As someone who is constantly testing & measuring different social media content, I am increasingly aware that “posting stuff” is a really bad plan for social media success.
Having a strategy is key to social media success. That’s why I invited Amber Broder of ABC Social Media Management onto the Interior DesignHer podcast.
During our chat, Amber & I dive deep into how interior designers can build social media systems that enhance both professional success and personal balance. Imagine that…a successful business and a personal life.
Amber identifies a significant evolution in social media strategy: that as platforms continue to change, successful interior designers implement structured planning systems while the rest of us “just post stuff”.
Amber explains that consistent client acquisition through social media requires intentional frameworks. After working with numerous interior designers who initially relied on referrals, Amber noted that diversified marketing channels deliver greater financial stability and reduced business vulnerability.
Industry analysis confirms it – while many interior designers maintain beautiful portfolios on Instagram, they struggle to convert followers into clients. Strategic social media planning offers an approach that transforms visual inspiration into qualified client inquiries.
"I realized success meant building sustainable systems rather than chasing trends. When interior designers implement monthly planning and content batching, they transform their social media from a demanding obligation into a valuable business asset that respects their time priorities."
Whether you currently manage your own social media or seek more effective approaches, Amber's strategic insights will transform how you approach your digital presence – and ultimately, how effectively your online presence supports both your client acquisition goals and life priorities.
Listen to the podcast…
Apple - Youtube Music - Spotify - Youtube
Watch the podcast…
Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:04 Origin Story
05:30 Why Focus on Interior Designers
06:36 Social Media Transformations
11:08 Instagram Advice
14:16 Instagram Trial Reels
14:50 Reel Length
15:51 The 4 Insta Algorithms
16:53 Small Instagram Accounts
59:07 Captions
1:03:22 What's Your Insta Plan?
1:09:07 Context Switching
1:12:31 Pinterest
1:14:15 Pinterest Engagement
1:15:14 Pinterest: Search or Social?
1:16:30 Pinterest: Call to Action
1:18:20 Pinterest: Multiple Pins
1:20:04 Pinterest Posting Schedule
1:20:54 Native or 3rd Party Schedulers
1:21:43 Engagement & Growth Strategy
1:24:54 Connections
1:26:33 Instagram is Different
1:28:00 Want to Work With Amber?
1:28:57 Amber's Service Options
1:32:19 Time & Money
1:36:48 Results???
1:42:44 What's Next for Insta / Social Media?
1:45:53 Social Media is Ever Changing
1:47:48 How to Keep Track of What's New?
1:48:57 Outro
Read the transcript…
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Amber, before we dive into all the social media stuff, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and, how you got into it and how you started your business?
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: Sure. So, I'm Amber. I started ABC Social Media Management my junior year of college. It was in the middle of the COVID pandemic, so spring of 2021. And I was studying at Georgetown. I was got my degree in international politics because I'd always thought through high school that that was what I wanted to do and was so sure I was going to work in government.
I took a gap year before college. Started to think, hm, I don't know about this, but I'm going to stick it out. I'm going to go to Georgetown, start my freshman year. And I didn't like it at all. and the thought of working on the hill, the thought of being there for my career, it just gave me anxiety. I remember watching a C-SPAN uh broadcast in a common room and thinking, "Nope, that that cannot be my life." So, I started exploring other things because I'd been so set on that track. And one of them was social media. I was looking for a creative outlet, especially my first uh round of final exams my freshman fall. started playing around of posting about skincare on Instagram. Got really into the content creator space. I worked with a bunch of brands that people have probably heard of from Youth to the People, Brio Joo, Sand and Sky, uh big brands in Sephora, did content for them, did uh my own Instagram, ran a blog, helped other content creators, and from there really realized that social media and creative marketing was what I wanted to pursue.
