Not just interior designers, but people from many industries bemoan the fact that no-one is visiting their web site. Then the next (incorrect) step in thinking goes that “well maybe I need to pay someone to get links to my site”… or something along those lines. And so it goes on, more money is spent on technology, on social media, on the web, on the net, on web 2.0 – whatever you want to call it. I’m sure you recognise the picture, perhaps from other designers you know that have these awesome looking websites…with no visitors!

This all-too-typical situation raises a whole raft of questions, points and observations. I’ll try to cover a few of them here.

1. Why on earth should I visit your web site?

I think you, the interior designer, really have to answer this question. Yes I’m sure your site looks great. Yes I’m sure it highlights your services and showcases your past projects (hopefully!). But let’s say I’m a potential customer, really, why should I visit your site? What’s in it for me? Your site MUST address this issue. IE the issue of your customer. Your web site should NOT be set up solely to gratify the interior design company’s owners or marketing team or web designer…I’m sorry but what you guys think is not that important to most people! You need to add something to the (potential) customer. Ideally something that will take them on that metaphorical ‘voyage’ towards closer links with your company and ultimately turning them into a customer and advocate of your firm.

So, simplistically, your site needs to contain the words and images necessary to give the client the information they need in an appropriate format.

2. Why on earth should Google or Bing or Yahoo visit your web site?

This questions is important because even if your site is set up to cater for the needs of your perfect potential customer that’s absolutely no use whatsoever if the search engines do not place your company on the first or second page of a potential customer’s web search. And even if you understand this issue it is still awfully hard to achieve such a placing in search engine results.

So, part of the solution here relies on your site having sufficient words and properly ‘tagged’ images (I won’t go into that that means here, look elsewhere on this site or the net). Remember that google cannot really see images at all, only words. Look at the sofa/fireplace image below  only ONE OF YOU UK INTERIOR DESIGNERS IN THE WHOLE COUNTRY automatically came up with an image that I can could choose from to publicize on this blog. Only one. Amazing. And who are Rogue Designs? Never heard of them…but google.co.uk, wordpres.com and zemanta.com have and now so have you. Go figure!

So you have to have the right words. You have to know what the words are that your customers use in their searches (not so easy!) and then you have to use those words a lot…but not too much! How much is not too much? No-one really exactly knows. But you have to use them sufficiently frequently and towards the start of the various pages on your site. But just write stuff that makes sense don’t try to write the key words a million times per article… that doesn’t work either.

All well and good you might say. If you’ve got this far…which most people haven’t…you’re a long way down the line.

Now the next problem is that the search engines also look at the frequency of how often your pages change. So now you really have a problem. Even if you did a great web site last year Google will downgrade it’s importance in search results this year because the content hasn’t changed in the 12 months. The solution to this is of course to change your words and pictures a lot….but that takes time. Either your time or the time of someone that you pay for. That’s annoying and expensive. But that’s the way it is. Oh yes, and you quickly run out of interesting things that your customer will want to read. That’s annoying too.

If your web site has some sort of e-commerce facility ie products are sold, introduced, discounted etc etc. Then I think that meets the ‘sufficiently changing criterion’ of the search engines. But you are interior designers and many of you will not have a retail front or an internet based retail front. So you won’t be able to do that or won’t want to do that. So what you would do instead is write a blog. And that blog should ideally be a physical part of your web site not an add-on somewhere else on the internet. It must also be frequently updated with posts that contain the right pictures and keywords.

I guarantee you (with caveats! hmmm) that if you do that, then blog weekly for a month and then write an ‘appropriate’ article/blog page; within an hour or so it WILL be on the first page of google for a suitable ‘keyword search’ (techy term, sorry) but obviously things too generic like bbc or ‘interior designer’ won’t work. Maybe, of course, a week or month later it won’t be on the first page as something ‘better’, or more recent or more ‘trusted’ is written! Sorry again! But at least you will have proof that what I am saying has some truth in it. I did the same thing in about September 2011 for our new ‘Luxury Cashmere Throws‘. Click on that link and see if we still come up. If we do still come up then, of course, I am wonderful (hmm) but the more generic you get such as with ‘Cashmere Throws‘ then the less likely our articles will be to come up. [So here 'Cashmere Throw' is a quite generic search with many results returned; but adding in something specific to the market I am targeting, ie the word 'luxury', narrows the results sufficiently so that my new/well-written post figures highly].

