As a home stager, you can build awareness and ultimately sales for your home staging business through blogging. The term “blog” actually comes from “web log” which was initially envisioned as a diary or online journal.

Blogs can look and function very differently from each other to the casual observer, but they all share fairly similar coding, which is different than a conventional HTML website.

The technical details of what makes blog coding work isn’t something you need to worry about as a home stager, any more than you need to understand how your car works under the hood to put your key in the ignition and drive somewhere. So don’t let the term “blog” scare you!

Here are 5 reasons you need a home staging blog:

1. Once your blog is set up, it’s much easier to regularly add content than to a conventional HTML website, especially if you have no technical knowledge.

Blogs are coded to allow for easy additions or “posts.” Let’s face it, the easier it is, the more likely you are to update your website, which is so important because your home staging portfolio gets better and better with every new staging project!  You can post about a particular project for example, and easily add a photo without knowing anything about how to build a webpage.

2. Search engines love blogs!

In other words, if you have a regularly updated blog, you’ll end up way higher in search engine rankings than a conventional HTML site. Some joke that blog stands for “Better Listings on Google.”

This is why the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers is actually a blog site rather than a conventional HTML site. I made the switch from one format to the other to benefit the home stagers who participate about 4 years ago. I made the same switch for my home staging business website, SixElements.com.

3. Blogging allows you to continually demonstrate your expertise as a home stager.

This will eventually lead to more business as your potential customers get to know, like and trust you. Don’t worry that you’ll only attract “DIYers”!  Yes, some people will read your tips and try and stage their homes themselves. Frankly, these are people that wouldn’t have hired you anyways even if you had no free tips. They just would have found them somewhere else. Remember, you’re not trying to attract cheapskate clients, you’re looking for people who value your expertise and are prepared to pay for it.

4. Having a home staging blog will put you in an achievement mindset.

It’s easy to procrastinate when it comes to keeping in touch with customers and potential customers. It’s also easy to get so busy that you forget to celebrate or document your successes.

When you have a blog and a posting schedule of twice a month, you’ll be in the right mindset to follow up to get the information that leads to home staging success stories and to keep your business moving forward. That’s because you’ll always be wondering about blog content and looking for new things to report to your audience. More on this in an upcoming post!

5. Your home staging blog can attract media attention for your home staging business.

You’ll attract media attention because the more content you write about the field of home staging, the more easily you’ll be found, and the more you’ll be seen as a “go to” source for reporters.

For example I was prominently featured in The Australian and the reporter actually said, “In the US they call it ‘home staging’ and the queen is Debra Gould (aka the Staging Diva) who writes endlessly on the subject and runs training programs for people looking to set themselves up as professional home stagers.” There is no way this would have happened without my blog, Home Staging Business Report.

This is the first of a series on home staging blogging. To bring you the most useful information and answer the questions you’re wondering about, I would love it if you would add your comments here and tell me the things you’re most wondering about on the subject of blogging.

And, if you already have a home staging blog, post your address in the comments and I just might mention you in an upcoming post as a good example of the lessons I’m teaching. Don’t worry, I won’t criticize your blog here (unless you specifically ask me in your comments for ideas for improvements)!

So, whether you’ve never had a blog before, or you’ve been blogging for some time, what are you most wondering about on the topic of blogs?

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Debra Gould has been writing about marketing for small businesses since the early 1990s as a frequent contributor to Profit Magazine. A home stager since 2002, she developed the Staging Diva Training Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own money-making home staging businesses. There are now 4,000 students in over 20 countries following her formula for business success.

Home stagers, by now you’ve hopefully purchased a domain name for your home staging business but you shouldn’t stop there as far as claiming your company name on the Internet goes.

You should also go to the popular social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and ActiveRain and set up accounts/profiles in your business name. Even if you’re not going to use those accounts right now, you should still claim your name now while it’s still available for when the time comes that you are ready to start.

Staging Diva Graduate, Susan Holland was wise to secure her Twitter identity early. Even though she wasn’t ready to be an active Twitter user, she protected her little piece of Internet “real estate” so no one else could grab it first.

Here’s how I know this. Someone wrote to me from Australia after trying to secure the Twitter name Fresh Insight for his own business of the same name. He saw that the owner of the Fresh Insight Twitter account wasn’t using it actively and was only following me. Since that was his only clue to the identity of the Twitter user, he contacted me asking if I knew the owner and could encourage them to give up the name.

Of course, I would do no such thing, but had Susan waited until she was ready to start using Twitter to grab her name, this other gentleman would have already been using her company name it and she’d have had to come up with something different.

