From time-to-time, KOTHEA are happy to host profiles of interior designers and architects to boost their awareness and provide a link to their work/website.
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Hello, my name is Katie Malik and I’m an interior designer based in Cambridge. Here is my story: during my secondary school years, I developed a love for interior design but put my passion on hold to instead earn a degree in Linguistics. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, making me a much better communicator and an excellent listener. I completed Interior Design training at Chelsea College of Art in London and finally turned my passion into a full-time job.
Now, I design for and on behalf of Katie Malik Interiors, which I founded in 2012. In accordance with the belief “A home should reflect the people living there”, Katie Malik Interiors is about taking a holistic view of the way individuals use and enjoy their space and delivers bespoke interior design solutions to homeowners and developers both in the UK and internationally.
Our trademark is efficient, yet sophisticated and timeless design, demonstrated across a range of large and small-scale projects, featured, among the others, in the Homify magazine. We are also very excited for the kitchen we designed to appear in the Ideal Home magazine very soon.
We’ve scoured the net to find and list the sites we know and love. Some you already know, some you will love once you see them for the first time. Either way enjoy the depth and variety of the information on our industry and don’t forget to see which ones are voted as the ‘best’ at the end of this article – you can vote for your favourite too.
These are all sites that might be useful for interior designers rather than ones created by interior designers (or their suppliers) to promote their business. Maybe they provide a nice showcase or perhaps just a tad of inspiration in a seemingly never-ending sea of banality. Enjoy!
As the cleverer ones amongst you have spotted there are not YET the 99 promised. Suggest more to me using the voting mechanism below (you can add voting options)….
Please LIKE or SHARE … it keeps us sane to know that you are out there benefitting from the information WE share. XOXOXOX
Now VOTE for your FAVOURITES – you have ONE CHANCE to vote but you can vote for lots of sites in that one voting chance. You can also add your own website or blog to the list if you feel brave enough in the face of very stiff competition!! If you get ‘lots’ of votes I’ll add you to the list with a link 😉 But YOU can only vote once.
Interior Designers have been moving much of their sales and marketing into the digital world over the last few years. Maybe this was because of great looking Apple products or maybe just because as new, young designers come into larger business they bring in with them the gadget trends of youth. Or maybe because all this digital e-stuff actually can work and can work quite cost effectively if done right.
I’ve written a few articles on this general subject over the years (I’ll reference some of them at the end of this post. However things have moved on in the real world and some of what I’ve PREVIOUSLY written has been superceded or improved.
It’s still mostly true that you will use your web site as your show case for your business. Your blog will be a part of your website and, unless you sell products that require an up-to-date online catalogue, it is your blog that will contain the information that CAN AND SHOULD be regularly updated. (That will boost your google position). Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook come in as networks you are building. All good stuff.
Click To Read More Interior Design Articles
The problem used to come in how you would simultaneously update all these networks without having to manually re-submit the information. That would obviously be time consuming as would installing and keeping working additional pieces of software that glued all the bits of your marketing together.
Well now it is relatively straightforward to have your wordpress blog update your twitter account, your LinkedIn presence and your facebook business page. Similarly twitter can also update your facebook page automatically. Lots of these automatic links now exist within the main software websites (wordpress, twitter, etc) so you only have to write new information (blog posts or tweets or on your wall) once and then the software you use automates the distribution of that information across lots of different web site and online communities. Sorted, no mystery any more.
This area used to be horrendously complicated and thankfully facebook have now simplified how to create a venity URL. What I mean by this is how do you create and use www.facebook.com/kothea …or of course you would have your business name at the end of that.
Essentially you can now just create a PAGE and give it a name (eg KOTHEA in our case) straight away. Gone are the ridiculous but well intentioned rules about having a certain number of fans.
3. Building networks with Facebook
You probably already know that once you have created you PAGE in facebook then you can use facebook as if YOU are the ‘page’. Rather than the person you really are. So rather than having your facebook activities in the name of ‘Joan Smith’ you make comments as if they are coming instead from your business ‘Smith Interior Design’.
google are also trying to “do a facebook”. This is their Google plus network. You can ignore that for the time being.When was the last time you or your kids used it?
Much better for your branding. Remember to be nice ad say sensible things and don’t get carried away!
4. Gadgets
Especially in the Interior Design and Architecture industry lots of people use Apple iphones and ipads. Of course your clients may well also use these devices but perhaps are also quite likely to use other ‘tablet’ devices and other smart phones like Blackberries.
Like you, your clients lead hectic lives. They are on the go and people are increasingly looking for information on the move. So all the electronic marketing you do needs also to work on these devices so your potential clients can read it and find it.
This is not so hard to achieve. Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn will automatically do it. WordPress blogs will do it if you check a box in one of the admin features. It might be harder for your web site to do it properly so have a word with your web page designers.
You can use something like http://marketing.grader.com/ to tell you for free some of the more technical things (like working with mobile/cell phones)
Here are some of the posts I previously wrote or you can find them all in one go by <clicking here>
Interior Designers can spend hundreds or thousands of pounds/dollars on websites. That CAN be a good investment or it can be a total waste of money.
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 Continue reading “Interior Designers: Why does no-one visit my web site?”
Hello, my name is Katie Malik and I’m an interior designer based in Cambridge. Here is my story: during my secondary school years, I developed a love for interior design but put my passion on hold to instead earn a degree in Linguistics. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, making me a much better communicator and an excellent listener. I completed Interior Design training at Chelsea College of Art in London and finally turned my passion into a full-time job.
