When I ran my roofing company, I answered a lot of the same questions.
How does the insurance claim process work?
When do I pay my deductible?
When do I pick out my shingles?
Are you going to be there when the adjuster comes?
How much am I going to pay out of pocket?
And I get it.
Most homeowners don’t replace their roofs every year. They don’t spend their weekends reading insurance policies or studying roofing materials.
At least I hope they don’t. There are better ways to spend a Saturday.
But those questions kept coming up, and every time they did, I had to explain the process again.
Now, here’s something I wish I’d understood sooner.
Every question I kept answering was a chance to create something useful for the next customer.
I could have written an article. Made a short video. Put the answer on my website.
Then, when someone asked, I could send them something that explained the basics before we talked.
That wouldn’t replace the conversation. Some questions need a real person, especially when you’re talking about someone’s home or insurance claim.
But it could make the conversation easier.
And that’s what I want to show you today.
You don’t need to be a professional writer to create useful content for your business.
You already know things your customers want to understand.
You just need a way to get those answers out of your head and onto the page.
Start with the questions you hear all the time
Think about your last few jobs.
What did people ask?
If you’re a roofer, maybe they wanted to know how long a roof replacement takes.
If you install gutters, maybe they asked whether they need guards.
If you do restoration work, maybe they wanted to know what happens after water gets into the house.
You probably have a few questions you could answer in your sleep.
Those are good places to start.
And don’t worry about whether the question sounds exciting.
A customer doesn’t need your article to be exciting. They need it to answer something that’s bothering them.
Take the deductible question, for example.
A homeowner may have heard different things from a neighbor, an insurance company, and somebody who knocked on their door.
Now they’re confused.
You could write an article that explains what an insurance deductible is, how it may affect the amount a homeowner pays, and why they need to check their own policy and claim details.
You shouldn’t promise that every policy works the same way. And you shouldn’t tell people what their insurance company will pay before the facts are known.
But you can explain the general process.
That’s useful information.
And useful information is a pretty good reason for someone to visit your website.
Pick one question, not twenty
Here’s where people make this harder than it needs to be.
They decide they’re going to start writing articles.
So they sit down and try to explain everything they know about roofing.
Every shingle. Every nail. Every insurance question. Every kind of roof.
By the time they’re done planning it, they’ve got enough topics to write a textbook.
And no article.
I’ve done my share of turning a simple idea into a much bigger project than it needed to be.
So here’s what I’d recommend.
Pick one question.
Let’s use this one:
When do I pick out my shingles?
That’s a real question homeowners ask.
Now think about what someone needs to know.
When does the contractor normally discuss colors and materials?
What choices will the homeowner need to make?
What happens if a material isn’t available?
When does the final selection need to be confirmed?
Those questions give you an outline.
You don’t have to write about every roofing material ever made.
You just have to explain the part that helps someone make a decision.
And when you finish, you can write another article about a different question.
One useful answer at a time.
Tell the story the way you’d explain it to a customer
This is the part I really want you to understand.
You don’t have to suddenly become a different person because you’re writing an article.
If you’re good at explaining something to a customer, start there.
Talk through the answer.
You can record yourself on your phone when you’re somewhere safe and have time to focus.
Imagine the customer is standing in front of you.
What would you say first?
What do they need to understand?
What do people usually get confused about?
What should they do next?
Just explain it.
You can clean up the words later.
I come from a copywriting background, and one thing I believe is that the words matter.
But the words have to mean something.
A beautiful paragraph that doesn’t answer the customer’s question isn’t doing much for them.
It’s just taking up space on the internet.
And the internet seems to have plenty of that already.
Start with what you know.
Get the useful information down.
Then make it easier to read.
Give the article a job to do
Before you write, ask yourself something.
What should the reader know or be able to do when they finish?
Let’s go back to the shingle question.
Maybe the goal is to help the homeowner understand when they need to choose a color and what to ask before the materials are ordered.
