Hey everyone Lauren here with lauren lesley studio and today We're going to be talking about why every designer should have a blog Now if you're a designer you may have a different view of blogging fan the rest of the world so designers blogging isn't this? Glamorous thing where you walk around the city Drinking a latte all day Designers in their day to day job understand how much actually goes into creating Content like this. I mean for our jobs. We're looking at trend research color research G
etting props doing photo shoots we understand that You know you're gonna be lugging around different props All over town, and it's a lot of physical work and so When it comes to blogging? We're kind of like oh like I just want to create the content like I don't I Want to just design like I don't want to have to do the marketing part Of my design business, and I think that's super natural for designers We really just want to be creative being our element be our little introverted selves listening
to music and drawing or painting or Creating graphics so the marketing part can be a little bit difficult because we don't always like being in the limelight We don't like talking about ourselves or bragging about ourselves. We just really want to like do the work and like hope people like it But the problem with that is Nobody's gonna. See it. If you don't promote. It especially if you're a solo pair, and you have a design business or a side hustle Like I do I started my Etsy shop in 2011 and
since then have been really focused on growing that design business Especially in the last year and I would say from like 2011 until like 2016 mid 2016 or 2017 actually I Didn't really do any Promoting I was just I had my Etsy shop if people found my work that was great like I loved having the extra money But you know it wasn't something that Um that I really like worked hard to promote and get in front of people's eyes and so for that reason it was just kind Of this flat line. You know the busi
ness didn't really grow like this like you know the way you would want it to so I think a big reason for why it just kind of stayed flat was because I wasn't blogging and Guys like I've debated for a year. I mean literally I mean I'd really just started focusing on blogging within the last month or two so it's taking me until 2018 To actually realize how important it is that if you want to really grow your design business and get in front of people's eyes You have to share share share your work
and social sites like Instagram are really fun But they like something like 90 percent Don't quote me on that but a huge amount of your Instagram posts aren't even seen because of the algorithm So for that reason you really want to start blogging because it is evergreen content it Stays on your website, and it's searchable and Really the number one reason is because when you have a website Google is trying to crawl your website for keywords. It's trying to find all the different keywords on That
's relevant to the search engine right SEO is search engine optimization So if someone's looking for let's say a real estate logo, and you sell real estate logos And Google searching your website, and you only have like you know maybe five examples And those are just listings that just stay flat Then you're not going to rank very high in the search engine because as Google's BOTS crawl your website and the spiders crawl your website You know you're not going to have a ton of keywords that tells
Google that You're the expert at real estate logos even though you are you're magnificent at it But Google doesn't know that when you have a blog You have an endless endless stream an Opportunity for keywords to build this is called keyword density so when you have The blog you can create blog posts I would recommend three to five times a week for me right now I have a full-time job, so this it's really hard to create five blog posts per week I've been able to crank out about three per week And
that's going back to different customer examples, which is a pretty quick blog post You're able with that to create a template so if you're a designer This is what I would recommend first if you're having trouble coming up with ideas for blog posts. I would go back to old customer work customer projects and just Spell out the project from start to finish it can be super quick and it can just be a template with two to three graphics And you just plop them in and just say hey this customer came to
me and wanted a real estate logo blah blah blah This is you know the brief and this is the finished piece voila. This is what she sent me she loved it And now she uses it in Her In her business, and she's super happy with it, so That's an easy way to create multiple blog posts over and over again for your keyword density, so that way if you're Saying hey, I did this customer project I did this customer project and you're using the word the keywords Real estate logo over and over again all of a
sudden that really starts to add up on Google and Google's spiders are crawling your website being like oh Like this this person is the expert on real estate logos because it sees that keyword over a hundred times So it's gonna rake your website at the top of Google and hopefully get on the first page for being an expert in your niche Also So SEO is one of the main reasons to start blogging and that's like a really good way to Build up your keyword density as I was just saying Also I would check
out Lauren hookers Ellen company she has a really great explanation of how much her website traffic increased based on the number of times a Business published a blog post so she did this little experiment where she was like Okay, like I'm posting for a while for I think for the first six months of her business She was posting on her blog every single day so she built this huge this huge amount of blog posts and The keywords you know they were all relevant to her design business talking about d
ifferent designs talking about branding is what she specializes in but Yes, she Was starting to rank she asked now ranks on the first page of Google so that's amazing, but her blog posts She kind of experimented and then came down and only started posting like three times per week And I have a really great graphic From her on my website Which is basically the same content as this video, so you should go to the blog post and if you want to see the graphics? Unfortunately, I can't toggle my screen
on YouTube life, but it shows you that Basically if you your traffic index basically if you Only have or if you only have like one to four blog posts per month. It's gonna get you like maybe like a hundred Views in businesses that blog 16 to 20 times per month got over two times more traffic Than those that blog less than four times per month, so that's a really great metric Those who blog at least 20 times per month had five times five times more traffic to their website Than those who blog le
