SBID Accredited CPD: Karndean Designflooring’s ‘Social Media for the Interior Design Profession’

The UK’s market leader in luxury vinyl flooring Karndean Designflooring took centre stage at Molineux football stadium in Wolverhampton, on Tuesday (1st April) to present their ‘Social media for the Interior Design Profession’ in partnership with The Society of British and International Design (SBID).

With an impressive turnout of more than 40 attendees, the evening welcomed back Heather Horton, international head of digital from Karndean who led last year’s successful CPD on the ‘Social Media for Business’ as lead speaker, and Claire Ryan, Karndean’s newly appointed PR executive.

Of course, there were high expectations from the evening to match last year’s event. Kick-starting the seminar with SEO, often a confusing subject for non-techies, our speakers drilled down the most important things our designers needed to understand and presented it in a way that could be easily applied by all.

Acknowledging the ‘5,922,000,000 Google searches recorded per day last year’, Heather explained the importance of having a strategy in place to ensure your business is ranking well on search engines.

When asked for a quick show of hands for the number of people blogging in the room, we were surprised to see how many attendees were yet to start blogging. It brought the talk on to the importance of blogging and its power to help you enhance your current SEO strategy.

Highlighting engaging content, inspiring photography and videos and backlinks as the vital ingredients for a successful blog, our speakers explained from a practical point of view how to get started using their own blog – www.karndeanblog.com – as a prime example.

As busy designers, we often don’t have the time or manpower to do everything we need to do for our own online profile. This is something our speakers had clearly taken into account when addressing each subject.

There was an air of apprehension in the room on the subject of Google+. It was clear to see the change in opinion in the room as our speakers introduced this platform as the fastest growing social network at the moment with over 500 million users.  As well as giving us ideas to get creative, our social duo explained the pros and cons of this channel, concluding with the benefits far outweigh the negative of having to keep up with an extra social profile. It certainly gave us all food for thought.

To finish, we were given an insight into ‘community engagement’ and how to keep the conversation flowing. This led us to locating your social advocates and deciding the best way of engaging these audiences to talk about your brand.

Overall, I think the evening was summed up nicely by one of our designers in attendance – ‘it was refreshing to attend a talk on social media and not leave the room in a state of confusion’.

We wonder what they’ll have in store for us next time!

Can you imagine just five years ago , the human race embracing technology in such a dynamic and dramatic way , Smartphones have become a way of life, young and old now have the world wide web at their fingertips and digital cameras at the ready!

Along with tablets (mobile computers) communication with loved ones and friends is now a breeze with the help of apps such as Face time , Skype , etc.

YouTube for me is for sure the future if you haven’t got a  YouTube TV channel make sure its high on your list of priorities before the year is out , YouTube is the world’s second biggest search engine and the biggest growing video sharing  website in the world at the moment  and since it was purchased by Google, this popularity is showing no signs of stopping. Video is an important feature of maintaining a web presence, and is a highly effective marketing tool.

YouTube receives somewhere in the region of 3 billion searches a month. Some of the people making these searches will be potential clients of yours, and it is important not to miss out on this market. As with any other aspect of SEO, your use of keywords is vital. Make sure your video title features your strongest keyword, and that it is relevant to the content.

I realised the phenomenon of video back in 2011. A couple of years earlier in 2007 I was introduced into the sport of kite surfing after falling in love with the sport on a trip to Rhosneigr in Anglesey Wales, I followed the sport closely through the power of video and soon became familiar with the professional athletes and brands associated with them.

A couple more years passed and I finally found the time to go and learn to kite surf , all my research and brand awareness was found through the internet, It got me thinking the power of video is such an amazing tool I could use this in my own industry and so I did! I  employed a fantastic company Shutterbox Films to come and film and produce a short movie in my showroom owners Lee and Dawn are so cool their portfolio of work is immense , they did a fantastic job for me.

Fast forwarding to 2013 I now employ a small in-house team to look after my websites, blog, social media, publications and now new YouTube TV channel we have now produced our own videos showcasing client case studies, bringing to life photographs potential clients can now actually get a feel of your portfolio along with your beautiful photographs of your work.

We have plenty more case studies lined up for later this year together with a launch of a brand new resource publication dedicated to Architects , Designers and Interior Designers this will include augmented reality driven by Aurasma bringing video to printed media our next edition of Revealed Design Home Interiors is due out too later this year.

Obviously it’s not quite so easy to just make a video and pop it on YouTube or another video sharing site like Vimeo , you have to promote it to get views social media comes in perfectly and with the help of your clients , followers and peers you can soon spread the word.

Written by SBID Member and Interior Designer Lisa Melvin

Check out Lisa Melvin’s YouTube TV channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/LisamelvindesignTV?feature=watch