Indeed if KOTHEA’s articles still do have a first page listing for that search then it will be because we have been doing this blogging thing for quite a while. And if you have done just that then Mr Google gives you extra gold stars (pagerank) and you rank even higher in search engine results.

So if you are just starting out with a blog and use the wrong or widely used keywords then you will not appear on the first page of your customer’s searches. You have got to be in it for the long term.

Now, to complicate things further. Take a closer look at the search I got you to do on Luxury Cashmere Throws. If you actually click through onto the page in question. You, as a customer, may well be disappointed!! (See I am fallible). The pages that were coming up top were an image of ours on FLICKR and a general press release on one of the colours of our throw. So if you were looking to buy a throw then those pages might not have been good enough for you. Maybe you’d have gone off and looked somewhere else very quickly? Well yes probably. Especially because I did not include a ‘call to action’ to take you from that click to our website or request samples page further down the sale process.

So even if you do the right technical things ie intelligent(ish) blogging, then that’s no good if the customer is not drawn further onto your web presence and actually goes on to buy something. So I committed the cardinal e-sin. I got a click but did nothing about it to convert it into a sale.

3. The Big Brands

If you have a big brand then people will visit your site because they know the brand and at least vaguely associate that brand with selling what they want. So in that situation, it is your branding driving web site visits rather than the content of the site per se or how good the search engines think your site is.

So you smaller interior designers have yet another problem to overcome. Branding of course is a whole different kettle of fish of which web-presence is only one part.

4. Link Building

You will probably get hundreds of overseas based companies emailing you every day to say they can boost the SEO of your web site or guarantee you inbound links to boost your ranking. Hint… they can’t really. And even if they can…it won’t last. And even if they do what are they going to link to? Remember you have to have stuff that your customers is genuinely interested in, can they write that? I doubt it. YOU have to do it.

5. Social Media

And now of course you have to have a presence on Facebook and twitter and all the rest of it. Well, yes you probably do. But don’t get your hopes up too much.

Bizarrely I think that Twitter may well end up being the most effective. There will be the odd few of your blog posts, that effectively get syndicated across like minded people on Twitter, and those few posts will hit home to them and turn into something for your business.

Facebook. Only really useful I think as a mechanism for interacting with people on the move (via smart phones) or who just spend their time in that world more than the other parts of the digital world.

If your blog automatically sends updates to your facebook business page and twitter i think that will be enough to cover you there.

Before you embark on building a facebook world for your potential clients think again why on earth would they come to your facebook world for anything other than a cursory look or query? When they do you have to respond to that but the reality is that you will not have some all-singing all dancing interior design world on either the web or twitter. And even if you do who will go there… other interior designers or your clients!

Good luck. Getting clients was never easy – if that’s any consolation.

Related articles

• The Art of Choosing the Perfect Interior Designer (prweb.com)
• How do I work with an interior designer? (ask.metafilter.com)
• Looking For Top Interior Designers (mydecorarticles.com)
• Luxury-Cashmere-Throws-Colour-Rose (kothea.com)
• Luxury-Cashmere-Throws-Colour-Lipstick (kothea.com)
• Luxury-Cashmere-Throws-Colour-Ruby (kothea.com)
• Luxury-Cashmere-Throws-Colour-Raspberry (kothea.com)
• Luxury-Cashmere-Throws-Colour-Redcurrant (kothea.com)
• Luxury-Cashmere-Throws-Colour-Tea (kothea.com)
• Luxury-Cashmere-Throws-Colour-Malt (kothea.com)
• Luxury-Cashmere-Throws-Colour-Chateauneuf (kothea.com)
• Luxury-Cashmere-Throws-Colour-Midnight (kothea.com)
• Luxury-Cashmere-Throws-Colour-Blackcurrant (kothea.com)

Image via Wikipedia

23 September 2011, Decorex and Homes & Garden Magazine will be looking for the most inspirational fabrics and wallpapers that are launched in Spring or Autumn 2011.

