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Music. Welcome to design for the creative mind, a podcast for interior designers and creative entrepreneurs to run their business with purpose, efficiency and passion, because while every design is different, the process should remain the same.
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Prepare yourself for some good conversations with amazing guests, a dash of Jesus and a touch of the Woo, woo, and probably a swear word or two.
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If you're ready to stop trading your time for money and enjoy your interior design business, you are in the right place.
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I'm your host. Michelle Lynn, you
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Hey y'all welcome back to the podcast. I'm so glad you're here, and it has been a hot minute since I have introduced myself. So if you are new around here, welcome. This is a very casual, unassuming, but chock full of business content podcast designed for the interior designer. My name is Michelle Lynn. I'm the owner of ml interiors group, a seven figure, award winning interior design from in Dallas, Texas. I've been featured in Forbes modern luxury, Martha Stewart, Southern Living, lux and other publications. I am a trusted advisor to small business owners and interior design, and I serve designers who have achieved five figures in revenue and want to scale to multiple six figures with profit and passion. So babe, I know you. You love this work. You create spaces that feel like a hug. You change people's lives with organized, beautiful spaces. And you know in your core that this business is where you're supposed to be. You're in a position to make this calling profitable, support your family and enjoy a work life balance. Maybe you've had some clients and completed some projects, but, girl, you didn't make a profit, or at least not enough for the amount of work that you did. Your processes weren't buttoned up. You're exhausted. You have the desire to get to multiple six figures of revenue profitably and without sacrificing your sanity, but you don't know how. And that is when designers come to me. So welcome. Welcome to design for the creative mind. That's the name of my company, as well as the name of this podcast. Today we're going to continue with our marketing series. I've recently tried to organize this podcast and work in a format of seasons. This season we are focused on Marketing, and today we're talking about Google juice. It's what I call search engine optimization. So Google juice, we are going to be working on small SEO steps for big visibility now, with all of the various ways today to market your interior design business, good old fashioned Google searches are still effective, but SEO or Search Engine Optimization, is a long game, and it's a complicated, detailed strategies. There are agencies that focus solely on SEO, so until you can get to a place to hire one of those agencies, and if you need a referral, you just let me know. But until you can get to a place to hire one of those, here are some tips on places where you can create and optimize your search ability online. You ready. You're going to want to this episode. You're definitely going to want pencil and paper, or pen and paper, or your tablet, whatever works, but you're going to want to take some notes. Let's start at the top with your Google business profile. If you don't have a Google business profile, it's free, and you can set it up in a matter of moments. Once you have it set up, you want to optimize your profile with key words that people use to search for your services. It could be interior for us, it's interior designer Dallas. It could be interior designer, you know, best interior design Dallas Fort Worth area. It can also be using things along the lines of renovation, construction management, decoration, living room design, all of those types of things can be in your profile. The goal is to post a couple of times a week. It's just images and.
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What you can do is you can post exactly what you're posting on Instagram to your Google My Business Profile, okay, or Google business profile. Now I am going to give a gratuitous plug to sidemark, because sidemark is the program that I use, and in all transparency, I am a co owner of but sidemark on the social media function has the opportunity for you to do one post to Instagram, and at the same time it will go to Facebook and your Google business profile, it'll also go to LinkedIn. So I am a little bit biased about working on side mark, but I would just throw that out for out there for you guys. So add photos of your work on a regular basis to your Google business profile. Now, the reason why you want your Google business profile to to be active is because it shows Google that you are an active business. Google likes it if the users are staying on Google, imagine that. So Google wants users to stay on Google, so set up your Google profile with lots of information. This is also where you can get your reviews. I highly recommend that as you complete fun and successful projects that you send the link to the Google reviews to your client so that they can post a review. Don't send them to the ones that you didn't have much fun with or the ones who are always crabby for real. And then once you get the review from your clients, make sure you reply to them. That's your Google business profile, free, easy, low maintenance. Let's now talk about your website. Websites for interior designers, as I've talked to hundreds and literally 1000s of y'all, it seems to be a sticking point that it needs to be perfect and babe, I'm here to tell you, it just needs to be done. Done is better than perfect. And then as you grow and as your portfolio grows, as your services grow, then you will be able to invest in an upgraded, newer, more sophisticated website, but right now, just make sure you have one. Once you have the website, and I can