Blogging In The Recovering Market

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm surfing the "Other Resources and Blogroll" and I'm discovering that while many of you have blogs, there's a significant percentage that are not actively posting. You did a great thing for your marketing effort by starting a blog. Don't let down now that business seems to be picking up.

I was listening to Kyle Bass, investment manager for Hayman Capital, yesterday. He believes the housing market has bottomed. It may not roar like it did four years ago, but at least it's stopped going down. In many cities, prices of homes are going up, and in Portland there's a shortage of rental units.

Many of you can imitate Jason Ball of Jason Ball Interiors. He is always finding something to write about and his before and afters are stunning.

So, next time I run through our blogroll, let me see that you've posted something about your business. Surely, you have information acquired from all your experience to share. BTW, one other way to get traffic to your website, is to link to Landfair on Furniture. We get over 18,000 visits per month to our blog.

A Serious Proposal For Your Blog!

You have a blog, but haven't posted any information in a while. You have a blog, but it's hard to find the time to post regularly. Hi! I'm Mike Landfair and I'm a professional blogger. I realize to generate traffic that supplements your marketing efforts, takes posting regularly. I currently post regularly to five blogs and have built a blog from scratch at "Home Accents Today" that received 10,000 to 12,000 visits a month.

I want you to hire me to post once a week on your blog, in your voice as much as possible on subjects you think would be of interest to your potential clients. In addition, I will make sure that those posts show up on Facebook and Twitter to reach a wider audience. You will be able to track visitors and their interests to see traffic grow over time.

We can use PayPal so that you are billed each month. To start I need to collect information from you about you and your interests.

BTW, if your blog accepts ads, revenue from selected ads may offset my whole monthly fee. If you want to really have a successful blog, email me or call me at 503-249-7951 and let's get started.

Proud and Grateful

I Googled Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery this morning to see if there were any reviews of our business that needed a response.  I remember writing once that reviews can be both good and bad.  One hopes that all the reviews are glowing, but occasionally one could receive a bad one.  It's imperative I wrote that you respond immediately to a bad review.  Maybe, you can change an attitude or right a wrong.  Maybe, in the case of a bad review, your response is merely to tell your side of the story.

I'm proud to say that there were no bad reviews.  Actually there was only one review and that was our own review.  I should renew my efforts to get reviews posted to our site.  When my husband and I relax for a moment to reflect on the past ten years in business, we are proud of the business we've built and love the showroom.  I'd like to have even more furniture on the floor and represent even more vendors, but in these economic times I believe it prudent to run a little lean.

I have been posting on this blog since 2005 and each year have posted on average about 10 to 15 times a month.  In that time I have posted 35 pages of images.  I took a moment to look at some of those images.  There I am at the top.  Who will forget these images:











Thanks for reading and commenting on our posts and visiting our store. We hope to be here for you for many more years.

Bev & Mike
Landfair Furniture + Design gallery
Become Our Fan on Facebook

Learn About Blogging from decor8 Founder

When you compile a list of the Top 25 Home Decor blogs, one name is always on such a list, small "d", decor8. ProBlogger interviewed decor8 blogger Holly Becker who gets 35,000 readers a day. Listen to the podcast at Problogger to hear her talk about:

• shares the story behind starting decor8
• gives insight into how she keeps coming up with fresh content ideas
• shares what type of posts work best at drawing in readers to comment
• talks about her decision to bring on a regular columnist
• reflects on dealing with negative comments
• answers the question of ‘what is a conversion’ for you when a reader hits your blog
• share how she’s built her readership
• reveals how she makes a full time living from her blog
• talks about her other ventures, including her ‘blogging your way’ e-course and up coming book

Bev & Mike
Landfair Furniture + Design gallery
Become Our Fan on Facebook

Blogging 101

We recently joined Blogorama and I encourage you to join also. All of us who blog want to be read widely. Here's one more way to get your name out there. You will also like the helpful articles:

Publishing Your First Blog You’ve spent so much time searching for just the right theme for your blog, as well as getting your first post written. Now all is ready to go. You’re finally ready to publish your very first blog post and you’re most likely so excited that you can’t sit still! It’s that excitement that has carried you this far and will keep your blog interesting and well-read for a long time to come. The blog software that you have chosen will most likely be quite clear in its instructions that will show you where to add a new post. That’s the first thing you’re going to be doing. So you will need to go to that part of your blog administrative section. Now that you’re at the page to insert your blog, enter the title of your post. Keep it enticing and to the point. You want your readers to be drawn in by the title and be dying to know what you have to say on that particular subject. When you’re writing your post, you should write in small paragraphs rather than long drawn out ones. Make them at least 3 sentences long but there’s no need to make them a half page in length. People tend to stay with your posts longer when they are short and quickly read. Add in any pictures or images that you have to enhance this particular post. (Next month, we’ll discuss finding images and photos.) A picture is definitely worth a thousand words especially if it’s an image that will draw your reader to the post. This is an important part of the overall post. Something else to keep in mind is that you must save your post regularly while you’re writing it. Some people decide to do a copy/paste where they will write out their post in something such as Microsoft Word, and then transfer it to the blog page. However you choose to do that is up to you. Don’t forget to add categories and tags to your post. The categories are a great way to group together things to find them easier. The tags will let people find you through many separate words that your post is about. The more tags you can put in, the better. Save your draft and then have a look at how it appears so far. This is where you will see if there are any glaring errors or something needs to be changed around. When you’re 100 percent happy with the way your post and accompanying images appear, it’s time to hit that Publish button. Don’t be afraid! You’ve done everything just right and you’re READY! CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve just published your very first blog post! Next week: Using Photos and Images for your Blog Bev & Mike Landfair Furniture + Design gallery Become Our Fan on Facebook

Use Twitter and A Blog For Your Marketing

If there's one question Mike gets asked the most, it's this one: "Do Twitter and a blog really lead to increased business?" Hubspot, a report at eMarketer, shows that

Among business-to-consumer (B2C) small and medium-sized companies studied, more than one-half of those using Twitter generated double the median monthly leads of non-Twitter users. That result held across company size.

For those of you with no marketing program or just waiting for referrals, by using Twitter and forming a community of followers, the study showed that you can double your leads.

Companies with 100 to 500 followers generated 146% more median monthly leads than those with 21 to 100 followers. Beyond the 500-follower mark, though, there was no further gain.

Blogging also increased leads, but here content and frequency of posting was critical.

Businesses must produce enough content for their blog to kick off growth in leads, which starts with about 24 to 51 posts. Blogs not only promote engagement but they also help companies increase the number of pages they have indexed by major search engines. HubSpot found that more indexed pages on Google also translates to more leads. Every 50 to 100 incremental indexed pages can mean double-digit lead growth.

The lesson is clear. The simplest and lowest cost way of increasing leads is using social media. It can be time consuming, but it is worth it. Happy blogging.

You can also find references to this post on Twitter, Facebook, and Linked in.

Bev & Mike
Landfair Furniture + Design gallery
Become Our Fan on Facebook

"Blogging for Bliss"

Thinking of starting a blog, but somehow just never get around to it. Here's Tara Frey and she has a book out called "Blogging for Bliss."

Today’s crafting community is online, connected, and blissfully blogging about their work and ideas. Blogging is hot in this highly creative world—and here is the only how-to book aimed directly at them. Everyone from knitters and beaders to scrapbookers and altered artists will find the practical information and visual inspiration they need to create an artful online journal.

You may say crafting isn't interior design, but you would be wrong to pass. Here you will meet some of the web's most successful bloggers.

Tara Frey's blog was honored as a Typepad Favorite Blog in November 2008 and receives more than 6,000 hits a day.

Bev & Mike
Landfair Furniture + Design gallery
Follow us on Twitter