There are several awards that may interest readers including

• Best Small Print
• Best Printed Fabric
• Best Woven Fabric
• Best Embroidered Fabric
• Best Wallpaper over £40 a roll
• Best Fabric Collection

Here is a link to the 2010 winners. See if  you are inspired. On the whole we weren’t.

Related articles

• Watercolour Florals – Hot Interior trend for summer 2011 (digetexhome.com)
• New Orleans Artist Amanda Talley Launches a Fabric Line! (casasugar.com)
• What’s Your Favorite New Marimekko Fabric? (casasugar.com)

Image via Wikipedia

I would be rich if I were to be given one pound for every time we are asked, “What is the best upholstery fabric to use on my sofa?” Typically the questioner means ‘most durable’ rather than ‘best’.  You could buy a near bullet-proof fabric with a Martindale score of several hundred thousand but could you live with it!

‘Simple’ measures of durability such as Martindale and Wyzenbeek overlay complex structures of the fabric. This covers the construction of the yarns and design of the weave weave as well as the fibre chosen. Furthermore, finishes, sofa/furniture design, maintenance regimes and usage are variables that very significantly affect the life of your fabric.

More Martindale links here and here and here

There is a close link between fiber strength and yarn strength. Yarns are twisted to add strength – generally a tighter twist gives a stronger yarn. This is measured in Twists Per Inch or Meter (TPI or TPM). Tightly twisted yarns are generally smooth and dense. This brings us to weave design. Weaves can be extremely complicated and difficult to structurally model and understand. Just knowing the fibers, yarn and weave construction still doesn’t answer the basic question – an objective measurement is needed. Test were developed to determine wear. They are better known as abrasion tests and many Interior Designers today refer to these test results as THE way to measure fabric durability. Abrasion test are supposed to forecast how well a fabric will wear in upholstery applications.

There are two tests: Martindale in Europe and Wyzenbeek in the USA. The tests are different and there is no correlation between the two. With Wyzenbeek (ASTM D4157-02): a piece of cotton duck fabric or wire mesh is rubbed in a straight back and forth motion on a piece of fabric until “noticeable wear” or thread break is evident. One back and forth motion is called a “double rub” (dbl rub). Whereas with Martindale (ASTM D4966-98): the abradant in this test is worsted wool or wire screen, the fabric specimen is a circle or round shape and the rubbing is undertaken in a figure 8, unlike the straight line of the Wyzenbeek. One figure 8 is a cycle – hence the terms Martindale cycles.

Contract fabrics would normally meet these criteria:

General contract: Wyzenbeek 15,000 Martindale 20,000

Heavy duty contract Wyzenbeek 30,000 Martindale 40,000

Whereas for domestic applications:

Light residential Wyzenbeek 6,000, Martindale 9,000

Medium use residential Wyzenbeek 9,000 Martindale 15,000

Heavy use residential 15,000 Martindale 30,000 or higher

The higher the result the more likely the fabric is to be more durable. (Source of the above figures can be provided on request to the author)

With figures over 100,000 then there may be an issue with the applicability of the results and certainly how the fabrics’ care regime is implemented will have more of an influence on its longevity.

Some commentators question the validity of test results. In my experience in the UK, test houses are independent and are strictly monitored by British Standards and no one fabric company is big enough to be able to ‘ask for’ results to be skewed. Nor, I’m sure, would any fabric company want to put a supplier in that position if only for the reason that it is in no-one’s interests to undermine the authority of independent industry bodies that, in general, regulate for the greater good of all.

