Are you looking to attract more clients? Whether you’re trying to grow your existing client base or build one from scratch, it can be hard to know how to start. There’s not exactly a blueprint for marketing yourself as an interior designer.

However, when you keep in mind that interior design is a highly visual medium, one potential marketing strategy stands out — social media. Marketing on social media can be great for any business, but it’s especially effective for artists, designers, and anyone else whose business centers on aesthetics.

The good news is that social media can help you build a business. The (potentially) bad news is that it isn’t a one-and-done solution. If you want to see results, you need to develop a strong social media presence. That takes time and work, but it’s within reach! Here are some tips to help you build a winning social media marketing strategy.

Choose Your Platforms Wisely

What’s the best social media for interior designers? Some businesses seem to maintain accounts on every imaginable social media platform. However, some platforms are better for interior designers than others.

Before you get started, choose the platforms that best suit your style, your target audience, and interior design in general. Here are a few to consider.

• Instagram: Classic, photo/visual-based, audience skews toward the 18-34 range
• TikTok: Newer, video-based, skews younger (over half of users are 18-24)
• Pinterest: Visual-based, great for inspiration boards, majority of users are 25-34
• Facebook: Great for creating a business page/cross-posting content
• LinkedIn: Useful for cross-posting content, best for professional networking

If you’re just beginning your social media journey, don’t be afraid to start small. Pick one platform, create your profile, and gradually expand to others.

Create a Visual Feast

Choosing what platform you use to connect with your future customers is important. But don’t get so wrapped up in selecting platforms and creating profiles that you lose sight of the most important thing — the quality of your visuals. When it comes to social media for interior designers, your visuals are arguably the most important part!

A low-quality photo or video won’t do your business any favors. Viewers won’t be able to appreciate the quality of your work, and grainy or otherwise underwhelming pictures will make your whole business look unprofessional.

Hiring a professional photographer is never a bad idea. But if you’re on a budget, try playing with lighting and taking photos from interesting angles. You also might consider learning some basic photo editing techniques with programs like Lightroom or Photoshop.

The kinds of pictures you post make a difference, too. Try documenting a project’s progress through photos. Audiences love before and after pictures!

Tell the Story Behind the Design

One of the most intriguing things about social media is that users don’t simply follow content creators to see what they post — part of the appeal is forming a kind of connection. Each time you post, share a bit of the story behind the design. Here are some suggestions:

• Show or describe the inspiration behind the project
• Share a challenge you overcame while working on the project
• Detail the concept behind the project
• Give your audience a glimpse into your workflow
• Share small but interesting details (like where that antique furniture came from)

Ultimately, the goal is to give your audience a window into your world. Your aesthetic might initially draw them in, but they’re more likely to stay if they feel like they’re building a personal connection with you.

Prioritize Engagement

Businesses with a successful social media presence don’t just post photos and videos and then log off until they post again. Engagement is key when it comes to social media marketing.

If you want to strengthen your social media presence as much as possible, you should engage with both your audience and other designers (or even social media influencers who focus on design).

Engaging with your audience is relatively straightforward. Start by taking a certain amount of time each day to respond to comments on your posts. You’ll get better audience engagement if you take the time to write thoughtful replies. A few high-quality replies are generally better than many one-word responses.

It’s also important to engage with other people in the world of interior design. Social media makes it easy to find and learn from designers you admire. Once you’ve followed a few designers and have engaged with their content for a bit) it might be worth reaching out to suggest a collaboration.

While being geographically close would certainly make collaboration easier, online-only is absolutely doable. For instance, you might decide to challenge yourselves to build a space around a certain kind of green chair. Each of you could film your attempts, and you could edit them into a side-by-side video showing your different approaches.

Use Hashtags and Geotags Effectively

Getting users to see your posts — especially when your accounts are new — can be hard. Fortunately, when you know how to use hashtags and geotags, connecting with your future audience gets a lot easier.

Hashtags make it easy for the right people to find your posts. For instance, imagine someone sees a photo of a minimalist living room on Instagram, and the post includes the hashtag #ScandinavianDesign. The user clicks the hashtag, and because you have a few posts with the #ScandinavianDesign tag, that user is introduced to your business.

Because designing interiors almost always involves going to a client’s physical location, connecting with local people is vital.

Geotagging is one of the easiest ways to do it. It simply involves tagging a post with a physical location. That way, you’re more likely to show up in local search results, and the platform algorithms are more likely to show your content to people near you.

Be Consistent

Part of the goal of social media marketing is to create a “brand identity,” which is essentially your particular brand’s personality and style. If you want to build a strong brand identity, be consistent in your posts and across platforms. All of your social media profiles should use essentially the same style and theme.

For instance, you shouldn’t have a minimalist, sepia-toned Instagram and a Facebook full of neon colors.

Measure Success

It takes time to develop a great social media marketing strategy. But if you want to improve, you first need a way to reliably track which techniques are working well (and which are not).

Some marketers use complex, sophisticated analytics tools. However, social media platforms have their own built-in analytics tools to help you track post performance.

For example, Instagram comes with Instagram Insights, a set of tools that show you how many accounts your posts have reached, how many people have engaged with each post, and more.

Be Authentic!

There’s a learning curve when it comes to social media for interior designers. Don’t be discouraged if the first strategy you try doesn’t work! Feel free to experiment with social media strategies, but remember that, above all, audiences engage with and respond to authenticity. That kind of engagement turns followers into fans and fans into clients.

However, if you struggle to find time to cultivate a social media presence while managing a design business, you’re far from alone. That’s why Behind the Design offers marketing services for architects and interior designers, and these services include social media marketing!

Get in touch with us to ask questions or get started on your personalized marketing plan!