hear some of y'all just through the through the communication waves, I can hear some of y'all saying, Yeah, but I don't have a good portfolio. I will address that later. But you can still start it. You can still start a website without a fabulous portfolio, okay, if nothing else, if nothing else, what you could do when you're done listening to this podcast is you can go start your website and on your portfolio page. You can just put coming soon. Okay, so get it started, babe. Just get it started on that website that you either have now and you need to edit, or you are going to start, you need to make sure that you have a lot of copy on your website. Copy is the technical term for the words used. Yes, you need a lot of words on your interior design website. It's not all images, even though it would just be so much fun to put all the pretty pictures on the website and not really say much, just invite clients to call us. However, it needs to have this key. It needs to be keyword rich copy, so you need to work it in a lot. And you don't want to say interior design, Dallas, interior designer, Dallas, Dallas interior designer, over and over, but you need to be putting words along the lines of construction management, renovation, decoration, living room design, just like we were talking about on your Google business profile website copy is not necessarily going to be award winning. You're not looking for this beautiful pros to flow from your website, but what you're wanting to do, the strategy that you have, is to write it so that Google bots know who you are and what your website is about. Google bots basically is just what it sounds like. It is Google as it goes through your website and reads what you are all about so that they can categorize you appropriately, put you in the proper searches based on the words that you put on your website. If you don't have the right words, you are going to end up in the wrong searches. So for example, my this was pretty funny, actually, my
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my signature program is called the interior design.
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Business bakery. It's a 12 month mentorship program where I teach interior designers how to scale from five to multiple, six figures, again, with passion and profit, like I mentioned in my as I introduced myself, but we call the people who are in the bakery, bakers, okay, it just, it's just a natural progression. It sounds a little dorky, but if you've been in my world for a while, you know, I don't mind being a little dorky. But the interior design business bakery was prevalent on my website, called the design, designed for the creative mind and y'all and we had to go through and take out some of the verbiage and and replace some of the copy, because I was showing up in, like, cooking channels, bakery, baking, chefs, confectioners, like, all the type of stuff we were showing up in, so you have to make sure that you're writing it, so that Google understands who and who you are and what you do. If you're looking for some keyword research tools, write these down. You can write down the website, answer the public Google Keyword Planner and chat GPT, who I have recently nicknamed chatty G old. Chatty G can give you a hand with a whole lot of things in a very quick, quick manner. Yes, we are now embracing AI, it is that time of time of our lives. So that's a whole other one. That's a whole other podcast, right? Check your websites loading speed. Google loves fast sites. Years ago, as I was coming up through, coming up through the weeds, I had a website that loaded like molasses on a winter morning in Canada. Okay, it was slow. It turns out, I had uploaded all of the images that my photographers had provided to me, not on the website, but for a print size. I didn't know the difference at the time.
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I I thought that if I uploaded the larger images, that the quality would be better and it would be more attractive on my website. Well, that was incorrect. It was really incorrect. It's great if you're going to print it and do something in a magazine, but you do not want those images on your website, so always make sure that you are uploading web images. Your photographer will know the difference if you don't.
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But just like me, I don't know the difference in regards to what size does that mean? I don't know. Just give me the websites images you also want to make sure that you also want to make sure that your website is mobile optimized. Google will prioritize mobile optimized websites. As you have probably experienced yourself today, a lot of people look things up from their phone rather than waiting to get back to their desktop. Heck, so many people don't even have desktops anymore. It's a laptop. So our, our our screens are getting smaller and smaller, so make sure your website is mobile friendly. And then finally, you want to make sure that all of your images have alt text on them. So that's that's twofold. One is when you upload your when you upload your image, you want to rename it to what the image basically is, and it can simply be, I don't know, Project Miller, Ave floral SOPA, okay, so you just upload it, so that in that respect, the Miller Ave like Project Miller Ave, Project Miller Avenue is what we would use, or we would name it a fun and funky project, or whatever. But you name it that, just so you know what floral sofa it is. But then the floral sofa term is searchable, so that image can be found by Google. If somebody is looking for a floral sofa, there's that, but also there is what you call alt text. I believe that's alternative text, but it's, it's, it's shortened to alt text. I could be wrong. Don't quote me on that, but I do know that you need to fill it out. Your alt text needs to be a description of the image per se. It needs to what is that image? It can be a traditional floral sofa in a bright and bold living room. So these are the things that can also.