Related articles

• Hemp History Week (peaceandgreens.wordpress.com)
• Well Balanced Yarn (knittingbeforeknittingwascool.wordpress.com)
• Fabrics 101 – Cotton (kingpinchic.com)

Mohair Velvet

Mohair Velvet – A velvet made from natural Mohair Wool. Typically durable with high Martindale rub test results. Natural fibres give a degree of inherent fire retardancy.

Cotton velvet – A velvet made from natural cotton

Linen Velvet – a velvet made from natural linen typically an excellent domestic upholstery velvet.

Silk Velvet – Potentially beautiful and amazing velvet fabric made from silk but a high degree of quality variation across manufacturers.

CS Trevira – Made from synthetic Trevira. Excellent contract velvet.

Cashmere Silk Velvet – Extremely high quality luxury fabric. Mix of two natural fibres ie Cashmere Wool and Silk. Combines beauty with durability.

Vicuna Silk Velvet – Extremely high quality and rare luxury fabric. Rarely available as an interiors fabric.

Cotton & Silk Velvet – A less expensive way to strengthen the beauty of the silk with the strength of cotton. Cotton being cheaper than Cashmere wool for example!

Note also that a velvet is made with a back cloth material. It is not unusual for an extremely fine top market velvet to have a 100% cotton back cloth.

Related Articles

• What is Velvet? (brainz.org)
• Got A Crush On Velvet? (kothea.com)
• Contract Upholstery Fabric – How to Specify It (kothea.com)
• Holiday Trend: Crushed Velvet (beso.com)
• New Fabric Trends Update Your Decor (chicagonow.com)
• Upholstery Linen – Sourcing Luxury Linen in the UK (kothea.com)

1. Determine Use

Is it panelling or seating? for the latter you will need to consider flammability (cigarette, match and crib 5) and abrasion (Martindale)

2. Fabric Composition

The composition of the fabric including the yarn and weave will affect the fabric’s long term wear, appearance and technical performance.

Natural fabrics such as wool can be more expensive but generally offer good feel and technical characteristics such as natural flame retardancy.

Man-made fabrics usually are more easily cared for but can look cheap if not properly chosen.

3. Flammability

The single standard for contract seating which is acceptable throughout the EU is EN 1021 Parts 1 and 2 (cigarette and match). Higher level standards in the UK are BS 5852 and BS 7176.

The standard which applies to vertical surface fabrics is BS 476 Part 7.

4. Abrasion

You should be looking at the Martindale properties of the fabric. <Here> is more information on the Martindale rub test.

5. Environmental Considerations

Generally natural fibres like wool are good. And man-made ones less so, NYLON is not great.

6. Care and maintenance

Generally contract fabrics will look bad because of dirt rather than because they wear out. So follow the manufacturers instructions on care and maintenance.  Basically wipe away stains quickly and vacuum clean regularly.

With that in mind I have been looking through a few search terms that potential customers of interior designers might use. Unsurprisingly lots of interior designers popped up.

But one thing that I noticed was that VERY few of you were making use of video.

I know it takes a long time to do these things to a reasonable degree of quality but I would suggest it is worth it.

The reason being that Kelly Hoppen popped up again and again. She is obviously a renowned interior designer of the first degree BUT she also appreciates the importance of PR to her new business generation activities. The internet is not much more than PR … just the digital kind.

Why did Kelly appear? Well google doesn’t favour her over you, that much is true. Google does not think that she is better than you. However Google DOES put more emphasis sometimes on non textual information eg pictures and videos. So her video (above) popped up. When you go and check it out, YOUTUBE takes you through lots more of her videos. Before I knew it I had spent 15 minutes looking at her work and hearing her views.

Now if you go to your web site designer and ask them to talk to your ISP and get the stats for YOUR web site, you will probably find that the average visitor spends MUCH less than one minute on your site.

Food for thought.

“Black Diamond” is the colourway name for the Italian Silk Velvet (100% Silk Pile) with the code 777-108-900.

