Why Blogging Can Help You Grow Your Interior Design Business. Plus 10 Tips to Get You Started.

If you want to expand your interior design firm, you must consider a digital marketing plan that includes a well-designed, robust website. Unfortunately, the days where you could create a simple website and leave it alone for five years are gone. Instead, your prospects want to see more from you. The best way to expand your website is through blogging. An active blog can attract more traffic to your website, establish your credibility and help you gain more exposure through search engines.

Blogging allows you to write articles, share tips, and provide additional value to your web visitors. It is also a great format for visual images and videos. As a result, many companies actively post informative information to a blog. As a result, companies with blogs produce an average of 67% more leads monthly than companies that don't blog, according to Hubspot research.

Furthermore, many of these companies are seeing 13% more return on investment than other marketing channels. So, although it takes more time to write and deliver quality content on average, the audience is more likely to react positively to the content.

Why do people react more positively to blog articles? Interestingly, the Hubspot research also found 70% of people would rather learn about a company through articles rather than advertisements. This tells marketers that consumers find more value in reading articles and identify the source as credible. Of those reading blog posts, 33% sit they want to learn something new, whereas 20% want to be entertained and 12% want to learn about news or trends. Another 9% read for all those reasons.

7 Reasons Why Blogging is Important to Your Small Business

Reason 1: Blogging Helps Search Engine’s Find You

Blogging helps you in several ways. First, as we mentioned, it helps drive traffic to your website by increasing your visibility online through search engines. In a nutshell, search engines crawl through websites to identify keywords, measure the quality of content and the number of other sites linking to your site. Furthermore, you are essentially increasing your indexed pages by blogging, which gives search engines more to evaluate.

Related Article: “The Ins and Outs of SEO – What Interior Designers Need to Get Started”

As a small business owner, you will determine what keywords your target audience would search for your company. For instance, if you are a kitchen designer specializing in European design in Nashville. You have three keywords right there: kitchen designer, European kitchen design, and Nashville. These are common terms that someone might use if they are looking for your specialty.

Moreover, search engines can recognize connections with searching. Most people do not search for just one term; rather, they use a string of words to help them find what they are looking for. As more content is available on your site, the engines will use related keywords often used in more complex searching.

By optimizing your website with blog content using these keywords and adding more connections, you will appear higher in the search results. Unfortunately, many people searching online will not look past the first page or two in search results, so you need to appear as high as possible, so you catch someone’s attention.

Reasons #2: Blogging Extends the Life of Your Social Campaign

Another great reason for blogging is content creation that overlaps with social platforms. When you post on social platforms, the life of that individual post is minimal. Additionally, your audience might give you a “like,” but your interaction is fairly minimal. Whereas if you have a blog post related to the social post content, you can attract social traffic to your website. Remember, you do not own your social followers. Therefore, if the algorithm changes, you could lose your impact on the followers, which is why you want to attract social followers to your website and capture their email.

When publishing a blog, you should have a minimum of 3 - 6 social posts. These posts can be scheduled periodically over the next few months. Additionally, readers (and search engines) like it when older articles are updated with new content. This gives you even more opportunities to share through social on the same post. This also goes for video. You can repurpose your blog content for quick tip videos that are hugely popular on social platforms.

Reason #3: Blogging Gives Your Audience Something to Share

Blog readers can be a huge part of your growth strategy. As you entertain, educate, and inspire your audience, they will share the blog on their social channels. This, in turn, drives more traffic to your site.

Think about how you hear about a new restaurant or cool new gadget. It is often from friends that are raving about it online. We typically trust recommendations from those closes to us. This is a similar scenario. When audiences see someone they know recommend something, they are 92% more likely to click into it. If you post images of projects or spaces, these are even more likely to be shared across social channels.

Reasons #4: Adds Credibility to Your Expertise

Blogging can also establish you as an expert. As you share your knowledge through blogging, you increase your credibility with the reader and position yourself as an authority on interior design. This goes a long way to encourage prospects to purchase your services.

Beautiful images and informative videos show your services and products differently than a webpage can. It helps give the reader a peek into your abilities and entices them to reach out.

Reason #5: Convert Web Traffic to Leads

As people visit, they often want more information, therefore they will sign up on your website either through a contact form or a call-to-action form. Remember, making big purchases like deciding to remodel or hiring an interior designer isn’t a quick decision. Many prospects need to see more. It is important for you to engage your prospects beyond that first web visit. By capturing a prospect's email, you can continue to reach out and provide more value.

Related Article: “How to Effectively Position Your Brand Using a Digital Marketing Funnel”

Reason #6: Link Building

Link building is an important aspect of driving more traffic to your website, and it improves your search engine optimization. As you publish interesting content and other sites link to you, this is called backlinks. Search engines love backlinks because it reinforces your site as a quality website. It also helps you attract more visitors through linking websites.

