Great Fabric By KOTHEA, Great Design By McVitty

As an interior designer you appreciate the beauty of the things you design. So how can this flimsily-named Twitter-thing have any beauty? or any use for that matter with the constraint of 140 characters. How can it be a professional marketing tool?

Well it is and I’ll tell you why. I should also let you know that I am from the original anti-Twitter brigade but have been converted as I wrote late last year.

1. Many of the readers of this blog are owners of small to medium-sized interior design firms. We just don’t have that much spare time, right? You’re probably worried about how often your web site appears in Google and have (correctly) been told by the technical people that you need content on your web site. A blog is a great way to do that BUT you haven’t go the time to write frequent mini-essays. You will probably find a lot of your competitors have started blogs but only made one or two postings…pointless them even starting! How many text messages did you write today? I would like to bet that either you wrote a few or could have at least spared the time to write a few. So you have time to Twitter and all that means is that you really do have the time to write short thoughts and comments that your clients might be interested in. Your job as an Interior Designer IS INTERESTING, you meet lots of clients, see lots of fantastic products and installations. Share your thoughts and comments.
2. Did no-one read your last mail shot or you got not response to a mass e-mailing? On Twitter you can EASILY make connections. You follow people, they follow you. It requires little time. OK it gives a flimsy contact at first. BUT A CONTACT NEVERTHELESS. Grow that contact, Twitter makes them aware of you it’s then up to you to convert that Awareness into an Interest / Desire / Action on what you do. Twitter is MUCH easier than email and calling. Much. Keep doing your ‘normal’ marketing, no-one is saying you should stop that.
3. Monitor who is talking about you on Twitter (eg SocialMention.com). When someone mentions you then find out if they have a blog. If they do get them to write a blog about some aspect of your company, they are probably looking for ideas for articles (just like the ‘real’ press). So your network expands so does traffic to your site, so your reputation and awareness improves. At the same time so does Google’s pagerank view of the importance of your website, so you appear higher in Google results. Win, win, win.
4. Once you have enough potential clients following you, do a Twitter promotion “10% off this Saturday”, whatever you like. How long does it take to write 140 characters? Even if you get one sale, the maths and profitability metrics are conclusively simple.
5. If you do write a blog use Twitter to promote your blog. Like I do with this WordPress blog which posts automatically to http://twitter.com/kothea and then onto other places like our Facebook account http://facebook.com/kothea or our FriendFeed account. (If you want a cool Facebook url like mine here’s how). Find out how your clients like to communicate, some might like email, some might like Twitter over their Blackberries – business is about doing what your clients like not what you like.

Of course you could just sit back and let your competitors get one over you.

If you liked this article please comment, it motivates me to write on a cold and windy day. If you want me to write on any business related area to interior design please let me know – if it’s marketing related we’ll certainly try to do it. We’ve already written lots of such articles here.

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