So, I worked a couple other internships and fellowships. I did email marketing for a program at my school and then I landed an internship at ROR skincare when they were uh very early in their startup phase and did everything. I refer to that as my fire hose. It was uh the spring, summer, and fall of 2020. So I was home from college, had a lot of extra time. I was really surprised actually how much time you feel like gets wasted in the day-to-day when you're, you know, at college. Like the walking between classes, the having to make food, doing your laundry, like all that has to be set aside. So when everything went on Zoom, I had so much time because I would do laundry during classes. I didn't have to walk anywhere to get to get to classes. So I was just hopping between Zooms. Had a lot more time. So I poured into this internship and it poured into me. I did Instagram, Pinterest, Tik Tok, LinkedIn, ads on all the platforms, Twitter when it was Twitter, now it's X, uh content creation, influencer management, got to sit on a lot of meetings with um when we were meeting with like the Pinterest ads people and I learned so much.
So, I did that for seven months and got to the end of it, debated, do I look for another internship, it was my junior spring, or do I just take what time I was dedicating to this internship and say, I'm going to start my own thing in social media. So, I did it. I ran with it. I was still home. I spent my half my sophomore spring and my entire junior year online. So, my junior spring and summer, I was getting ABC Social Media Management off the ground.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: What prompted you to decide to go out on your own? Like that's not in everybody to do that.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: It really comes from my other passion riding horses. Uh the level that I am lucky to ride at. I'm a show jumper. I compete around the country requires a certain amount of flexibility in my schedule and also just in location. I move around a lot, go to competitions and that doesn't match so well with a 9 to5.
And I was lucky with my internship with some other fellowships I'd had that they were very flexible with me. But I was actually doing some interviews and getting push back around availability times or hard requirements. And I was thinking, hm, what if I just made the rules up on my own for availability? You know, social media is a 247 thing. And I said, I'm going to give it a go. Especially because I'm in college. There's no harm done if I decide being on my own is not for me. I still have, you know, my senior year, I can look for something after. So, that was really the big driver to go out on my own versus stick with a more traditional whether it was uh startup or whether it was a corporate corporate job. I said, I'm going to carve out a a workspace that works for me and supports the other parts of my life.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Why interior designers?
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: It was not where I started. So probably unsurprisingly, I started with skincare and beauty and wellness. Worked with a couple brands in that space because that's what I knew really well having worked in that space for three years. But randomly, and I still laugh, I cannot remember how she found me, but this client found me early on, reached out and she was an interior designer who had her own pillow company. And I said, "Sure." You know, when you're early on your business, you take on anybody and everybody, and you're learning, you know, what you like, what you don't like. And I just loved working with her and I loved working on her account. I loved interacting with the designers that I interacted with when we were engaging for her. And I said, "This is much more my my speed and my lane than the product skincare brands." So I started slowly shifting, picking up more interior design focused clients, but she was really the the catapult. I think she was my third or fourth client um since I'd started my business.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay. Before we start diving into all the details of how we should be doing social media better, can you give me a few examples of transformations you've seen? Whether it's stuff you've worked on or maybe even it's people you haven't worked on, you've seen where they've exploded their social media and improved their
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: So, one of our past clients that worked with us for over two years started out getting anywhere from 80 to 90% of her leads for her design business from a referral partner. And because it was refer a referral partner, she had to pay out a commission every time a lead would sign. It was great early on in her business, but she really wanted to be more independent. That was her number one goal when she started working with ABC Social Media Management. Uh after two years together, we had about 40% of her leads coming directly from Instagram. Another 40% were from a mix of other sources, her website, guest speaking, that sort of thing. and she cut her referral leads down to the le I want to say it was 20 25%. So she'd really reverse those percentages and that was you know it wasn't a quick transformation. It took a lot of time a lot of engagement really working on the messaging strategy pulling her away from just leaning on that referral partner. But that is probably one of the transformations I'm proudest of. But then I also work now a lot with interior designers who are not outsourcing social media management to us fully. They're coming to me through the membership looking for kind of done with you support. And one of the designers in that membership signed her first few clients from her Instagram content. That's really the only way she's marketing her business. We've been working on just getting her comfortable. One of the things I say to my members is building that content muscle. I will often tell them like my best case scenario is, you know, you're posting five, six times a week. you have all this time to engage. That's not the case for some of them. They're moms. They're busy. They're trying to get their design projects off the ground. So, I'm building that muscle with them of two or three posts a week just to get in the habit. And even from those, she started to sign her first design projects, design consultations, which is really fun to see.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: That sounds huge, right? Because it it changes how their business works altogether instead of that relying on referrals all the time, which is fantastic because they'll still be there, but now you've opened up a whole new pipeline of potential clients.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: For sure. And I think that goes to one of my biggest things is that even if you're working with a social media manager, all your eggs shouldn't be in that one basket. They shouldn't be all in one platform. I want you to diversify. Not because I want more work and you're outsourcing more services to us and not because I want to add more to your plate if you're diying. because it re it alleviates that stress if you all your eggs are in one basket basket and god forbid Instagram goes down which it has or Pinterest breaks or your uh Tik Tok gets taken down for whatever reason.