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Help. Help be found. But then it's, I'll tell you, from a business owner standpoint, it's also very helpful if you're trying to, if you're trying to gather content for maybe you are creating a, what do you call it? A magazine advertisement, or you're just trying to find something, you can literally go to your computer screen and search floral sofa if you're having a moment and you don't even remember that it was at the Miller Ave project. Does that make sense? Hopefully, that makes sense.
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Imagine trying to bake a cake without a recipe. You kind of know what the ingredients are but you don't know how to put it all together.
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After lots of hard work and trying different combinations, all you are left with is a sticky situation and a stomach ache. Babe running an interior design business can feel exactly that same way. That is why I created the interior design business bakery. This is a program that teaches you how to bake your interior design business cake and eat it too.
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If you don't want to figure out the hard way and you want guidance to follow a recipe that has already been vetted, someone that has already been there and done it and we'll help you do it too. Then check out the year long mentorship and coaching program, the interior design business bakery.
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If your interior design business revenue is below 300,000
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or if you're struggling to make a profit and keep your sanity, this is the only program for you. You can find that information at designed for the creative mind.com.
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Forward slash business, dash, bakery, check it out. You won't regret it.
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Also on your website, you want to make sure that you have a blog.
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Yeah, I know I hear some of y'all just going, I don't have time for a blog, or I don't like to write a blog. I don't know how to and honey, I just, I just want to tell you that it's important. So it's important to your business. That means it's important to you, and this is not nearly as difficult as you imagine it to be for those of you who currently have a blog that you are keeping up on a regular basis, high five like rock on with your bad self. The reason why a blog is important to your website is that it betters the chance of your ranking going up in searches. And what I mean by this is that Google, just like with your Google business profile, Google's wanting to make sure that your your website and your business is still alive. So if you can update your business website on a regular basis, the easiest way to do it is via a blog, because you're more than likely not getting new project images every month, right? You're not hiring a new employee every month. There are months at a time that you wouldn't even log into your website, probably, unless there was a there was a problem of some sort. So by posting a blog on a regular basis, if you are new in your SEO journey, you're going to want to post a blog more often. I started by posting a blog once, once a week. And let me just tell you, if y'all could see my old blogs, oh my God. They were so bad, so bad. I came across them the other day. I don't even remember why, what or how, but like they were embarrassingly bad. But here's the deal. When you were just starting, it's not like you have a lot of followers. Like, is your mom going to tell you, babe, that was really bad? Now I'm sure, if it was really bad, hopefully your mom would tell you, but, but for the most part, she's just going to be proud of you for having a blog. My baby's got a blog. Look at how pretty your website is. Okay? So so in that respect, don't get hung up on the quality, because you're not going to get better until you do it more. So remember, the more active your website is, the better chance your ranking goes up when you are writing your blog. Go back to that key word richness in the copy, there is a format to use by using headers, you have your title and then you have your headers. The headers show up as the I don't know how to exactly describe it, but you have to have headers because.
