughter is amazing. She's so smart, they're going to like you. And so you could use it as a marketing tool to simply write about people in your community, and it needs to be genuine. Obviously you can't fake it, but I don't think there's any reason why you couldn't go around. I think like when magazines approach you as a company, yes, they want you to advertise in their magazine. If you've been around a long time and you do good work, eventually you're gonna get editorial content and people are gonna say, hey, what you're doing is really cool. Can we write a story about it? And as a as a entrepreneur, like, of course, that's great. That's great marketing. It's very organic. It people see that article written. They get to know you better. Again, blogging is something that you control. They're your writers, and that's one of the reasons why. Obviously, we partnered with you, Alyssa, I think a lot of people are daunted by writing, either they feel like they don't have the time, or they don't want to have the time, or they feel like they don't have the talent. But what's really cool is there are companies like yourself that you know can align, and you're so diverse that you're such a gifted writer and content creator that you can it doesn't really matter what the angle is, you can help write like, sometimes I'll read what you're writing, and obviously I've influenced it a ton, because you know how we do it. We can talk about that in a minute, about how you and I write stuff together, but I'm always like, wow, that's really well said. It's co authored, if you will. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Alpine hardwood flooring. They've been our partner now for over a decade, installing all our wood floors on all our new homes, as well as our remodels. And on a personal level, Adam and Anthony, the owners are just absolutely amazing people. They've been so supportive of my career, as well as doing anything, we need to make sure that our clients are happy, and they work so well with our other vendors and trade partners at not only protecting their product, but also ensuring everyone else's looks great. So if you're looking for a wood floor or for a refinish, I highly recommend Alpine hardwood flooring,
Alyssa Abbott 10:37
going back to tying in like other brands. I love that, and I feel like you do a really good job. Obviously, we're gonna highlight your brand partners and your sponsors, but in such a genuine way where you can again tell that story of like, why you love working with Pella windows, or whatever it is you're gonna work with these companies that you truly believe in, and I've had other clients since, where that's been a good opportunity, or a designer that really wants to branch out and start working with more builders, or whoever. And so I've mentioned that we have done a little bit more of that, and I think it's just a great way to it's good on the again, on the SEO side, with backlinks and some of that stuff, but on the kind of more front facing, side. It's just It brings people together, and it builds that community, and then it's a way to be top of mind for someone else when they come knocking. Do
Mark D. Williams 11:29
you have any sort of clarity, or is there any way to gage like on Instagram, you can look at what percentage of your followers are men or women, and like for, I know for our Mark Williams Custom Homes brand, I want to say we're like 60 65% women, and the balance in men. Where I'm going with this as like a blog, any idea. And maybe this is, I don't know if we should be industry specific, like building, but like most of my clients, most of them happen to be married couples, not all of them. But let's call it 90% of my clients. And of the 90% like, I'd say 80% of the decisions are made by the woman. And where I'm going with this is, who reads blogs? Is it men or women? Is it what is the angle like? Are we gravitating towards things that we know the decision maker is interested in having an input on, like design ideas, like the latest trends, like those types of things, or, like condensation. I can't imagine anyone's I'm so excited to build a house I'm gonna Google who's great at condensation deal. It's like, that's just not you've already had an issue. If you're researching condensation on your windows, that's not something. So I guess I'm just trying to balance. Like, how do you know who you're writing for.
Alyssa Abbott 12:43
We've been working together for a while, so I feel like I have a pretty good handle on who your audience is. For the different brands. When I work with someone new, I definitely take in. I have a form where we'll just dive into all of those things, and then I do, I go in and do some research on some of their different their analytics. There are different things that we can see in there's several different like Google Analytic platforms where we can really break down even in Pinterest, I love Pinterest has really great analytic tools to where we can see that's male or female, the age range, all of that stuff too. And yeah, I think I, if I was just to guess, I would say probably it's going to be heavier on the women, but, but certainly I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but I would guess it's probably pretty similar, roughly, to to what you're seeing, maybe even on some of the social media platforms.
Mark D. Williams 13:32
I'm just curious, from a writer's standpoint, like, obviously, if you're going to write a book or an article for sale, I mean, you're thinking about your audience in mind, or at least we are when we talk about storytelling and what we're, what you and I, I think I feel like, correct me if I'm wrong. I've never thought about this out loud, but like, I'd say half of what we're writing is for brand creation and brand reinforcement on what we already are, and then the rest would be solving, like, actual topics of interest, like how to I think that's the Educate the Educate side. Sometimes I didn't realize we were educating people. It was just happening. And then when you look back, you're like, oh, that actually had more, had more strategy behind it than maybe we realized that.