That’s the thing about the Internet, your not only competing for names with everyone else in your location but also worldwide!

Take a few minutes now to set up your accounts while this is fresh in your mind. It doesn’t cost anything, but you’ll be glad you took the time to do it. And while you’re there, I’d love it if you connect with me at these locations in social media:

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

ActiveRain

Here’s another piece of related news, all members of the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers will be able to include social media icons in their Profile Listings with links to their profiles in social media. This is being phased in over the next 4 to 6 weeks. So if you’re already a member, keep your eye out for an email asking you to submit your linking information! This is a FREE benefit for anyone who has committed to the Directory for a year and will be available for purchase to Directory members on the quarterly billing plan.

Have you set up your accounts on social media sites yet? If so, how about posting your links in the comment box so fellow home stagers can find you and share the “link love”!

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Intrepid entrepreneur, Debra Gould, developed the Staging Diva Training Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own profitable home staging businesses. There are currently over 4,000 Staging Diva students across the United States, Canada, Australia and 18 other countries around the world. She is the author of 5 guides including the ever popular Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter: Building your home staging business one “tweet” at a time.

As part of promoting your home staging business online in social media, you’ll want to have an image  (or photo of you) that you use consistently from site to site.

Most of us are comfortable with how this works on Facebook, since one of the first things you do when you open your account is upload your photo. Then it conveniently follows you around inside of Facebook while you comment on other people’s walls, send message, etc.

If you’ve set yourself up on Twitter to promote your home staging business, you’ve probably already uploaded a photo of yourself there too.

But what happens when you comment on blogs like this one? Does a faceless silhouette accompany your post? Wouldn’t it be much more effective for a photo of you to show up automatically, no matter what blog you commented on?

You can do this easily and automatically and for FREE by setting yourself up on Gravatar.com. It’s really simple and if you already have a head shot that you’ve used on Facebook, Twitter or your website, you can use it here too!

By the way, if you want tips for getting a great head shot of yourself, you’ll find that and more inside the Staging Diva Ultimate Portfolio Guide.

Some people like to use their logo as their image on Twitter or a business page in Facebook. I’ve also seen them used on blog comments instead of a personal head shot. What are your opinions on this?

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love while helping others at the same time. She is the author of 5 guides including the Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter.

What prompted me to write this post today is that I finally understand a new and potentially dangerous feature that Facebook added this week called, Facebook Places. Not only did I not know about it but I didn’t realize that by default my Facebook friends could easily announce where I was to the world without my knowledge or permission!

If you stop and think about the ramifications of this, I think you’ll want to watch this video on how to alter your privacy setting so this won’t happen to you!

I have to add that I can see where Facebook is going with this. Imagine the ads that will be targeted at you once they know where you are at any given time. And think about all the data you’ll be adding to what they know about you already. But that’s a subject for another post, really my purpose here is to help you protect your privacy for your own personal safety reasons!

Many home stagers are using social media to help build their businesses. I recommend this and have talked about various techniques in Staging Diva Dialog, my monthly coaching calls. I am also the author of the Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter.

Social media is great, but don’t forget that it’s important to still protect your privacy! There are lots of unsavory characters out there who can use your own information against you.

For example, to protect my own privacy, I don’t “tweet,” blog or make Facebook or LinkedIn comments about where I am, though I sometimes write about a place I’ve visited after the fact.

A good example of that was my June trip to New York City. The public didn’t know when or where I was going (why would anyone in their right mind announce to total strangers that they’ll be out of town?), but upon my return I posted a photo of my evening out with Staging Diva Graduates Susan Atwell, Jodi Whalen and Donna Dazzo, along with a mention of the places we went.

But, there was no need for people to know where we were while we were still there!

I’d love for you to share your comments about how you protect your privacy online or any problems you’ve run into by not doing so. Please add your tips to this discussion, I know others will appreciate it!

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc.

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love.

Hopefully Monday’s post about how social media can help grow your home staging business has motivated you to get out there and try some new things to market yourself this year. (Catch up by reading that post now by clicking here.)

The example I shared in that post was centered around Facebook, which is more familiar to most people. Today, though, I’m going to focus on a tool that can be even more powerful in growing your business – Twitter.

This social networking site has taken the world by storm. Millions of people around the world use Twitter to communicate with others in short, 140 character sentences or status updates.

You can think of Twitter as your own micro blog with each status update being its own mini blog post. The people you communicate with on Twitter, your micro blog readers if you will, are known as your followers and their feedback on what you have to say will be instantaneous.