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That is what catches the attention of the Google, and then it dives down into the content, looking for some assistance with that. Go to chat GPT, you know, I can't believe I'm saying that, but go to chat GPT, have it. Write you a blog. You will see the header format. You need to repeat that online. Let me give you a disclaimer. If you're using chat GPT to write your content, babe, you need to go back and don't just copy and paste it. Read that, read that stuff, read it. Make sure it's accurate. Make sure it sounds like you, because there is no better way to lose credibility than to have your blog read like artificial intelligence wrote it. You are not a robot, so make sure you go back there and put your own spin on what has been created that in itself. Y'all, I'm not kidding. It's going to save you a bucket of time, like, I'm envious of this tool that is out for y'all right now, as you're as you're starting and growing your businesses, because I was like, blood, sweat and tears writing this stuff out. I'm trying not to swear as much on the podcast, just in case you have kids in the car, so you're welcome, but it still crosses my mind, and once in a while, it still may, may come out. So anyway, so when you're in the blog, as you continue to grow your website, and you grow your copy and you grow your blog posts link to other parts of your website inside of the blog. What I mean by this is I'm guilty of reading the Yahoo trashy news online. Okay, I just need a brain break sometimes. So, yeah, I go read about Kim Kardashian and her daughter and like all of the the crazy stuff her ex husband does okay. I don't watch their television show. I don't follow him on Instagram, but it's a good five minute break on Yahoo News, okay, but what Yahoo News does is, when they're talking about Kim kardashian's crazy ex husband and what his wife, his new wife, is wearing, okay, then what it does is it says something about Kim Kardashian, and then it says something about her crazy ex husband and his new wife and her lack of attire. But that is a clickable link that's going to take me to see what in the heck was that woman wearing. So do you understand what that does is that's going to keep you on whatever publication, whatever publication published that article. So it could keep me in People magazine. It could keep me on TMZ, or whatever you want. To take that same strategy and do that on your blog, take them, keep them there, keep those people there. Okay, use SEO friendly captions and hashtags on Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook. I think I'm going to do another entire episode on this coming soon, because I just learned about, well, I knew about SEO on your hashtags and stuff like that for Instagram, but I haven't done a deep dive, so I'm going to do a deep dive, and I'm going to come back and do a podcast on that. Speaking of social media, you want to share your blog post on social platforms with the link back to increase traffic to your website. Okay? So you can do that by link in bio, and then have, like, a link tree or something that it links to. You can use many chat where it says, where it could say, you just type a word in the comments and I'll send you the blog, or whatever it is, just the link to the blog. You could do that. But again, sidemark has that feature, okay, so you don't have to pay many chat. You can do it all in side mark. Okay, let's see what else do we have going on here,
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City area. I cannot tell you how many times I have an appointment to talk to an interior designer about coaching or
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whatever the case may be. And so I go and I look at their Instagram, and I'm like, I don't even know where this person is located. So then I go to their website, and there's not even any information about what city or area they serve, so make sure you have that information on in several places. Add it to the end of your blog. If you're in the Dallas Fort Worth area and you're looking for a badass interior designer, give us a call. Make sure it's on your social media profile. Make sure you're using it in your hashtags. Okay, y'all so that is the quick and the dirty version of things to do for your website to increase your Google visibility. The goal is, is that when somebody searches interior designer.
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Or that your website comes up. But also, one of the things, let's go back to your blog real fast, one of the things that I have been asked multiple times when I'm talking to interior designers like you is that, what if, why would I promote my blog on my social media? Because social media is global, and you're right. You know, why would somebody want to read your blog that's that's never going to hire you, because they live in 10 Buck too. Well, there's a couple reasons. One is that you're teaching people things in your blog. You're setting yourself up as a trusted authority in the industry. You're bringing people back to your website, and that, again, gives you Google juice. It doesn't matter if they're not going to hire you, you're going for the long game of the search engine optimization. So those, I hope that helps. Those are, those are small SEO steps stacked on top of each other, they really will get your Google juice flowing until you can afford to hire somebody who can really play the game on a deep dive. So for those of you who are listening to this, drop a review. Oh, but only if it's positive, okay, only, I only want the positive reviews. In all honesty, if you think this podcast sucks, then go ahead. You can unsubscribe. You can also send me an email and tell me what you think I can do differently or do better. Okay, so remember only positive reviews. It really does help that is my Google juice to get this podcast out to more interior designers and the more interior designers that up level their business, a rising tide lifts all boats, so it helps us all as a community. So thanks for listening. I'll be back again soon, and we will have some ongoing marketing material. So thanks. Share it with a friend and be great today. Hey, y'all, if you love the show and find it useful, I would really appreciate it if you would share with your friends and followers, and if you like what you're hearing. Want to put a face with a name and get even more business advice, then join me in my Facebook group, the interior designers business launch pad. Yeah, I know it's Facebook, but just come on in for the training and then leave without scrolling your feet. It's fun. I promise you'll enjoy it. And finally, I hear it's good for business to get ratings on your podcast, so please drop yours on whatever platform you use to listen to this. We're all about community over competition, so let's work on elevating our industry, one designer at a time. See you next time you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