You can get black silk velvet samples here from KOTHEA if you are a trade professional. Just click the link.

KOTHEA velvets are the best in the market. We only sell top market fabrics, mostly to top European Interior Designers and Architects. Here are some more bits of technical information on our black Italian Silk velvet fabric:

Width: 140cm

Composition: 100% Silk Pile

No repeat, plain.

Abrasion: Martindale 20,000.

Available from stock, normal delivery within 5 days.

Minimum Order length: 2m

There are one or two wools that are possibly ‘better’ (ie warmer or softer) but they are extremely expensive (such as Vicuna). They are SO expensive and ‘rare’ that you will never come across them in reality unless you work in a very niche area of the fashion fabrics market. I have never even heard about such fabrics being available for interiors use, let alone seen or touched them. Although I would imagine it would not be dissimilar from cashmere!

Which brings me back to Cashmere Throws.

Maybe you already have a Cashmere Throw, or possibly a Cashmere scarf. They feel wonderful. It is not just marketing hype either, there are a variety of technical reasons why the Cashmere yarn makes fabrics that are warmer and softer to the touch than any other woolen yarn.

Yet there remains a huge variation in price from one Cashmere throw to the next. Why?

We have struggled to answer that question ourselves. Cashmere Throws can retail at £2,000. Yet the quality is only very good. Scarves too can easily cost several hundreds of pounds (and upwards).

So we are about to release Cashmere Throws that are better than everyone else. We are using: higher quality, thicker yarns than anyone else; sourcing our own designs, qualities and colours from the best mills.

I can guarantee that if you put one of our throws next to any competing alternative you would always choose a KOTHEA Cashmere Throw. We would even let our competitor choose the criteria that they wish to compete on! We are SO confident that our throws win on all counts.

Or you could go and buy one for £2,000 from somewhere else and be unsure that you have the best.

We are in the advanced stages of launching a substantial new range of bespoke Cashmere Throws with standard and custom sizes; custom colours and great standard designs and colourways. Quite a big leap ahead of many companies, certainly in the UK.

We will be introducing new yarns of a higher ply rating than any we know to be available in the UK, offering the thickest and most luxurious feel.

We already have exquisite hand-woven linen throws and are considering other yarns for throws like Chenille.

In the UK those phrases are taken to mean the same thing. But that is not universally true so I will explain.

When you as an interior designer are about to place an order you need to get a cutting which you keep in your records stating exactly what colour the fabric will be. So you need a cutting from the exact roll of fabric which is going to be cut for you by the supplier. Once you have a this “dye lot sample” or “stock cutting” the onus is then on the supplier to supply you with the exact fabric.

Is this always important?

This is particularly important as the colour of many fabrics vary slightly between different batches of production. This is common across all suppliers.

Usually, however, it will not matter if your ENTIRE order comes from a roll that was different from the original sampling. The difference will be trivial and not noticed.

But if you are being supplied with more than one piece then it often DOES matter. The different rolls of fabric when made-up side-by-side can be noticeably different.

Sometimes even if the fabrics are different; the way they are made up, the lighting or where they are in a room can make the difference not noticeable.

Various technical reasons explain all of this, such as the variability of colour in man-made dyes, however designers need only know that it can and often does happen that fabrics vary slightly in their colour.

If in doubt obtain a dye lot sample/stock cutting.

Note: Before you start make sure you will be working on your business page (fan page) and not your personal page. You really should be using a business page (fan page), be sure what one is before continuing as lots of people go down the wrong route and then have to start all over again, FB is not very forgiving in that respect.

OK I’m going to look at Branding, Promoting, Enhanced Navigation & Content. These are the main areas to add a bit of spice to your FB Fan Page/Business Page.

