As one of the many the marketing tactics available to small interior design businesses these days, social media almost always gets the best return on investment.
Because interior design work is so beautiful, it makes a great subject for share-worthy Instagram images. And by curating the right collections of images in places like Instagram and Pinterest, you can give your customers an immediate idea of what you’re capable of and what you’re all about. And the fact that the images are shared by real people, not generated by an algorithm, inspires a greater sense of trust.
These are the things that make social media marketing one of the easiest and most effective ways to attract new interior design clients to your business.
However, it’s not exactly easy to come up with beautiful, well-written posts consistently, especially when you’re feeling the pressure to use those posts to make sales.
The solution is to realize that social media shouldn’t be approached from a strictly business perspective. Although social media is a great way to make new connections and has plenty of business benefits, choosing to focus on those business benefits can actually make your social media efforts less effective.
That’s because the best posts and campaigns leverage a genuine sense of joy and personality, and that doesn’t come from a business focus. Here’s how to embrace the other perks of social media and boost your business revenue in the process.
Celebrate Your Work
Let’s put the business benefits of social media aside for a moment and talk about why people use social media for fun.
If you use social media at all personally, you already understand the advantages. For all of its distractions, social media is a great way to keep in touch with friends and get a feel for what’s going on in the community.
Sharing photos of your home, pets, food, friends, family, and travels can make you feel proud and happy. Posting is just another way to celebrate your life and the good things in it, and a way to make sure that those moments stand out in time. When you commemorate them, special milestones mean a little more.
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You need to embrace the fun perks of social media for your business pursuits, too.
The primary aim of your social media use should be to celebrate your accomplishments and your art with the people in your life.
After all, it’s important to celebrate. If you own your own design business, you’re working hard, and the results are personal. You should be excited about your work and want to show what you’ve accomplished to the world.
Think of it as shouting from the rooftops. These days, social media is your proverbial rooftops.
Document Your Progress
Besides celebrating your work, there’s a lot to be said for simply documenting the progress on your projects with photos as it happens, and posting regularly on social media is a good way to keep yourself accountable to do it.
Sharing photos as your projects come together is a good way of celebrating each milestone you reach. In the end, all the photos will all come together to tell the “story” of the project.
If you come up with a unique hashtag for each project, it will help keep the work organized.
You can even use the collection of photos later to create a nice photo book for the client when the project is finished. A photo book that documents and celebrates the little details of their beautiful new space will be much appreciated, and the book (especially the “before” and “after” shots) can be a powerful sales tool that all their visitors will see.
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Curate Your Style
Not everything you post on social media has to be official design work. It’s a good idea to post other design-related objects and images that inspire you, as well.
If you see something that interests you and aligns with your brand, odds are it would make a good social media post.
Over time, your social media profile pages will become like vision boards. It will be easy for people to learn, at a glance, what inspires you and what approach you take to your art just by looking at your social media profiles.
Sharing inspiration from other parts of your life can also make your feed more personal and more fun. It also gives you more material to work with so that you can post regularly.
Your followers need to see beauty through your eyes – show them!
Structure Your Social Media Marketing Efforts
As I mentioned in my post on the importance of creating a consistent marketing schedule, spending even just a few minutes each day on marketing can be more effective than pouring days into marketing efforts every now and then when you have the time available.
That’s because it usually takes weeks, if not months, to establish relationships and land new sales. Social media marketing thrives on consistency. If you don’t post regularly, your audience won’t be as engaged with you, and your efforts won’t be as effective.
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First, you need a posting routine. If you have a hard time remembering to post regularly, see if you can connect the task to a certain time of day or to another task that you’ve already committed to the routine.
However, a routine won’t help much if you don’t know what to post.
As we mentioned, you can post images from current projects. I suggest coming up with a checklist of shots that you should make sure to get from every project you work on. Add them to your project timelines so you don’t forget to take them.
Of course, you can also post anything that inspires you and fits into your aesthetic.
But you should also have a stockpile of images to use for when you don’t have anything from your current work or activities.
Here are a few easy ideas for Instagram images for your stockpile:
- Photos from past projects / memories
- Quotes or even single words that resonate with you and post images of them
- Gather photos of collections of your favorite textures, patterns, wallpapers, stitching, metals, woods, and embroidery from your local design showroom. (For more ideas, check out my post on Instagram content.)
Another trick for maintaining consistency with your Instagram posts is to plan them out ahead of time. You can use a tool like Planoly, which is the one I use to visually plan my Instagram grid.
Finally, if you’d like more concrete advice and tools when it comes to Instagram and marketing, I’d love to work with you personally.
Interior Design Master Class offers both one-on-one business coaching and group mastermind sessions, where you can join other designers who are working together to get their businesses to the next level. I’ve hosted several “Instagram With Influence” master classes for designers that discuss everything from editing your photos before you post them to nailing down a content strategy that feels uniquely yours.
If you’re interested in learning more about working with Interior Design Master Class, please fill out this contact form. I look forward to hearing from you.