I have plenty of stories from friends from peers from clients who've had any number of glitches and if every single client or project is coming from one channel and you lose that channel that can be devastating. So I want interior designers to always be thinking about how do I diversify? It's not just referrals. It's not just Instagram. It's not just Pinterest. It's a mix. A healthy mix. That means my business isn't so dependent on any one channel uh delivering my livelihood.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Right. Um, kind of touching on that uncertainty. I mean, referrals for interior designers is kind of up to them, right? The service they deliver, the relationship they have with their clients, they're responsible for that. But with social media platforms, like you said, if if something goes down or as we've seen in the last few years, how Tik Tok has influenced all of the other platforms by making it less social, right? Like who you know, and more about interests,right?
Instagram has changed so much in the last few years. Um, I've always kind of thought like the the designers who had some success back in say 2020 or 2021 posting static images and like having this gorgeous grid that is just perfection that no longer works to the same degree. introduction of reels and and stories and and how and how they're even still changing like the lengths of reels have changed or the collaboration feature which I love. So as of like today, right? What are the features? Let's just look at Instagram for a second because that's obviously the most popular one for designers. what are features maybe that you're seeing that maybe designers really aren't taking advantage of yet and what they could do with those features.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: So in terms of features I see designers not really using yet because I do see plenty of designers using reals, carousels and stories. not always maybe as strategically as I would recommend they do, but they are using them. But one of the ones that not enough interior designers are using are trial reels. And we've been rolling this out for our clients. I've been teaching about it in the membership. And not to tell designers to create a ton more content for trial reels. To back up, trial reels are a new algorithm that Instagram has opened up where you post a reel and you mark it. You're setting it to trial re and it only goes to people who don't follow you. So, it will not show up on your feed. It's not showing up in the accounts of anyone who's already following you. It's only going to new eyes, which is really powerful when one of the things that many of us interior designers included, have been feeling a struggle or a slowdown in is growth in getting that reach.
So, it puts you in front of people who've never seen you before. And like you said, with Tik Tok, it really is interestbased. That's the point of trial reels. It's really trying to serve like the Tik Tok for you page. get your content in front of people who are going to engage with it because it goes back to any platform's algorithm goal, but especially Instagram, keep people on the app. So, what I'm having clients do, what I'm doing for our management clients is when we're creating reels that are a little bit more of a mass appeal reel versus a conversion focused reel, like we're talking about top offunnel content versus lower down in the funnel. We're repurposing that same reel to trial reels. Honestly, sometimes the exact same reel to bring in new eyes. Sometimes we'll tweak the hook a little bit. The great thing about trial reels, because it's not showing up in your feed, you can duplicate it and do two or three times of the same reel. You adjust the hook a little bit.
