social media

Being a design influencer looks like so much fun. Being a photogenic person existing in a gorgeous, one-of-a-kind space, where the light hits you just so, and casually posting photos and blogs and watching the likes and fawning comments roll in. The reality is getting that perfect photo takes backbreaking work, more than simply standing in the perfect lighting. It involves sourcing, staging, writing, research and creativity. To get to the comfortable, profitable place you need to produce consistent, quality content. It may look effortless, but a lot of work goes into developing a killer personal brand.

Being a design influencer is part art, part science, and all hard work. Luckily for you, some of the design influencers we partner with have shared their tips for success.

True to you

Let’s talk about Joanna Hawley, the Seattle-based blogger behind Jojotastic. Hawley, a product designer and trend scout for companies like Anthropologie, was invited to join Pinterest before it was open to everyone. She started her blog to leverage the popularity of her Pinterest and to give companies interested in working with her a way to contact her. She landed her first sponsorship deal within three months of starting her blog.

And when Hawley began looking to buy a home, she let companies know that she was about to take on a home décor and renovation project—and that she had 3.7 million Pinterest followers. Companies including Decoist, Sherwin Williams, Rejuvenation, The Mine, CB2, All Modern, Pottery Barn, Parachute Home and Barn and Willow, happily jumped on the opportunity to partner with her, and ended up paying for a huge part of her remodel and helped furnish her tiny house.

And while you may think her giant audience is the moral of the story, there’s a lot more to her success than that. When Hawley was laid off, she got into the world of blogging by reaching out to Joy Cho from Oh Joy! on a whim. Cho brought her on to contribute to biweekly round-ups, giving Hawley the opportunity to learn from one of the best in the biz.

Hawley was at the forefront of the tiny house trend and has built her brand on providing small space tips, home tours, and inspiration for choosing to live small. She’s also been open about the less-then-photo-ready side of her life, sharing what her home looks like when it’s not staged to divine perfection.

So, the real takeaway is, as an aspiring influencer, you need to know your brand inside and out: Hawley utilized her education in industrial design and photography to define her visual brand, her honed job skills of cataloging and categorizing to curate her boards, built relationships with other bloggers and brands, and followed her heart and instinct to invest in a tiny house. What she had is the one thing you can’t fake as an influencer: authenticity.

If you want to be a successful influencer, you have to be real, honest, original and true to you. Being authentic will help you increase your engagement rate, generate organic traffic to your website, and increase visibility—and help you gain new followers. And it’s not just to gain followers: Brands prefer collaborating with an influencer who can generate authentic stories for their brand.

Authenticity is a word that gets thrown around a lot, when we say it we mean: No one likes being lied to or mislead. Can you clear the clutter before you take a photo? Yes, please do! But don’t be disingenuous or promote products you don’t love. Only partner with brands that fit with your personal brand, otherwise, the partnership could have a negative impact on the brand as well as on you. Followers can smell phoniness a mile away.

Read why partnering with the right influencer matters.

Get social with your audience

This sounds easy enough, and it will be at first, because you won’t have a big following. Like and respond to every comment, follow people back, make sure that you are making moves to form a much-needed connection with your followers.

One of the worst mistakes you can make on social media is having zero interaction and personality. No one likes someone who just talks about themselves. The same is true of influencers. This is the age of transparency and people want to get to know you and your brand on a more personal level. And that means they expect you to want to know them, too.

When you see something you like in other people’s content, don’t just like it or share it, also reply with a comment to start a conversation. Other tips include:

Always @mention people you reference in your posts
Reply when people @mention you or share your content
When someone asks a question, answer it

Kate Pearce of Kate Pearce Vintage has found a unique way to engage with her audience, while driving weekly traffic to her Instagram stories and blog. She turned her followers’ questions about how to grow an Instagram following into a series of blog posts. Every Sunday she posts a question box in her Instagram stories where readers can drop in questions for her, and then every Monday she shares her answers to her questions on the blog.

When it comes to numbers, it’s easy to obsess over your follower count, and while there is value in increasing the number of followers you have, other metrics are just as important. Basically, having fewer followers who regularly engage with you and your content is infinitely more valuable than having 100,000 followers that ignore you.

Ask yourself:

What percentage of your followers are active and engaged with your page and content?
What’s your average number of likes or shares?

Once you have a handle on what your statistics are, you can begin to analyze what content is resonating the most with your audience.

Ask yourself:

Do specific types of posts have more likes, comments and shares than others?
Do you see a lift in new followers when you share a specific kind of post or use a specific platform?

Pearce’s journey from vintage dealer to full-time Instagram/blogger was driven by focusing on what was working and adjusting her content to reflect that learning. Her first year was focused on selling vintage furniture and finds on Etsy and dabbling in Instagram. After being contacted by Apartment Therapy for a feature on her home, Pearce changed direction and focused on selling vintage and Instagram. And not long after, she refined her vision again and went full force into blogging and Instagram, leaving the world of vintage sales behind. Does Pearce still have a passion for vintage furniture? Of course, but that doesn’t mean focusing on it is the right fit for her brand right now.

Content is queen

Whether it’s videos or blogs or Instagram posts, the most important thing an influencer must do is to keep creating content. Create an editorial calendar, schedule posts, find a system that works for you and stick to it. Make sure what you are posting is useful, informative, engaging, and helpful to your followers. This will help you position yourself as an authority and reliable resource.

Creating content should be how you’re going to spend most of your time— your content is your brand, after all. Make sure you are investing your time and talent where it matters. And that includes promoting that amazing content.