Alyssa Abbott 14:14
Yeah, a lot of times I like, again, if I'm starting with somebody, we will put together three pillars of the content that we're going to create, and people do that with Instagram too. Where it's it's going to be educational content, maybe something specific to brand development, and then whatever else, even just showing off, specifically focusing on our work, our builds. It's all just content showing that kind of stuff. Obviously, it's case by case. But yeah, I like that, and I think that helps me as I'm building out the blog topics and putting all of that together and doing my research, I can keep it within those and I feel like that's a helpful strategy to just in the organization side of
Mark D. Williams 14:55
it. All right, now, for sure, you had mentioned before about a nerd. During campaign in terms of, like, SEO, you just alluded to it briefly. Seo, a lot of people know, search engine optimization. It was big when websites were first coming out. Now I feel like everything we do has a component of it. I don't know how often people are being really strategic about it or not, but the thing that is really interesting to me about blogging, and I think maybe we should take a step back to define blogging, at least. I'll define it my layman's terms. Sometimes people think like it's Hey, it's an article about design, the top three trends, and that is a blog, but it could just a blog. Could be as simple as just a written update about what you're doing that week. I think blog is just, really, honestly, just written content. You can make it as sparkly and as fluffy as you want. Or it could also just be just a hey, what's happening this month and or a newsletter, or however you want to share it, but correct me if I'm wrong. But the real benefit in why Google and other search platforms like Pinterest just gobble up blogs is it's fresh content. Is that accurate? Yeah,
Alyssa Abbott 15:54
it's interesting, because I'll see people, a builder will get a brand new website, and that's amazing. And it can convert, it can do so many things, but I think adding that blogging component really will help Google appreciate that, but it's gonna see it. It's if that reoccurring content is coming up that is gonna really make a big difference for SEO than if you're just like, all right, got my new website, I'm good to go. Leads are gonna start calling me. That's not necessarily the case.
Mark D. Williams 16:22
Does it? Does Google prioritize for newer content or not? It does
Alyssa Abbott 16:26
like newer content. I think it prioritizes valuable content, and so the more it sees content as relevant and valuable to the user. If you're just writing a diary, that's helpful, if you do that every week, but it also is going to be stuff that people are searching for, that people go to and actually are on the page for more than a second. That's right. We'll take that into consideration.
Mark D. Williams 16:53
And I know we use chat GPT to organize thoughts and stuff as the world changes so quickly, especially because AI is such is so good at language models, if you will. Where are you seeing? The talent of olivin vine? Let's say like yourself. You're not a robot. You use it as a tool, and you're very creative. And I've heard before that AI can't be nearly as creative. It's really just good at organizing. Where do you see? People out there might say, I'll just have something write a blog for me, versus working with somebody like you. I would imagine that question gets asked, How would you respond to something like that?
Alyssa Abbott 17:30
We've talked about this before with AI. It, it can write a blog that's fine. You can ask it for keywords, and it does. It organizes, but there's a whole element I know I've done that before, where I'm like, All right, give me some ideas, or write a blog and I'll look at it just to see, like, what it comes up with. And there's just something different. I think you can tell, I think especially if you use AI a lot, you can tell, like, that sounds like a robot, like I've had people come to me where they're that was the problem in the past with their past blogging company, and they want that warmth or that personality that comes with a real person that just a robot can't they can't do another thing that I just with the AI that I noticed the other day I was doing some keyword research. This is the company give me some keywords that would be good for SEO, and it gave me a huge list, and I started putting them in, and three of them actually had really good search results. They were good keywords, but, like, they all were coming up with zero searches. And I'm like, I can't, you still have to do your due diligence, because it's, it doesn't know it, it doesn't, yeah, I was surprised. I was like, Oh my goodness. And I went in and I tweaked things, but I had to go in and actually put it into my program to see what the results were, and what actually was going to be worth our time writing a blog on, versus just okay, chatgpt knows,
Mark D. Williams 18:49
doesn't I think that was a really insightful answer, because I think a lot of people might be intimidated by what it can do, but I again, I think it's like, I think it's like a tool. I think I was trying to think of a job site analogy. It'd be like builders were worried that AI was going to take their jobs. It's just a tool. And so I was thinking about it'd be like the equivalent of all the two by fours showing up at a job site, and then assuming they'd put them all, they'd put themselves together. Still, sure, maybe I can cut all the two by fours and get them there. We still need experience. It'll be interesting to see how the next years evolve, because I know it's showing up in schools and plagiarism and all kinds of places that as a world, we're gonna have to figure out what are the limits of it. And then you hear some some things were like, Google's aware of it, and it prioritize organic content, because it can record computer can probably recognize a computer way easier than it can a human. So I would imagine, does it prioritize organic wording versus like, just copy and paste wording. Yeah,
Alyssa Abbott 19:45
I've heard different things, and Google is there's times where I've heard Google doesn't like the AI written stuff, and then I've also heard that it if it's valuable content, then it doesn't. So I'm not I'm not an under. Sure. Personally, we use it as a tool for researching. We do not use it like as our main source of writing. It might give us some ideas or outlines, but for them, you can go in and even search and see there's AI checkers, and I'll do that every once in a while, just to make sure it's not coming up as it's written by a human right. I don't know how accurate they always are, but we're writing, I know we're writing the content. Yeah, I think it's interesting. It really is,
Mark D. Williams 20:24
for anyone listening, they can obviously reach out to you as well, and you're also one of our newest sponsors as well. In the next six months, you're going to be hearing a lot more from olivin vine. And I think that's one of the things that's been fun for me. People ask about partnerships, and I think I like partnerships more. And in some ways, partnerships have been really easy because I it's like it basically just recommending the people you already work with. If you weren't working with them, like, why would you recommend them? And if you are working with them, why wouldn't you recommend them? So it becomes like a very easy thing to just simply say, is what I do. This is why I do it. And this is success we've had with it. If you want any part of that, here they are. And so it becomes like a very you don't have to really sell anything. It's kind of, this is my this is my builder family, or you're welcome to adopt them into your family. And so from my standpoint, it's really enjoyable to have you on and talk about this sort of thing, just because it's really interesting.
