Social Media: Showcase your Personal Brand
When you click on an Instagram page, Pinterest Profile or Facebook page, what’s the first thing you see? Take note of what you’re looking at. Is it the bio or the cohesiveness of the images? When people find your profiles, first impressions are KEY. In a matter of seconds, people will leave your page if they don’t absolutely love what they see.
Personality
Your persona online should align with your brand. Consider how you want to be perceived and create content that contributes to that idea! Be conscious when creating content for each platform. Your brand must be consistent across every outlet, including in press, at events, and most importantly today, social media.
Sure, what you may be posting on Facebook will be different from Houzz, but your potential client must be able to connect your business from platform to platform. They need to identify who you are as a designer or firm. When you make a post, you want your audience to know it’s coming from you, even before seeing your name or logo. Give your brand a personality people will recognize!
How Are You Different?
When creating this persona, think of what is important to you as a designer and all the things that make you stand out. Your unique Selling Proposition (USP), is truly the key to successful marketing. Evaluating how you are different from everyone else in your trade is what potential clients want to see, even if they don’t know it. Setting yourself apart will make you memorable. Evaluate your niche and run with it!
Stay Consistent
If you’re not posting regularly, it’s time to change that. Depending on if you are a newer, smaller business, you’ll need to have more of a presence. For more established companies, it’s alright to post more sparingly – but consider maintaining a steady presence to keep your audience on the edge of their seat and updated on what you’re doing.
Make sure to be conscious of the posts and ultimate grid you are composing on Instagram and Pinterest. Do you have a theme, standard style of shooting photos, or method to editing your posts? A curated feed will show your attention to visual detail, which relates back to your work as a designer.
Consider using apps such as Schedugram or Later to plan and automate posting to Instagram. If you don’t use the Instagram draft feature, these tools can help to visualize your content and maintain consistency.
Even if you are not looking for more projects to work on, keep clients and your greater audience in the know with what you’re doing. You may have all the business you’re looking for and want to stay small, but even so, it’s important to let your brand be represented in the digital world. Keep yourself in their minds!
All in all, social media gives you opportunities you need to take advantage of! Your social media content represents who you are as a designer or firm, and you want people to stick around! Make your online name memorable – one to come back to.
Keep in mind, you can have a beautiful profile, but there is more to social media than that. You’ve got to give a reason for people to come to you. No one will find you on their own if you’re not linked in or present. Manage your presence and maximize your returns by optimizing online!
Nick May is the host of a widely acclaimed interior design podcast, The Chaise Lounge, dedicated to the business of interior design. Each week he interviews top designers from across the globe to find out how they got into interior design, why they started their firm, and what has made them so successful.
