Scraps of Paper

This week the folks at Modenus announced the crew for BlogTourNYC. I thought I’d take this occasion to explain (quickly) why BlogTour is awesome and why I think it represents a big piece of the future of the design business. ​

First thing you should know - BlogTour is Awesome. ​

Design is All About Experience

We can all look at catalogs, read press releases and visit company websites but what matters is the personal reaction a designer has to a product or space. BlogTour doesn’t give you one design blogger’s perspective it provides 10 or 15 of the most influential design bloggers in the world talking about their amazing experiences all over the globe.  

​BlogTour wakes up a designer’s senses.

When I was invited to BlogTourLDN my creative gas tank was on “E” and I needed a recharge. I live in NY, the design capital of the United States. I see an amazing skyline everyday, I have access to global culture, none the less, like every other designer hustling to keep the lights on, I run out of inspiration.  BlogTour London re-awoke my senses. I was shooting photos and writing posts like a tourist and I loved every second of it. 

BlogTour is becoming a social media giant.

In the cold world of analytics, eyeballs and clicks - Veronika, Tim and Erin are creating a social media phenomena in BlogTour. I don’t have their numbers offhand but there are few communities of professionals more ​active than interior designers and home decor brands. Becoming part of it as a sponsor, an event on tour, a designer on tour, or even just a watcher on twitter/instagram is to take part in one of the most important conversations going on in our industry. 

Second thing you need to know - BlogTour is the future of our industry.

The design services industry is going through rapid changes. Soon, the world of blogs and social media will be the primary source of information for people interested in design and home decor. Forward thinking brands already recognize this, but soon every home decor brand will realize that its this community of online tastemakers who are the most important to win if they’re product is going to make a dent in the market.  The team at Modenus recognizes this and is making the future now. ​

BlogTour is coming to NYC. I hope I get the chance to meet up with this terrific group of bloggers and hear their take on my home town.​

Don’t believe me? Check out your Facebook stream. When you look at it how many times are you reminded “so and so likes Target”?

Or go look at Twitter - Sponsored stories are a minor eye sore. What’s worse are all of the people using the platform to shout into the void “my service is really really valuable!”

Or look at all of the content marketing nonsense you read out there.

3 reasons you should think about investing (from a blogger in finance)

Why you need to buy small (from the Etsy crafter).

In short, the need to advertise and market is ruining the social platforms we’re supposed to be using to share our passions, what makes us tick.

Every client I’ve ever attracted from my content in social media has been attracted to my ideas, not anything I’ve ever tried to sell.

What’s the lesson. Don’t. Sell.

Forbes is declaring this is the year for marketers to come ruin tumblr.

I hope marketers don’t listen.

More and more, Twitter is losing it’s place as a conversation platform. There’s simply too much noise for the average user. Sure, you can filter the noise by following specific hashtags and creating curated lists but the average user isn’t doing these things. They are signing on and scrolling through their list. 

The social media gurus once advised me to be polite, to follow back those that followed you in hopes of creating conversation and community. The sad truth is most of the time this has proven to be a waste of time. Fewer and fewer people on Twitter are out for conversation and learning. We’re all doing the same thing. Shouting our name and our brand and our banter into a crowded room, hoping if we’re clever enough, snarky enough or simply repetitive enough someone will whisper back. 

If you’re a blogger or you’re thinking about starting a blog you’re likely to come across lots of articles about increasing traffic. I’m here to tell you that traffic isn’t the beginning and the end of social media. 

Don’t get me wrong, traffic is awesome. It’s a huge ego boost when I share something on the official site and through the power of twitter and google it suddenly sees a huge audience. It’s a measurable validation that someone out there is reading this stuff. And of course if you run an e-commerce site you need as many potential buyers as possible. But in the end…it really doesn’t matter that much to most design bloggers, here’s why. 

If you’re a designer or an artist then what you want is quality traffic, not necessarily massive clicks. It’s great to get both. But in the end you have to decide what the goal of your site is in the first place. If you’re goal is to get massive traffic, start a blog of funny cat videos and joke memes update it every 15 minutes and tag everything relentlessly. All the sudden you’ll see tons of hits. 

But if you’re looking to grow a business and a reputation from social media, then thousands of meaningless hits don’t matter. What matters is that the people who are reading your blog actually make a difference in the industry. 

If, for instance, you’re an interior designer, would you rather have 10,000 people with no real interest in the industry or your work view a post with a pretty photo or have 150 people each with an interest in potentially hiring you hanging out on your blog for a few minutes and getting to know you? The former will make you feel good, but the latter leads to all kinds of opportunites.

When other taste makers see you as someone smart, interesting and unique in your field, all of the sudden you start to earn opportunities to speak, or guest post, or write for a magazine, or even tour London. It takes time and effort to become one of those bloggers, one of the ones that make a difference, but when you do the benefits are tangible and exciting. 

What are you sharing these days? Social media gives us this tremendous opportunity to share what’s on our mind. 

Facebook’s prompt to us is, “What’s on your mind?”

On twitter we share what’s on our mind in 140 character (or less) chunks. On Pinterest we’re sharing just pictures we like. 

It just has me wondering, the easier it gets to share every little thought that pops into our head, the more important it will probably become to edit ourselves. Don’t we owe it to our facebook friends, our twitter followers, our fellow pinners and who ever else to respect their time? 

I know this goes against much of the grain of the social media guru’s. Their mantra is to be consistent and constantly share as much as you can on every social stream possible. (Or they say pick the service that best fits your personal brand and spam the hell out of that)

The trouble is that click-through rates on social platforms are dropping. People aren’t clicking because there is more and more noise and less and less signal. 

And while we like to blame twitter or facebook or tumblr for the dirth of good content, , the truth is we create our experiences in these spaces. What were your last 10 tweets? Were they thoughtful? Did they share important work or thoughts? Or were they about your turkey sandwich? 

I’ve tweeted over 34,000 times. I shudder to think how much of that content is truly valuable.