ss than four times per month, so if you're a designer and you want people to be seeing your designs yeah, it's great that you're posting on Instagram or maybe on Facebook or Twitter, but Honestly like blogging is going to get you the SEO in its evergreen content That's the other thing is that when people are searching those keywords. They are ready to buy They have an issue or a problem And they're looking to solve it and when you are able to pop up in the Google search engine Then they're alrea
dy like a warm lead whereas if you're posting on Instagram or something like that not to knock on Instagram I love Instagram, but you know people are just kind of bored and they're scrolling through their phone, and they're you know oh? That's pretty hard. Oh, that's pretty hard, but they're just wasting time while they're sitting at the doctor's office, or you know Waiting for the red light to change don't text and drive But you know if you're you know sitting still in your car I feel like that
's when people are home Instagram or on their lunch break You know it's not like they're oh, I I'm a real estate agent, and I really need this logo So I need to you know I'm searching because I want to actually make something happen. I'm ready to take action Okay, so the next reason why you really need a blog is to help grow your brand online and to grow your online presence Customers really want to be able to get to know you more and more people want to buy something from someone they feel like
they have a personal connection with so It doesn't mean that you start blogging about your dog Your best friend your boyfriend problems any of that just stay away from that Stay on topic, but be yourself. Let your personality shine through That way people you know they're still interested your content is relevant to whatever they're needing But they still feel like they can get to know your personality and it helps them want to buy from you So you know they can buy a real estate logo from anyon
e then? You may as well buy it from you because they feel like they have a personal connection to you now And they just like you I'm at the end of the day Okay, the other great thing about blogging is that you can repurpose content That's exactly what I'm doing right now, so I created a blog post on Why designers? need a blog and that is what I'm creating this video for so I'm now using it on YouTube I can make an Instagram post about it if I Want to I can use it for a webinar, I can use it over
and over again I also Created like a blog post about ultraviolet the Pantone color of the year and you should also watch that video if you are at all interested in the Pantone color of the year for 2018 I Was kind of surprised that it was purple, but I really dive into the content there, but I repurposed that Blog post first it was a blog post I did all the research for ultraviolet the Pantone color of the year for 2018 I Did a webinar on it? And I repurposed it as my podcast it's also on YouTu
be and Facebook live so this one topic this one bit of content I was able to spread to so many different channels and improve my reach And it's basically the same amount of work for that piece of content. I'm just using different mediums to share it with different audiences So then I was able to also share Yeah So the podcast went to iTunes and Spotify And I was able to share my imagery on Pinterest Instagram and Facebook and reaching all audiences there Okay, so the other great thing is that if
you're a designer having a blog? This is really why designers need a blog is that customers want to see your? Previous work your and your process They really want to see your creative process And how you've handled customers in the past and a listing doesn't really let them see that like you can post Examples of your design work or your finished product, and it might look great, but it really helps customers See themselves Working with you if they can see oh like This real estate agent you know
Contacted this designer, and they explained what they wanted, and this is how the designer handled it, and I can see the original photos that they sent them I can see how they explained the design brief So when designers have a blog it really shows their creative process and the end Product it really just spells it out for the customer so that the customer can really just picture themselves working with you The four steps I recommend anytime, you're Creating a design project is you know you sta
rt with the idea That's number one number two is you create create create create? You create till you get it, right? Number three now most of the time for since from 2011 up until you know like 2017 really that's kind of where I stopped I stopped it's step two And that's why I've stayed flatlined You know I wasn't getting a ton of traffic my design business wasn't growing like it is now But step three would be to share share Your work share it as much as you can share it everywhere. I would real
ly recommend to First why designers need a blog sharing it on your blog showing customers your process Second I would create a vertical image to share it on Pinterest the reason why is because Pinterest is a Search engine most people think of it as like a social media platform, just like Instagram or Facebook But it's not it's actually a search engine so those same SEO search engine optimization keywords Can create evergreen traffic? Link that back to Facebook. I'm sorry link that back to Pinter
est also sure posted on Facebook posted on Instagram But I would rat first recommend Pinterest and YouTube because YouTube and Pinterest are both search engine sites So they are basing everything on keywords and you want to just be able to rank there And it just creates evergreen content so that you can always always always share that information In the fourth step so you have ideas create share and The fourth one is teach, so you want to share your work you want to share your designs. Yes. Yes,
yes love love love Oak the way, you can really add value to is to teach other people Your creative process you can teach like I'm doing now other designers Why they need a blog why do designers need a block well? I just told you so that is pretty much it, but if you really really really can't stand the idea of blogging I Still recommend it every designer needs a blog that's what I would recommend but if you really Can't handle it then there are other things you can do like create a video blog l
ike if you just can't sit down and type I Understand for me it helps get my thoughts out it helps me organize my thoughts I'm sorry my cats in the background she likes to be on the channel, too But You can vlog that's the new form of logging which is a video blog so I would do that but you definitely want to be putting yourself out there and not forgetting those last two steps Which the first few our ideas create? Share and teach definitely share and teach, okay guys. Thanks so much for tuning i
n I'll see you next time
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