Maybe you switch out the B-roll, you try a different audio, and it's also a good marketing research tool because you can see which messaging lands. I love to use it for that. I'll put three different hooks in trial reels and I'll leave everything the exact same. The one that picks up steam is the one I I then will put on the feed and see, okay, this resonated the most because it's resonating with people who don't know me at all. So, I'll repurpose it that way.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Could they play with um the time that they release those uh those trial reels as well? Like I mean most interior designers are local. So, I mean, in terms of like time, I I don't really worry so much about time zones, but, you know, try something at noon and then something at 8:00 p.m.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: They could. The thing with trial reels is I typically don't see time as a determining factor. You don't want to post at 2 a.m. when no one's around. But within reasonable waking hours, we don't stress about time too much. I don't want it to be the make or break factor and someone not posting. But especially with trial reels, they are slow to pick up. So, it really doesn't matter when you post it because it's going onto people's reels tab. So, it's going to be kept it's going to keep being pushed out to people that it thinks might be interested based off the text on screen, based off what's in the caption, based off hashtags if you choose to use them. Anything that Instagram can use to categorize, it's going to keep testing it to different audiences. And you will notice when you post, it can be slow. It can have zero views for three, four, five hours. So the time really isn't a factor there, but you can play with length of the reel. And that's something I talk about a lot with my designers working on if it's not a voice over, if it's not a talking head reel, making sure the length of your reel is only as long as it takes somebody to read the text on screen before it loops.
Because one of the things Instagram prioritizes is watch time. And speaking of what interior designers could do or what features they could be better about using within the reals feature, looking at their watch time and seeing how can they keep people watching for longer. Yes, it helps to have an interesting hook. Yes, use visually appealing clips, photos, great music, but at the end of the day, if your reel is 18 seconds and your hook takes 3 seconds to read, people are scrolling even if your reel is interesting. So, if you cut that down, it helps tell Instagram that people are staying on your reel and it improves your watch time, which only improves your reach,
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Fair enough. So that that definitely how the the algorithm is serving these reels these uh trial reels is completely different to how it serves normal reels.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: completely different. All of the other core Instagram algorithms, and there are actually four in the platform, it's your feed, your reels, your explore page, and your stories. They're all based on relationships.
How likely are you to interact with this person? What type of relationship, meaning post interactions, comments, saves, shares, that sort of DMs, that sort of thing, have you had in the past? How likely is their piece of content going to keep you on the app or vice versa? The trial reels, there's no relationship between the two accounts that are seeing this post. It is solely interestbased, very similar to the Tik Tok for you page where they're really trying to curate and serve you content that will keep you interested even if you've never heard of the person before. Honestly, most of what you see on Tik Tok are accounts that you've never interacted with. It's just trying to get you to stay on the platform by showing you what you're interested in. And that I think is where Instagram is going with trial reels.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, that's interesting. It kind of leads me into my next question for you, which was about, designers who have had little success to this point on Instagram.
There's a a definite feeling that unless you've already achieved some success whether and how you want to measure that by followers or engagement or however, Instagram tends to favor uh, bigger accounts. So, if you're a small little account with 200 followers, you just feel like you're putting things out there, but nobody is seeing them. Um, if you were to sit down with somebody who's got a tiny account and is definitely feeling that, like almost like, I'm ready to give up Instagram altogether, can you give them some hope or some some pointers on what they can do to turn their tiny account into something a little bit bigger?
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: Yeah, for sure. I still think it's possible to grow. You know, a lot of the people in my membership are those smaller quote unquote accounts of under 500 followers. And the most important thing I'd say first of all is in the kindest way, I want you to be realistic. Meaning, I don't want you to compare yourself to Studio McGee or Pure Salt Interiors or Light and Dwell, these massive interior design.
I don't want to call them conglomerates. They're still people, but they have these massive marketing machines behind them. decades of industry experience, decades of posting. I did a carousel about Studio McGee a little while ago about how long they've been posting. They've been doing this for 10 years and you look at their early posts and the marketing was so different back then and how they grew. The landscape was so much less competitive. So, the first thing is be realistic by pulling away from those big accounts. You're not going to grow the same audience as them now because you're operating in a much less. And if you look at their engagement rates and their comments on their post, I think you would honestly be happier with your engagement rate. When I pull those smaller interior designers engagement rates and I show them and I compare them to these larger accounts, yes, we might get into like their business success and their credibility and those are important goals that those smaller interior designers would still be working to, but they think I'm getting no engagement.