1. BRANDING.

a. You need a 200 pixels wide x 600 pixels high image of your brand. Maybe you have a logo, if so use that. Upload this to the area to the left of where it says “Wall”.
b. Header. This goes above where it says “Wall”. Change the text here so that it has your company name. What if you get the name wrong? Well if you get the name wrong you cannot change it, so you have to delete the page and start again (as at Feb 2010). So please get it right first time.

c. The same applies to the category of your page, that cannot be changed either. So when you create your page get the category right.
d. If your company is called XYZDesigns then you need http://facebook.com/XYZDesigns as your url. This article <here> tells you how to do that.

2. PROMOTING

a. You probably already understand groups on LinkedIn. Well Facebook (FB) has them as well. Start one or use existing ones like Interior Design Lovers (requires you to be logged in to FB). Promote your page in groups. BUT DO NOT SELL, SELL, SELL. Let people know about the information your FB page will provide them with. Remember further that few people are interested in your business per se, they are more interested in what it can do for them. So talk about solving problems and NOT saying how great you/your services are. The sell-sell way does not usually work.

b. User comments. Engage with your fans, reply to them. Promote yourself to these people and remember that they are already on your page and are taking the time to write something, probably to find out something, so they have more than a passing interest in what you do. Again soft sell not hard sell. Try to help them.

c. Facebook Advertising.

You may have tried Google AdWords advertising or the Yahoo and Microsoft equivalents (they are each very similar to one another). Maybe they have worked for you, maybe not. Facebook also allows you to advertise your services. They take a slightly different approach to the other 3 by targeting the FB user base. I particularly like how you can be much more specific about the region and demographics of the person you are targeting; FB also tell you how many people are in the demographics you specify. Worth a look especially for Interior Designers who are targeting the general public rather than other businesses. I will not go into this area in any more depth yet as it really comes under ‘advertising’ rather than building a better FB page for your business.

d. Make sure the information about your business on the left hand side really stands out. Get some good, engaging and genuine words about your company there.

3. ENHANCED NAVIGATION

a. You can administer your FB business page (fan page) <here>. You need to be an administrator of your business fan page.

b. Go to the wall. At the top of the left hand column you will see ‘edit page’. Go there and then choose “Wall Settings: Edit”. Change the default view to the correct page that you want a user to land on, could be your wall, could be your info page. This can be changed later if you make a mistake.

4. CONTENT

This is what will make people come back to your site. It’s really, really important! So you will need to have some new ‘stuff’ on your FB page to make it worth their while to return. That ‘stuff’ could be new videos, articles or whatever. it could also be the content of communication and engagement with like-minded design professionals working together to solve problems online…

The most obvious route is through your blog. You can display your blog as the ‘wall’ for your business page. You have a few options for example:

• Write your blog (the original content) in FB and post it everywhere else automatically from FB. You can even write your blog by accessing Facebook from your blackberry.
• Get your external blog synchronised into FB automatically (I use a free FB application called Social RSS and my blog is on WordPress)
• I prefer the second approach as WordPress also automatically publishes my blog posts to other sources such as Twitter. Apparently there is a FB Fan Page-to-Twitter application but I do not use that, sorry!
• Encourage your fans to add content (photos, etc.). That makes your job easier and makes your site content rich for others.

Share & Enjoy!

So…

1. Automatically Tweet your blog posts once a week – that’s a great way to start. If  you use a WordPress hosted blog (like this one) it’s just a case of ticking a box and you are done.

Or

2. Every day just go through your suppliers. As a designer you have lots of them. Tweet a compliment about a DESIGN RELATED supplier &/or one of their products/services.

Or

3. Maybe tweet a promotion

Remember

4. Tweets are eventually deleted from the net. So you don’t have to worry about keywords too much. If you are writing a blog post then that post will be permanent and the keywords in it are important. So with your Tweets just keep it simple, interesting and professional. Think “interesting narrative”.

But would you…

5. Tweet about your competitors? Sure if you want to help publicize their work (??) and sure if they reciprocate and Tweet back.

Share & Enjoy!

If you sell to the general public then the consensus amongst marketing professionals is that your marketing strategy must include Facebook. Facebook will work to promote your services through your network and through the networks of your network members.