Alyssa Abbott 21:14
Yeah, it's a joy to work with you. And I will work with you forever, as long as I'll have me.
Mark D. Williams 21:20
You know it we joked before we came online, because I said episode 68 and you're like, Oh, it was about a year ago. It was right around our anniversary. And it was so funny, because I took it as she's so sweet. She knows we've been working together for two and a half years. It's our anniversary, when you met your husband and your marriage anniversary. And I just think that I was like, okay, Mark, it's not all about you. I understand there's other anniversaries, but it just that's what's really so rewarding about I think working with people is, after you get time together, there's just this great chemistry. And I'm sure when I do, I mean, we should probably mention it and we'll close this with this. But like, how do you and I work together? And how do we write blogs? And I'm very busy, and I actually do writing. I don't prioritize it at all, and even I can speak so much faster than I can write, which most people can. But, you know, having a podcast studio makes it just easier. And so one thing that a hack that you and I in terms of using AI is you and I use otter AI, which, if you've been in you, for those that have had it for virtual calls or your interviews or whatever you're doing, it's just a note taker. A lot of Gemini. There's a ton of them out there. But what you and I use it for is you'll generate all the prompts and all the questions for blog that you and I have already strategized. What do we want to talk about? And then I'll just riff on it for 1015, minutes and just talk to this, my this note taker. And then it gives you, in my words and in my thought process, all of this content that you then can use that to the basis of writing the articles that we write together. And it's for owners out there. You know, I'm taking 10 to 15 minutes of time. Actually, this is a good question. How much time do you think that takes you to then turn around and write a blog? It takes me about 10 minutes to just blah, blah, blah, talk about talk about whatever topic I'm supposed to maybe a little bit longer, 1015, minutes, depending on the topic. From that point on how much more time does it take? You forget the graphics and the posting and all the other work, but actually write it. How long does that take?
Alyssa Abbott 23:11
It's probably an hour. I'll go through and we'll use, I'll use chat GPT to take the transcript and organize it back into my questions and your answers, yeah, because I never stay on topic. So it compiles everything, and then yeah, we'll go through so for me, probably an hour. I feel like we've got your voice. And I mean, it depends on how many times I get interrupted by my kids. If I had a perfect, perfect work situation,
Mark D. Williams 23:43
yeah, that's how it goes. Well. Thanks again for tuning into the curious builder podcast. You can find us on Mondays for our episodes with builders, designers, architects across the country, and Thursdays for our Q and A if you have any further questions, you can always DM us. Reach out to us at curious builder.com thanks for joining in. We've had the podcast now for two and a half years, coming up on three, and I get questions all the time through DMS, on Instagram, emails as well as to our account. Maybe we've had a guest on where a question has come up that really triggers an idea for you. If you didn't know, we have a one to one consulting session through the cures builder platform on our website, cures builder.com or cures builder podcast.com you can click on the one to one and schedule one hour of my time, and we will simply just sit down have a virtual call, and we'll talk about any business idea that you want, marketing, branding, operations, really, anything that helps you and helps your business. Maybe it's a guest that you want an introduction to. Maybe it's a guest we've had on and they brought up something about scaling or hiring and firing, or anything that might resonate with you as a business owner, that you want to expand and talk on, we'd be happy to do it. If you're interested in that, please reach out to us at the cures builder podcast.com. Thanks for tuning in the cures builder podcast. If you like this episode, do us a favor. Share it with three other business owners, the best. Way that we can spread what we're doing is by word of mouth, and with your help, we can continue to help other curious builders expand their business. Please share it with your friends. Like and review online, and thanks again for tuning in. You.