Comparatively to the size of their account, they might actually be getting more than some of these large interior designers. So, that's the first thing I pull back. Let's be realistic about what growth you can see on Instagram, what makes sense for you and your capacity as an interior designer. How much are you posting? How much time do you have to dedicate to this? What how much content do you have to dedicate to this? You know, if you don't have a ton of projects, it's different than these uh accounts that have years of projects to use and repurpose. But also be sure we're comparing apples to apples and not apples to oranges. I don't want you to think that you're that it's hopeless because you don't have the following of their size.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: Then the next thing I'd move into is how can we take steps towards whatever your goal is. For most interior designers, that comes down to I want to start signing projects. I want to get leads from Instagram.
So I say, okay, we need some consistency in your posting schedule. Often if they're getting to the point of being hopeless, they might or feeling hopeless. I don't want to say they are hopeless. So what I mean? Um, if they're feeling hopeless, they are pulling back from Instagram in some way. Even if they don't think they are, they are not putting as much effort into the post because they feel like it's not giving them anything in return. They're being a little bit inconsistent in terms of like, I'll get a rush of energy to post this week and then I won't post for 3 weeks. Here's the thing, that doesn't work. You can do it. Like if life happens and stuff hits the fan, I do tell my membership clients like if one of them is struggling, I say, "No, this is not your main priority over your family, over your design clients." But in best case scenario, I want you posting at least that two to three times a week showing up consistently.
And if you're ghosting your audience, even if it feels small, if you're ghosting them for three, four, five weeks, yeah, of course they're not going to care that much when you come back. That's that's just how social media works. And you need to prioritize the audience you have at the stage you have to grow more. Because if you don't appreciate a hundred followers, you're still going to feel like it's not enough when it's a thousand. You're still going to feel like it's not enough when it's 10,000. And I also like to share this story. Back when I was in high school, I gave a speech to I want to say our high school was maybe 300, 350 people. A lot of interior designers feel like 350 followers is very small in terms of Instagram. Those 350 people had me wanting to run off stage and hide when I had to give a speech to them. So, it's also helpful to think about what would it look like to put all of your followers in a room together and what would you feel like speaking to them?
100 people is a lot of people to talk to. Now, of course, we have to deal with like some of them might be spam, some of them might be bots, maybe some of them are your friends, cousins, grandma, who knows? But it's still a lot of people to talk to. So, pulling all of that together, I'd want them to be careful about what they're who they're looking at, who they're comparing to, come up with a way to stay consistent that works for them that they can actually stick to in their schedule, and then think about what it would mean to actually talk to those people. Like, what does that number mean for them? And not comparing it to a bigger interior designer, but how does it feel to talk to 100 people? And then start talking to them. Really engage with your audience. Get to know them. Be in the DMs. Open those conversations and prioritize engagement is my final thing for any account that feels small. Oftentimes I see interior designers feel like they're posting a lot and they are staying consistent, but they post in ghost.
They log in, they post their content, they say, "Yep, I checked the Instagram box for today." And they don't say anything and they're leaving comments on their posts unresponded to. And even that little piece of telling the algorithm, you know, this person took the time to respond to me, I'm going to respond back. that builds up your relationship with them in the eyes of the algorithm which improves the chances that your post will be higher in their feed the next time you post. So engagement meaning, you know, going through your home feed, leaving comments that aren't, you know, basic love this, but really responding to people, responding to stories where it makes sense, engaging with accounts that you don't follow yet who align with you, whether that's local businesses, whether that's other interior designers to build your network. Realtors are a great source for interior designers, but really prioritizing that connection, especially when you're a small account, is what stands out compared to the big accounts. Because the big accounts, they typically aren't responding to all their comments. They're flooded with comments.
They're super busy and aren't prioritizing as much that human connection because they've grown to the point where it's become more of like a portfolio piece and authority builder. But you in when you're in those smaller beginning stages can prioritize that connection and really build on that engagement.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: You said a lot there. There was a lot there and you've tweaked about like 10 questions in my head. Uh ultimately the when we talk about like social media metrics uh I've spoken with a ton of marketing experts online and offline on different topics and way too many of them um get focused on the metrics that are very marketer centric the things that they're interested in. And at the end of the day, if if if we're trying to help an interior designer grow their business, they want not just client leads, they want good client leads. Like, my wife's business is in Toronto, Canada. When she gets somebody from California DMing her, it's lovely, but she's not an international business.