Once you get the hang of it, it’s much less complicated than it sounds. All you need to know is that in order to compete in business in 2010, you must have a Twitter account.

Here are six reasons why you need to get your free Twitter account today:

1. It’s quick and easy to get started, especially compared to Facebook. It will take you about five minutes to set up your profile and start “Tweeting.”
2. You’ll be saving your identity. It’s expected that by the end of this year there will be 100 million people using Twitter. Even if you have no plans to start Tweeting in the near future, you should join now if only to save your business name so nobody else grabs it first.
3. You’ll  be proving that you’re current. You can’t listen to the radio or watch TV without hearing somebody asking you to follow them on Twitter. When you have a Twitter account, you’re demonstrating that you’re keeping up with trends.
4. You’re demonstrating your expertise as a home stager. The sooner you start using Twitter, the sooner you’ll have a history of “tweets” that will be positioning you as the home staging expert in your market. With Twitter growing at its current rate, it’s a matter of time before other stagers in your market are using it, if they aren’t already. Get there first so you appear to be ahead of the game.
5. It helps show your passion for home staging. You can use Twitter to share your passion about your industry. Allow your potential customers to get to know you and your design style giving them the chance to like and trust you. That will make them more likely to hire you when they need a stager.
6. You’ll be helping your customers find you. Twitter is becoming more and more mainstream. Many homeowners and real estate agents in your market are already on there. Twitter is a whole new way to get your business in front of people in your town. And you don’t even have to leave the comfort of your home!

You can find out more about these six points as well as six more reasons to sign up for an account in the Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter. You’ll also learn exactly how to sign up for your account, how to set up your profile, how to start finding people to follow and even ideas about what to post.

This 100+ page resource will navigate you through the entire process of using Twitter to build your business – no home stager should be without it. Order your copy today and before you know it, you’ll be an expert Twitter user!

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love. Debra has been writing about marketing since the 1980s and has operated her own home staging business for 7 years. The Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter is her fourth home staging guide.

Technorati Tags: home stager, home stagers, home staging business, home staging courses, twitter for home stagers, staging diva, debra gould, home staging resource

A year or two ago, if you thought things like Facebook and instant messaging were only for teenagers, you might have been right. But if you still have that same attitude in 2010, you have a lot of learning to do about the power of social media!

As a home stager, or any type of business owner, social media is the ideal way to grow your business.

Let’s use Facebook as an example. If you’re already on Facebook for the sole purpose of communicating with friends and family, you must not realize how this tool has the power to grow a business.

When you have a Facebook account, you basically have a big, interactive database of your friends, acquaintances, past colleagues, family members, etc. You can send a “friend request” to anyone else on Facebook, so you can build a big list very quickly. Most of the world is on Facebook so you’d be surprised at who you will find.

This database of contacts gives you access to your friends’ photos and you can read your friends interactions with their friends on their “wall” (the place where most discussions happen on Facebook).

That means your friends’ friends can see what’s going on over on your wall as well. Think about the power of this if you’re talking about your business.

To promote your home staging business, all you need to do is publish a new set of before and after photos of a home staging or decorating project and write a couple of sentences about the transformation, and all of the people on your list can see them. If they comment on your photos or on your wall, their friend lists can see that information as well.

All of a sudden, you’ve exponentially increased the number of people who are aware of your services and have seen a sample of your portfolio.

So while Facebook is a good way to waste time (especially if you’re doing all those silly quizzes or playing FarmVille), gossip and peruse your friends family photos, if you use your time differently there,  it can also be an outstanding way to grow your business.

Twitter is an even more powerful marketing tool for a home staging business. On Wednesday I’ll share half a dozen reasons why you should have your own free Twitter account, but in the meantime, I encourage you to check out the Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter.

You’ll learn everything you need to know to get started quickly on Twitter, and use the minimum amount of time to get the best business results, in this comprehensive and easy-to-read guide.

We’re at the beginning of a new year – the perfect time to try out some new marketing techniques for your staging business. You can’t beat the costs either because the only monetary investment you need to boost your business with Twitter is the cost of the ebook that will teach you how to use it most effectively.

Have you been using social media to grow your home staging business? Please share your experiences by leaving a comment below.

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love. Debra has been writing about marketing since the 1980s and has operated her own home staging business for 7 years. The Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter is her fourth home staging guide.

Technorati Tags: home stager, home stagers, home staging business, home staging courses, twitter for home stagers, staging diva, debra gould, home staging resource