Dare to be different

If every photo on your feed features versions of the same rattan bookcase, is your photo of yet another rattan bookcase going to stand out? Probably not. Home design trends are important to know about, but they aren’t as important to follow. Instead, get real with yourself. If the whole world is going gaga for glamour and your style is more simple and sleek, show that. Don’t be another voice in a chorus. Say what is true to you.

Time is on your side

Hawley started pinning years before she started her blog—which she launched in 2012., Kate Pearce launched what is now her blogging business in 2015. You’re not going to become an internet design sensation overnight. But follow the path of these successful design bloggers and you might be one someday.

Think you’ve got this personal branding under control? Now, let’s help you kickstart your partnerships with brands on a positive, professional note.

UV Keys to a Good Influencer Relationship

The role of a digital marketing agency is to stay one step ahead—knowing and understanding new social trends and platforms. Although Pinterest was created nearly a decade ago, brands, bloggers and designers are still learning how they can benefit from using the platform in their marketing. And today, it’s more relevant than ever.

As a visual search engine, many qualities set Pinterest apart from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and even the latest and greatest, TikTok. These same qualities can help grow website traffic through your Pinterest page. At the 2020 Design Influencers Conference, the ultraviolet team got to meet and speak with Kyla Herbes of House of Hipsters, a home decor and lifestyle blog, that has become a top interior design resource. There Kyla gave a super insightful presentation featuring her best practices for marketing on Pinterest. If you weren’t able to catch Kyla’s presentation, don’t worry—we have helpful hints and pointers straight from her on how you can tell your story on Pinterest today.

Let’s jump in!

uv: How has Pinterest impacted your brand?

kh: Pinterest has pretty much touched every part of my business. Not only is it one of my biggest traffic drivers, but Pinterest, the business itself, found me on Pinterest.

They reached out in an email asking if I was interested in doing some graphic design work. At first I thought I was being “punked” by a friend and deleted it. My husband said, “maybe you should take another look at that email”. I wound up working freelance for a few years, creating promoted pins for Pinterest’s brand partners. That experience really taught me how to market my own brand.

Pinterest also collaborated with me on their Pintervention with BravoTV. One lucky winner received a bedroom makeover designed by me. Also, I spoke about best practices at In The Making, Pinterest’s first conference for creators.

uv: How do you use Pinterest differently from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? How do your audiences differ on each?

kh: Unlike the other platforms, Pinterest is not used socially. When you think about it, how many times have you commented on a pin? In that rare occurrence you did comment, did you receive a response? Probably not. Pinterest is a place for discovery. A place to share and find inspiration for yourself. I pin and save content that is primarily not owned by me.

When it comes to Facebook, I’m sharing links I think my community will find interesting and content I’ve published on my blog. Instagram is primarily my interior design work or vintage pieces that were purchased from my brick and mortar in Barrington, IL. Every once in a while, I will feature or regram a space I love (with proper credit of course).

I love Facebook and Instagram because that is where I can converse with my little HOH community directly. That doesn’t happen on Pinterest.

I’m not very active on Twitter. I found it quite entertaining the night Sharknado first aired and I’ll check it during the MTV Awards for snarky tweets, but for the most part, Twitter is not my jam.

uv: Why is putting the content from your blogs on Pinterest important?

kh: If you don’t pin your content, who will? The first thing you should do after pressing publish on a blog post is pin it. Share it everywhere. I’ll admit, it took me a couple years to figure that concept out. I thought it was a bit narcissistic to pin my own work. But it’s really just another form of sharing, discovering and helping.

That concept is key. Channel the word helpfulness to create a soft sell on your brand. Add a little call to action in the description or text overlay to lead that user back to your blog. You’d be amazed what adding, “for more info click over to…” will do to add traffic to your site.

uv: Why do you think it’s necessary to share other people’s content on your Pinterest?

kh: You do not want to scream, “follow me” on Pinterest. Pinners are using the platform to discover ideas, not you. Again, channel helpfulness.

uv: Spill about Pinterest group boards. Are they effective for you?

kh: When you pin to a group board, you are sharing your content with the group board owner’s followers. It’s a whole new audience and reach.

Can’t find a group board? Create your own and invite other like-minded pinners to join. If you’re a brand and you know interior designers and content creators out there that use your products in their designs, invite them to your group board. If you’re a blogger, invite your blogger friends to share their content.

See how you’re channeling the word helpfulness without really trying to sell anything? It’s kinda magical.

See Kyla’s skills & style for yourself on her Pinterest.

uv: Why are keywords important when you are naming your account, boards, and pins?

kh: You really have to think of Pinterest as a search engine. By adding keywords your content is becoming searchable. Make it easy for pinners to find you.

uv: Why is resharing older pins no longer a best practice?

kh: Repinning is not necessarily bad practice, but pinning new content is highly encouraged. If you think of it from Pinterest’s perspective, they want to have the latest and greatest ideas and trends searchable on their platform. They don’t want the same pins from 2015 pinned and repinned again. Pinterest wants to stay current.

uv: What is your advice to a brand/designer who is not using Pinterest?

kh: What are you waiting for? Get on it now and start pinning for your business. It’s not too late. If you don’t have time, find someone like me who does social media consulting as a business. I do everything from setting up your account properly to keywording to creating pins and maintaining your Pinterest account. I’ll even sit down and just teach you the basics if you’re feeling overwhelmed but still want to do it yourself.

Pinterest is a powerful marketing platform that brands are just starting to figure out. Get on it and start pinning.

Pinterest allows brands to have fun and get creative. It can also help them elevate their brand visibility and bring traffic to their site.