60 Day Blog – Get FAT- Challenge

I don’t know about you, but I LOVE a good challenge. I want to challenge you to an interior design blog focus for 60 days.  I just got back from vacation and I am fired up! I found a new podcast while I was driving called Self Made Entrepreneurs by Jason Bax, and I got a lot out of it. I will admit, a lot of the content is a bit advanced, but there are lots of actionable items in there too.

One of the guests that inspired me was a guy named Chris Huntley, who is an insurance salesman. That’s right, an insurance salesman, or I should say, marketer. His websites create about 2000 leads for his team per month. He no longer writes policies himself.  On top of his main site, Huntley Wealth Insurance, he also is trying to help other insurance agents build online web traffic through eLifeTools.com. What stood out to me though, is that he is now able to work in his business only 20 hours a week and gross over $1M in commissions per year. He has built a great system.

Because of this, I decided if he can do it with insurance then I need to do it with my painting business. We already have some great traffic that goes to the site, but my fear is that we drive a lot of it with paid posts on Facebook. So I want to really build this with some action. And since I have two websites to build, I am going to try to do it in BOTH places: WallsbyDesign.com and here on The Chaise Lounge podcast site. I will attempt to share what I am doing over on the Walls by Design site as much as possible, but you will see what I am doing here in real time. My challenge to you is to keep up.  In 60 days, can you create 30 interior design blog posts and obtain 30 quality back-links? YES! And I am going to walk you through it. So if you want to keep up, please subscribe, and you will get every update I post. My goal is  3 posts per week, but maybe I will do more. One of the things I know we need to build into our goals is the OSLH (Oh Sh%# Life Happened) factor, so that is why my goal is 30 in 60. I know I can hit that.

Why would you want to do this? Because you need to build traffic to your website, and not just use it as a digital brochure.  Your social media should be a tool to send traffic to your site. Content creation, or blogging, is only one aspect of this.  Think of it as a spider web, with your website in the middle. You want all the social media activity, and your blogging, to bring people in. Then you need to convert these people into prospects. Then, it is your job to sell them on yourself and your business so that they pay you money for your interior design services.

So, I am going to start very basic, so that everyone is following me. If you get impatient, just hang on, and it will get good…just like a roller coaster. Remember the part where the car goes up the big hill very slowly? Then, all of a sudden, you crest the hill and scream down the other side. Yea! It will be just like that.

So, what did I do first? The first thing I did was set aside time each day on my calendar to get this done. Oh, and it’s early. I decided to get up at 4:45 each day, so I could be at my computer by 5:00 am. Need my coffee. Then, I read and figure out what I needed to start on. I would print it out and make notes so you can track what you are doing. I am doing that with the blogs I am reading.

You might need to set up Google Analytics on your interior design blog. I have this already on both of my sites. I am not technical, so if you need help, go talk to my friends at VA Staffer.  They do all the tech stuff on my site. I don’t think it’s hard, but I don’t care to spend the time to learn it. Anyway, you should have Google Analytics connected to your site so that you can track your performance. It will tell you what kind of traffic you have, where it comes from, and what pages people like. We are sitting at about 2,000 visits per year for my Walls by Design site right now, so that will be my baseline.

Next, you might want to do a competitive analysis, and find out who are the top designers in your area. I did this and found that I hit the top 25 painting contractors in Denver according to Expertise.com. Not sure if it will have data for you, but you can check it out. There are also tools out there that you can use to check out the competition: semrush.com. You simply enter their web address, and you can find out all sorts of data. It will only allow you to do a few for free, and then it will require you to join, so use it sparingly.

So what did I do today to move the needle?

• I searched for any websites that listed me as a reference or quoted me but did not have a link to my website. Then, I reached out and contacted three that fit this criteria and asked them to include a link. This is great because you most likely already have a good relationship with them, so it can easily be done.
• I made a list of companies I could do testimonials for and sent one out.
• I reached out to two blogs that I could create content for that would then contain a backlink to my site.

I have not written my first blog post yet, but I brainstormed on topics. However, I am working on this one, so does that count? I also came up with a list of where to get blog post ideas:  Competitor sites, interior design blogs, Google search (the auto populate thing is awesome), and tried to think about what bloggers would like to link to.

I was contacted by another podcaster for content, so I will be recording something and receiving a link on his website. Not sure too many of you will have this option unless you started a podcast. Well, that is all for now. Let me know if you have any questions, and feel free to leave a comment below.

-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.