If you sell to businesses (eg if you are a hospitality interior designer specialising in restaurants) then I’m not convinced that Facebook is the best medium. However, and its a big however, many of your clients will be using Facebook already so maybe you should use it to help them consume the information that you produce and to help them interact with your organisation in a way that suits them. It’s not what is easiest for you that should be the way forwards, it should be what is the easiest for your (potential-) clients.

Let’s get started then. Here’s what you need to do and it will cost you nothing other than time:

1. Create a personal Facebook account if you don’t already have one. If you have one, use the one you have.

2. Create a business page for your business – sometimes called a fan page. Listen up here!

• Don’t create another personal page.
• Don’t create a group – you don’t need to know what one is.
• Create a business(or fan) page: http://www.Facebook.com/pages/create.php

Make a note of your default business page ie the URL that Facebook gives you. KOTHEA’s is http://www.facebook.com/pages/London-United-Kingdom/KOTHEA/129265851209/ and yours will be similar, make sure that there aren’t any superfluous bits on the end, it should look similar to mine. Yuk, looks awful I know; we’ll deal with that in a minute.

One thing you can do with your existing web site is to redirect traffic from one folder of your web site to your Facebook business page. eg look at this www.kothea.com/facebook.You’ll have to ask your hosting company to do that or your web administrator. It might be free to do that but some hosting companies charge.

If instead you want something like http://www.facebook.com/kothea then do steps 3 and 4 below.

3. Get 25 fans. You must have at least 25 fans of your business (ie NOT 25 friends of your personal account). You must do this to get a vanity URL.

4. Create a personal/vanity url for your business. This is sometimes referred to as a fan page. You probably want it to appear like: www.facebook.com/yourcompany. I’ve already published an article how to do this and it is <here>. Read it carefully as there are some disastrous mistakes you can make if you do not do it properly.

5. Get a (free) tool that lets you add more about your business to the “Info page” than is allowed by the standard Facebook section eg the application “More Extended Info“

6. Blogs: This can be seen as a ‘wall’ for your business. You have a few options for example:

• Write your blog in Facebook and post it everywhere else automatically from Facebook. You can even do that by accessing Facebook from your blackberry.
• Get your external blog synchronised into Facebook automatically (I use a free Facebook application called Social RSS and my blog is on WordPress)

Don’t do this

• Copy and paste all your blog posts into lots of different places. Too time-consuming.

7. Get lots more fans and build your network. You’ll do the best job at that by regularly adding interesting, original content that includes video, images and words.

A closing thought. Think of your old mailshots, think of your newer email shots, think how most of them were probably unsolicited, unwanted and UNREAD. When someone becomes a fan of your business on Facebook they actively want information about you and/or your company – so send it. When their friends look at the profile of your fans it will sometimes say that they are a fan of your company…the chance for someone you’ve probably never met to be enticed to find out more about your business. It’s not a panacea for lead generation but it’s a great start.

Share & Enjoy

Some advanced FB suggestions <here>.

Great Fabric By KOTHEA, Great Design By McVitty

Great Web Sites are important for Interior Designers. Often they are just too great-looking and neglect to do a proper all-round job.

As an Interior Designer you have a web site for numerous reasons, those reasons will almost exclusively be related to sales & marketing.

Your web site must personify your brand at its highest level, it should probably showcase your work and maybe it should showcase some of the talents of your most trusted and valued staff. It must look wonderful.

So far so good?

I can show you many sites where Interior Designers have done just that. They have produced the most amazing works of art almost. But why? I’m not saying it is wrong to do that I ‘m just asking why have you focused all your efforts on creating a work of art? Who exactly is going to see it? Where is the audience to your work of art? Who is the audience? What is the purpose?

Often the web design agency have made matters worse. Their creative staff have wanted to do just that; be creative. There is much merit in creativity but only as part of what your customers are looking for.

Maybe the web site has to look good to make your staff or management proud of working in your organisation. That’s a valid reasons too, in part.

