As a business owner, it’s essential to your success that you be an expert at what you do. As an owner in the HVAC industry, you need to stay informed and show your potential customers that you are a leading authority in your field. If you’re not credible, you’re not hireable. Business owners need clients to have trust in their ability, and the best way to earn that trust is to be the expert they expect you to be.
Staying informed in your industry can be done by joining and monitoring forums in the HVAC industry, following threads, starting threads, and taking the time to create a new thread from time to time. If you’ve got questions, post them here. Heating, air conditioning, and plumbing are heavily regulated with the state-to-state codes that apply. Learn more by joining and actively participating in an HVAC forum. Join several. Post often.
What Can You Gain From Forums?
Things change in your industry from day to day. New technologies and new regulations force you to adjust your installations to meet your client’s demands and adhere to local codes and regulations. Accessing forums can give you quick insight when you need it.
Your customers may happen across these forums and post a specific question that you can answer, allowing you to gain a new client.
Learn marketing techniques and gather essential data sets to target your ads to match your customers better. What is working for other companies and ask them how they made their determinations. It’s an opportunity to share insights that you wouldn’t otherwise have access to.
Best Forums For HVAC Pros to Follow
HVAC-Talk – With over 1000 members, this HVAC forum is designed nicely with a plethora of info to follow. Threads are straightforward and easy to follow. Take advantage of what they have to offer you and follow it closely for the best results.
HVAC Pro Forums – Use this forum to find and save your favorite websites and get access to thousands of other forum members. Get instant access to some of the most important topics to HVAC business owners, technicians, and search this forum easily for topics of interest to your marketing department as well.
Houzz – This forum has a special tab for people looking for professionals. This addition might be an excellent way to utilize a blog and post to show your field expertise and gain new leads. Aside from this, you can customize your feed to get the information you want and need right in your feed daily.
Youth4Work – A fantastic place to recruit techs and mentor young HVAC professionals. Do you like to give back to others in your career field? This is a way not just to give back but to establish yourself as the ‘go-to’ person in the know. Mentoring others is one of the best ways to get your name out into the world and bring both leads and workforce to you. This HVAC forum has a fresh design with a lot of info in an environment that encourages sharing ideas and links to great websites. Members include professionals from all over the world.
DIY Chatroom – This forum has a whopping 91 million views! It’s filled with more articles than you could have the time to read. If it’s crossed your mind, it’s here. It is a wonderful place to stay on top of anything new, great discussions, info on new tools and even help the DIYer to troubleshoot issues with their home HVAC system. Use your company name as your handle, and each time you write a new post, you’re getting some free advertising and don’t forget to post some articles from your blogs (a great way to build your business and your website) so that you’ll bring some local traffic to your website. Specific systems are listed if you need some airtight resources from other pros as well.
HVAC Site – With over 7000 members, this site has a plethora of knowledge from technical issues to help with marketing, specifically for the HVAC business owners. Their “Business, Marketing, and Sales” thread has over 675-thousand views! The residential forum has over 3.7 million views. What a great place to put your business name after you’ve read all of the new business marketing articles each week. Don’t forget to provide information straight from your website and provide links for people to check you out. Getting hits on your company website is a great way to get Google to rank your site higher, bringing more local traffic in time.
Contractor Talk – Over 13 million views are the reason that this site made our list. It’s got all the right threads and current content, including threads on “how to hire the right installer’ to give you insight into what people are using as their hiring criteria. Is this trap code compliant? Read the article and find out. The more you stay involved in HVAC forums, the more you get out of them in the long run. Network with other business owners to see what works for them while also staying on top of current changes within the HVAC industry.
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Some Blogs to Also Keep an Eye On
It should also be noted that there are some great blogs that you can follow for informational purposes. Useful blogs should be full of good info that is current and applicable. You can follow them and get new blogs delivered right to your inbox, and enjoy them with a cup of coffee in the morning when you’ve got the time. These blogs will give you great ideas for things to add to your website. Get topic ideas and content thoughts to add to keep your site fresh.
Arista – This is a highly ranked blog based out of New York. It has a large readership and is filled with fantastic information that you can use as a knowledge base. This company’s website is an excellent example of how they are using their blog to:
- Increase traffic to their website
- Utilize the knowledge shared with their audience to build credibility
- Score higher with Google by consistently adding new content to seem like an HVAC industry’s authority.
The News – It’s a blog that bills itself as the news that every HVAC contractor needs to read daily. It’s filled with goodies that will keep you in the know, help you relate to your customers, maintain strict standards of safety, efficiency, and code compliance, and marketing yourself in your local region. It’s an incredible resource for information and worth taking the time to read as new articles become available. Don’t have time to read? They’ve even got a podcast that you can listen to while you’re on the way to do estimates and installations. Check it out for yourself.
Conclusion
The key to success is staying relevant. The best way to do that is to learn new things and expand your knowledge base continuously. Reading is the best way to do this. Following other professionals and being part of forums is one way that you can do this.
Taking the time to follow some great blogs is another way. Learn how to emulate these blogs and create content on your websites. Don’t forget to incorporate tools like Podium on your website so that leads can reach out to you directly for a response to a question. Their Webchat feature is easy to integrate with your site. It is customizable and lets you answer questions and set appointments with people instantly.
Don’t miss your new posts from forums with Podium as well. When you sign-up for post updates using your email address, make sure that it’s the same address you use for Podium and you’ll be able to get all of your updates and messages through Podium’s inbox tool.
It’s a great tool that can make the most of your contacts, never missing anything important ever again. Did we mention that you can try Podium out for free? It can even get you fantastic customer reviews. Check out the Review tool designed to help you rank your business higher locally by making it easy for customers to write you a quick review with five beautiful stars.
Don’t forget that any way you can utilize free tools (forums, blogs, and incorporating a free product like Podium with your business platform) will put more money on your bottom line. Blow your competitors out of reach with a new form of communication.
