Nashville, TN

Roofing content for a metro full of people who just got here

Middle Tennessee keeps filling up with people who got here after the last hard freeze and have no idea what one does to a roof. Downtown, a good share of the housing is run as a business, so the window for getting a camera onto a roof is the gap between a checkout and the next check-in. A decade of infill left whole streets of tall narrow houses standing in pairs on a single old lot, with no side yard to put a ladder in. And a reader in Franklin or Hendersonville is not yet convinced a Nashville company drives out there at all. Those facts decide most of what a roofing company here can film, when it can film it, and who is watching when it goes up.

The family that moved to Mount Juliet has never seen an ice storm here

In a region this full of recent arrivals, a roofing account is explaining the weather as much as it is explaining itself.

Somebody who came from Phoenix or Chicago two summers ago has no memory of a Middle Tennessee ice storm and no reason to know that the damage often shows up as a slow ceiling stain in March rather than as a hole in January.

So show them the last one. Ice sitting in a valley on a north facing slope, a gutter pulled off its fascia by the weight, a shingle that lifted in a wind event and never sat back down.

Drop the assumed local knowledge. Content written for a family that grew up in Davidson County is not written for the buyer moving into a new subdivision in Rutherford or Wilson County, and the second group is the one with no roofer to call.

Name the neighborhood and roughly when the houses went up. A family in Hendersonville wants to know whether you have worked on a roof like theirs, and the age of the shingle tells them more than the age of your company does.

None of it has to be dramatic. A roof doing exactly what a roof that age does, explained plainly, is the post that gets saved by somebody with no other reference point for any of this.

A downtown rental roof gets filmed between a checkout and the next check-in

Much of the property near Broadway and The Gulch is run as a business, so the camera has to fit inside somebody's booking calendar.

The window is short. Cleaners are already inside, the next guests are on the road, and a manager counting the job in lost nights is not handing the crew an extra hour for footage.

Take the failure and the finish and let the rest go. A flat section over a converted attic bedroom carrying four rounds of patchwork is the least glamorous and most convincing material this trade produces.

The number an owner is running is nights rather than squares. A blocked weekend in the busy stretch costs more than a blocked week in February, and a company that offers the February date before anybody asks for it wins the job on the calendar alone.

So publish the scheduling thinking. Which work splits across two turnovers, which cannot start at all with guests arriving in three days, and how much notice a manager needs to move a booking. Nobody else in this trade is writing for a reader who thinks in occupancy.

One manager holding several units is a different reader than a homeowner. They watch a feed the way somebody reads a bid: turnaround, access, discretion, and whether your crew looks like it can be left alone on a property with guests arriving.

Two tall houses on one split lot, and no side yard between them

A decade of infill in East Nashville and Sylvan Park left pairs of narrow three-story houses a few feet apart on ground that used to hold one cottage.

The setup is most of the job. There is no side yard wide enough for a ladder on the line side, the two rooflines nearly touch, and anything that slides off one roof lands on the other owner's steps.

So film the staging rather than the slope. Where the tarps go, how the crew reaches the line side, how a tear-off on one half leaves the other half's driveway usable through the week.

The two houses are owned separately and share nothing but a lot line, so none of it is a joint decision. Say what you will do about the shared side before anybody asks, because the neighbor who did not hire you is standing at a window ten feet away for the duration.

The stock is uniform enough that one clip travels a long way. A reader in the Nations recognizes the house she lives in, and there is almost nothing published anywhere showing what that shape does to a roofing job.

It also sorts your inquiries. Somebody who watched a crew work a line side that tight stops asking why a house that size costs what a bigger one in Hendersonville costs.

Metro Nashville is one government and the county line is where that stops

A consolidated government makes Davidson County simple to explain and makes every county around it a separate explanation.

Metro Nashville and Davidson County operate as one government. Williamson, Rutherford, Sumner and Wilson do not, so the office a homeowner deals with and the inspection routine both change the moment a crew crosses the line.

Name the county in the caption, because it tells a reader something about the house. Williamson reads as subdivisions built in the last couple of decades, Sumner reads as Hendersonville and the lake, and Davidson covers everything from a prewar cottage to a roof three years old.

The line matters more to the reader than it does to you. A homeowner in Brentwood is not certain a Nashville company works out there at all, and the only thing that settles it is a job on their side of the line with the county named.

Weather does not respect the line either. A freeze that glazes Wilson and Sumner County can leave Williamson County wet and nothing more, so a post about the last ice storm ought to say where the ice actually sat rather than treating the region as one event.

The parts of this that do not change at a county line, like who on the crew ends up holding the phone and what can safely be said about an insurance claim, are set out on our roofing social media page at /industries/roofing/social-media.

Questions we actually get

A manager runs several units and wants one point of contact. Is that worth writing for?: It is the most valuable reader you have in this metro. One manager holding a handful of houses near Broadway or in the Gulch is several jobs a year plus a referral into the rest of that circle, and they judge a roofer on turnaround and access rather than on craftsmanship. Publish what they actually need: how many nights a house is out of service, how much notice you need to work around a booking, and who answers the phone when a cleaner finds something at seven in the morning.
Most of our customers moved here in the last few years. Does that change what we post?: It changes the reading level of everything. A buyer who arrived from a market with no ice storms does not know what freeze and thaw does to a valley, does not know what a roof of that age is supposed to look like, and has nobody to ask. Explaining the ordinary things, without treating it as a lesson, does more here than it would in a market where everyone grew up under the same weather.
Our best jobs are the tall infill pairs. Is there anything worth filming on one?: The setup, which is the part that makes the job hard. Two three-story houses a few feet apart on one old lot leave no side yard for a ladder on the line side, so how your crew reaches that slope and protects the neighbor's steps is the whole story. Owners in East Nashville and the Nations recognize their own house immediately, and almost nothing published anywhere shows what that shape does to a tear-off.
Our downtown jobs have nowhere to set a ladder. Is that work worth filming at all?: Film the roof, not the arrival. Near Broadway you are working over a business that opens at ten, with a sidewalk you cannot block and a load-in that took the whole morning to arrange, so the establishing shot everybody else uses is not available to you. What is available is the surface itself, which on those buildings is usually more interesting than anything residential you shot that month.
Does it matter which county a job was in?: Say it every time. A lot of your readers are trying to work out whether you actually cross the line they live on, and a run of posts naming Franklin, Mount Juliet and Hendersonville answers that faster than a service area map. It also gives the caption something to carry. A roof in Franklin and a roof in East Nashville are usually different ages and different assemblies, and the county name tells a reader which of the two she is looking at.

What is different here

Florida has tightened what a roofing contractor may say to a homeowner about an insurance claim, and the rules around soliciting claim work carry real consequences for the client rather than the agency. Design wind speed and product approval also vary by county, so a re-roof specification is a local document. Marketing built around storm claims needs legal review before it runs.

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Written by KC Thompson, Morgul Marketing.

Talk to us about social media for roofing contractors in Nashville

Tell us what you are working with and we will say what we would do first, and what we would leave alone. A real answer, not a pitch deck.