That’s a clear job for the article.
Now you can build the whole piece around it.
You might explain the usual steps.
You could tell them what choices they’ll need to make.
You could explain why they should ask about material availability before making a final decision.
And you could finish with a short list of questions to ask their contractor.
That’s a complete article.
It answers a real question and gives the reader something they can use.
Now compare that to an article titled "Everything You Need to Know About Roofing."
What does that even mean?
You could write for three days and still leave something out.
Keep the subject narrow enough that you can actually finish it.
Use AI to help, but don’t let it make up your life
I’m working with AI tools right now to help with writing, planning, and running businesses.
We’re testing things, making changes, and documenting what happens.
And I think there’s a lot of value in using these tools to help business owners create content.
But there’s something you need to watch.
AI can write a sentence that sounds perfectly reasonable.
It can also make up something you never said.
Maybe you tell it that you once had a customer ask about a deductible.
The next thing you know, it’s written a whole story about a family standing in their driveway while you explain their insurance policy.
Beautiful scene.
Shame it never happened.
That’s why I believe your original explanation needs to stay with the draft.
If you record yourself answering a question, save that recording or transcript.
When the article comes back, compare it with what you actually said.
Did it change the meaning?
Did it add a claim?
Did it make you sound like you personally handled something you were only using as an example?
Did it promise an outcome you can’t promise?
Fix those things before you worry about making the article sound clever.
And if you don’t know something, say so.
There’s nothing wrong with telling someone that the answer depends on their roof, their policy, or the work involved.
I’d rather read an honest answer than a confident one that happens to be wrong.
Make it easy to read
Now that you’ve got the information, it’s time to make the article easier to follow.
Read it out loud.
Does it sound like something you’d actually say?
If you stumble over a sentence, take another look at it.
If you use a technical term, explain what it means.
Break up long sections so someone can read them on a phone.
And don’t bury the answer under a giant introduction.
People came to learn something.
Give them the answer.
That doesn’t mean the article has to be boring.
A good story can help someone understand the point. A little humor can make it easier to read.
But don’t force jokes into every paragraph.
If you’re explaining an insurance deductible, the homeowner probably cares more about what they may owe than whether you’ve got a future in stand-up comedy.
Keep the writing natural.
The goal is to sound like yourself on a good day.
Don’t write the same article ten times
Once you start doing this, you’ll notice that one question can lead to several more.
That’s useful.
But it doesn’t mean you need ten versions of the same article with different titles.
Let’s say you write about when homeowners choose their shingles.
Then you want to write about how to compare shingle options.
Those can be two different articles because they answer different questions.
But if you’ve already answered a question well, don’t rewrite the same thing just to squeeze another keyword into the title.
Update the existing article when it needs new information.
Link to it when another article brings up the same subject.
And keep building a collection of answers your customers can actually use.
Over time, your website can become a place where people learn what you do and how your process works.
That’s a lot more useful than having a website that only tells people how wonderful your company is.
You can tell them that.
I’d rather show them something helpful.
Here’s how I’d start this week
You don’t need to plan a year’s worth of content today.
Start with one question.
Think about something a customer asked you recently.
Write it down.
Then make a simple outline.
What does the person need to know first?
What usually confuses them?
What should they check?
What can they do next?
Record yourself answering those questions.
Turn the answer into an article.
Check the facts. Make sure it still sounds like you. Read it on your phone.
Then decide whether it’s ready to share.
And when another customer asks that same question, you’ll have something useful to send them.
You can still talk with them. You can still explain their specific situation.
But you won’t have to start from scratch every time.
That’s the part I wish I’d done more of when I was running my roofing company.
I had the experience. I had the questions. I had the answers.
I just hadn’t turned enough of them into something I could use again.
So here’s your next step.
Pick one question you’ve answered more than once. Write an article that answers it well.
Don’t try to explain the whole business.
Just help the next person who asks.
Michael
Go be wild.
Leave a Reply