Has anyone considered your potential customers? Your existing customers? Has anyone considered at what moments in the customer’s decision making process they are likely to look at any given part of  your web site? Definitely not in many cases.

Ask: “How have your (potential-) customers got your web site address?” If it is from your business cards then the role your web site should play at that time is to support the image, the brand journey you have already started to create with them. If the customer is a longstanding one then they may visit your web site as a sort of post-purchase gratification – maybe they want the project you did for them showcased to the world? If it is a potential cusotmer, that you have not yet even contacted, then they have probably got your web address from a search engine. They will need some degree of showcasing BUT these potential new clients are looking for information, something to make them more interested in your company and they need something to make them be reassured of, and desirous for, your services.

So you’ve probably done a lot right in creating a tool to help the sales process along but you have probably not also created a marketing tool that plays a significant enough role in new lead generation.

What, in detail, have you done wrong then? (not you, sorry, those other interior designers!). Most of these are really very important points and not just designed to make up a list:

1. Publically invisible – there are a lack of quality inbound links to your website;

2. Picture rich, Word poor – insufficient content/information on your web site, instead you have too many nice images;

3. Gorgeously bland – if you changed the name of your company on your web site to that of your biggest competitor would anyone really notice? Do you share their language? When you write in media-speak you do not differentiate your company from anybody else. You are marketing yourself in the same way as everyone else, if that is true then you are trying hard to be average!;

4. Lost in space – your site should be easily navigable, leading visitors from one thoughtful insight to the next breathtaking interior  (or at least to the contact page). On several interior designer sites I have visited the first page presented has no obvious form of navigation to suggest where to go next;

5. Even the IT guy got confused – lack of meta-tag and headings, too much flash-content that search engines cannot see at all; and

6. Hide and seek - lack of search functionality. Without search on your site you are making it as hard as possible for your potential customers to find what they want. They will be used to using a search engine for finding information – just like you are.

There are more things interior designers do wrong with their web sites but those are ones that should be rectified ASAP.

So what exactly should you do? I’ll answer that by answering the ‘mistakes’ listed above:

1. Get quality inbound links. This is a traditional PR exercise but applied to digital media rather than print media. You want links from sites with a higher page rank than your site’s page rank NOT reciprocal links. Find out what pagerank is and put some time into creating inbound links, at first play catch up by seeing what some of your best competitors do (not KOTHEA, we are not a competitor)

2. More content: describe what you do and how you do it and why you do it. Google rates your site based on this type of content rather than pretty picture content.

3. Speak in plain, conversational English. You are not a management consultant, although your client might be.

4. Get your friends or kids (even better clients) to work through your site and watch them do it without helping. Getting around should be intuitive. Also think about the term “call to action”, wherever your potential client is on your site there should be an obvious call to action, an obvious thing for them to do next such as sending you an email or telephoning you for a brochure or appointment.

5. Keep the nice flash bits if you have them but get your IT guys to talk to you about meta tags/keywords, titles, sitemaps,  and h1/h2 tags. (Actually get them to JUST talk to you about those first of all and as soon as they mention web 2.0 just glaze your eyes over and pretend you don’t want to understand! That’s next month’s marketing job for you, don’t let them distract you!). Look puzzled and concerned when they tell you why some of these technical bits are just not possible on your site (they are not being fully truthful) and then ask them why the site was designed and implemented like it was as surely that is the cause of the problem. with the exception of inbound links, all of the things on this list really should have been done when  your site was designed and built, I would almost say that if they were not done then they should be corrected for free if they were done by a paid ‘expert’.

6. Introduce site search. This can cost thousands or it can be free. It depends who you talk to!

I hope that helps. These really are genuine, important problems with many sites and not just an excuse for me to write another list. You can read more of my articles on the business of interior design <here> the articles tend to be about sales and marketing issues rather than technology though I answer questions on either!

PS: This following link is written by Google, it covers related areas of interaction between you and your potential online customer. It is more geared towards selling over the web but you will get the idea of what you should be doing by inference: http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/conversion/ebook.html

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