Interior Design Blog Challenge

Time for an update on my interior design blog challenge. Well, it is not easy to keep this up, and I may not hit my goal of 30 posts and 30 links in 60 days, but I have been working on this every day, and I am really excited about some of the content that I have written on here and on the Walls by Design site. What do they say in weight loss…focus on progress and not perfection? It is hard to come up with good engaging content that might get you traffic, but I think it gets easier over time. The more I dive into this, the more good ideas pop into my head. I would suggest when a good idea hits you (and it can be at ALL hours of the day or night), email or text it to yourself. I find that while I might not have a pad of paper on me, I usually always have my phone or tablet.

Check out two of the posts that I just created this week for my painting customers. The first one is called White Kitchen Cabinets. It is an article all about the rising popularity and frequently asked questions that come up around painting cabinets. The other article I wrote is about Painting Shiplap Siding. Shiplap has gained a ton of attention and has become a trend in the last five years or so. A friend of mine just built a house in Wisconsin (you may remember me talking about it on a recent show), and has had some problems with the paint. I helped her understand why it happened and thought it would make a good blog post for others.
The key to making a great interior design blog is to create content that people want. Too often I read blog posts about what people are doing (like a diary) and I’m not sure that is the best use of a blog. I believe you should have your personality come through in your blog, and personalize the subject (like mentioning my friend in the shiplap post), but it should not be the major focus. Not even close. You have to think through what your customers or potential customers would want to read, or what they are searching for.

In my last post, I talked about some ways to brainstorm, but here’s a list (Google loves lists guys!):

• Look at competitor’s sites. Are they doing anything you like? Do they do anything you want to avoid? Do they have links on their site that can drive traffic? Can you get these same links?
• Read blogs on sites like Houzz, Zillow, smaller blogs like Dwell Beautiful, and your local shelter magazine.
• Make a list of FAQs that you get asked ALL THE TIME.
• Type things into Google and see what auto populates. That is what people are searching for.

Give it away!

Don’t be afraid of giving too much info away on your interior design blog. I think designers are afraid they are giving out their ideas, and it’s just not true. You have to look at the bigger picture. Think about chefs. They give out their exact recipes, and they get more and more famous. Why? It is not the recipes that people want, it is the person. Engage. I love Bobby Flay. Check out his recipes here. I know it comes down to an idea of abundance or scarcity. You either believe there is enough for everyone or you don’t.

Great, that is easy for you to say, Nick, but are you doing it? YES. I just wrote a blog post that listed out at least 30 of my painting competitors in Denver. Check out the link here: Best Paint Contractors in Denver. I spell it all out, then I let people know why I am being so open with my competitors. BUT, there is a sneaky reason I did it too. I think it would be cool if people search for my competition, and my article about them pops up. How awesome would that be?
But that isn’t giving away my secret sauce Nick, you might be thinking. Well, I will be writing a blog post on exactly how we are painting kitchen cabinets. It is very unique, has been HUGE for us, but no one else is doing it.

That is my secret sauce, and I’m going to tell people how to do it. Why? Because no one will do it. We all think we have these top secret ideas. There is nothing new under the sun. It is the implementation and action that gets things to happen, and the reason why people come back to you. That is why Bobby Flay is so successful. It is who he is, how he does it, and not what he does.

Back to brass tacks.

So, I built a list of potential blog posts. After doing extensive competitor research, I went back to my website and looked at it with fresh eyes. What did I not like? I changed out some pictures. I updated some old copy. I corrected things that were not accurate any longer. When was the last time you updated your site? Not just put up a new blog post (even though most of you haven’t even done that in a while), but put up new information, pictures of yourself, your team, etc? Google rewards websites that get updated on a regular basis. You need to update your interior design blog regularly.

Profile Pic Update

Your old profile pic from 10 years ago is not good! I know how hard it is to get good profile pics, but it doesn’t have to be. Have you been to an event recently that had a photographer? There is almost always a photographer that someone is paying to record the event. Ask them to take a few pics of you with a vignette backdrop. When I was in High Point for Market in the spring, I was waiting for my next guest to come, and I started talking to their photographer they had sent over. I asked him if he was getting a fee to just be there…he was. So I asked him to take some pictures of me that I could use. He did, and they are my new favorites! Here are a few of them.

Once you have these updated pics, update your website with them and use them in your social media profiles.
Do you have a team? What about doing a page on each of your team members or at least your main leaders. I have a team page where we do this on our artists. Not everyone is online (that is a job in and of itself), but check out my Artist Page. When I go to do research on a designer to interview, I want to see their team; I want to know about them and read about them.

Back to blogging. Do you see how many things you could blog about? There are endless possibilities, and it is not just to fill a page and keep it active. Think through it, and figure out what keywords people are searching for. One last idea. Go to Instagram and look to see what images people are commenting about. What is trending? Write about it from your perspective. Now go write something! For the next post, I will talk about backlinks: What are they, and why you need them.

-Nick

If you want to connect with Nick May and The Chaise Lounge, please do so on our website at TheChaiseLounge.com where we talk the business of interior design.