One way to create backlinks is by guest blogging on other websites. Start with identifying websites attracting your audience. Read through the website to see if they accept guest posts. Next, identify an area that would be important to their readers that is not covered. Then write an email to the blog owner asking if they would be interested in a specific topic. Blogging is incredibly time-consuming, and many bloggers gladly accept other posts if they are valuable to their audience and don’t directly compete with them. This can also be achieved through directories, podcasts, and magazine interviews.

Reason #7: Promote your Design Services, Products, and Ideas Without Being Pushy

Finally, blogging gives you a channel to share news, big wins, experiences and promote your products and services. This new blog content gives your company a longer impact on your market and potentially increases customer acquisition.

10 Tips to Help you Get Started Blogging

Now that you understand the importance of blogging and how it can help you grow your interior design business, let’s talk about what you should be blogging about. We have a great download available that gives 30 blog topics for residential and 30 topics for commercial designers. It is free when signing up on our website.

Writing blogs can be time-consuming. I won’t lie to you. On average, a blog post can take 4 hours to write. The good news is that you don’t have to be the only person writing the posts.

Tip # 1: Create a Laundry List of Blog Topics

Brainstorm a laundry list of topics before you start – as you begin writing blogs, you will inevitably think of more topics. Your topics should vary across different topics. Each post should focus on one key aspect that either teaches, entertains, or informs the reader.

Establish 4 to 6 categories, then brainstorm topics under each category. For instance, a theme might include How-To articles on various topics. Another theme might be Holiday Decorating. You can expand the categories as you progress with content.

Tip #2: Create a Content Calendar

Build a content calendar that includes topics, deadlines, writer, and postdates. This will help you stay focused. As I mentioned, I often come up with more blog topics as I am writing a blog. I have a Google spreadsheet with all my ideas. I plan my content calendar at least three months down the road. Then, each month, I revisit the list and add topics to the calendar. This helps me from having to come up with new topics every week.

Tip #3: Post Weekly

Begin by posting an article each week. If you are new, one time a week will feel like a lot. The good news is that you can use the article to create emails and social posts simultaneously.

Tip #4: Add a Call-to-Action to Each Blog

Be sure to add a call-to-action on every blog. What do you want the reader to do after they read your blog post? This can be as simple as signing up for your weekly email updates. You can also offer a free guide for joining the email list. You want to capture these names and emails, so you can continue to engage with them via email. Remember, you do not own your followers on social platforms, so it is important to grow an email list of prospects.

Tip #5: Recruit Writers to Help

Recruit others to help you write the blogs. This might be as simple as asking an employee to summarize a project and how it helped the client. Marketing freelancers are also available to help build content.

Tip #6: Don't Skimp on Words

The blog length can vary, but understanding that more details and less fluff will better engage your audience. The average blog post includes 1,236 words. However, many content marketers are finding better engagement with posts that are closer to 2,000 words. I can tell you from my own experience that clicking on a blog that is short and full of fluff irritates me to no end. I typically read blogs to learn something new. With that in mind, I focus our blogs to be actionably filled with valuable substance.

Tip #7: Write Compelling Headlines

The best headlines are between 6 and 13 words. Write descriptive titles with actionable words. Use your search keywords to help SEO efforts.

Tip #8: Proofread, Proofread, and then Proofread Again

I can’t say this enough, proofread, proofread, and proofread. I use Grammarly for every post, but I am still utterly shocked when I see a typo in my own blogs many months later. You always want to proofread anything you write, and it is a good idea to have a team member also read through the copy.

Tip #9: Share Links Across Your Website

Ideally, you want your audience to stay on your site for as long as possible. The longer they stay on your site, the more connected they will be with your company. The best way to do this is by sharing links to other blogs or information on your website. As the reader clicks through your website, they are essentially swirling around in your marketing funnel. This goes back to the call to action. Each page should have a call to action. Once you capture the client’s contact information, you can continue to engage with them through email.

Tip #10: Write to Your Audience

My final tip is to focus on the prospect. Do not write blog posts that are me-centric and spread-out promotional blogs with informative and educational content.
I often use the batch method for creating blogs. I schedule time on my calendar as if it was a long meeting. For example, I spend 2 to 4 hours researching several blogs, then add more time to my calendar for writing blogs. This helps me focus and ensure I get the blogs written.

There is one more thing to consider. Many of us have found alternative avenues to share our expertise through courses, coaching, and authoring. When you establish your skills and credibility through a blog, you open doors that otherwise may have been closed.

Need help brainstorming? We have you covered. Download your free blog topics for residential and commercial designers. We have 30 topics for each specialty.