She's not going to be that's no, those are not her clients, right? And you're one of the few that's brought that up kind of without me prompting or asking the question that uh client leads is is important. the most important thing, what are the metrics and sticking with Instagram for a sec? What are the metrics the Instagram metrics that are kind of take you on that path to client leads?
I would assume direct messages would be the closest thing to like now you're setting up a personal relationship with that person and that may become a client. Like, you know, we focus on things like likes, how many likes you got on a post. And I'm like, I guess it matters, but it doesn't matter near as much as someone reaching out and saying, "Hey, I really like your stuff." And then having that conversation with them on a DM and then taking them offline even and making a phone call.
So can you speak to that?
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: Yeah. They're what marketers refer to as a v visibility or not a vis a vanity metric. And that's the thing. It feels nice when people like your content. It's a nice little affirmation or ego boost. But you're right, it really doesn't mean anything more because it's such a passive thing. And honestly, at this point with social media, a lot of people are just scrolling and not even liking. So people are saying, "Well, I'm not getting a ton of likes. What's wrong with my content?" Honestly, people are burned out and they are just scrolling and scrolling and they're not even doing that little double tap anymore. But in terms of the metrics that we actually look at in that are going to drive first website visits and then leads or DMs, DMs are important
Depending on our package, sometimes we're in the DMs for our clients, sometimes we're not, and they're handling that. But we're seeing, you know, did they get an influx of DMs after a particular story set, after a particular reel? Did that inspire conversation? looking at which pieces of content spark conversation. We're looking at saves. That is an indicator that somebody is thinking about you for later. People are lurkers, especially now. They are taking the time to invest.
I think you mentioned your wife's in Toronto, so you're in Canada. We are seeing the impact of tariffs on the interior design industry in America. And it's not uh bottlenecking the industry yet, but it is changing how people think about their economic decisions and the greater economic picture as a whole. I'm not going to get into politics, but it is shifting how people are treating their spending. And for many people, interior design is a luxury item. It's discretionary spending. So, it's slowing down people's buying process.
So, that save is now even more so an indicator of, okay, I'm saving you for later. It might take what used to take, you know, 3 months of consideration before somebody raised their hand, so to speak, in the DMs. It could be taking four months, 5 months, 6 months now because some items are getting more expensive due to the tariffs. And not only that, people's discretionary spending is starting to slow down in the US. So, we're looking at more anonymous, so to speak, indicators. Like, people are not wanting to reach out before they're ready. They they respect interior designers. They know it's an investment. They're not going to come. A good lead is not going to come question you on your pricing, but they are thinking about it. They don't want to reach out before they're ready. They're kind of keeping an eye on you. So, saves. And the other one we look for are profile visits, like how many people are landing on your page. Some for some clients, we'll calculate profile visits to followers ratio, like of those profile visits in a month, how many converted, so to speak, to a follower, like who decided they were going to stick around.
And then website clicks, how many people went to your website. And that can be of greater or lesser importance depending on what we're driving them to. Like if a client's goal is really Instagram growth, I actually don't want to see as many website clicks. But they're still a good thing to have. I'm not going to complain about them, but I want to keep people on platform. If the goal is Instagram growth, if the goal is project inquiries or leads or site visits, we're going to look at website clicks. The other thing I wanted to talk about that I do look at because it helps with Instagram, it feeds the algorithm are shares. They're not necessarily as important for project inquiries um because it's sending it to somebody else, but even that that's helpful for visibility. And what shares do, I talked about it in my post today, actually, tells the Instagram algorithm that not only is a post keeping you on the platform, it's so good you want somebody else to come look at it. So, it really feeds Instagram's goal of keeping people on the platform, keeping people engaged.
So, you'll see a lot of the posts that are really performing well now are the ones that people want to hit share on, whether it's relatable, whether it's funny, whether it's inspirational, uh content that keeps people on the app.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Uh so if you were speaking to uh a designer, let's go back to our frustrated designer and uh if you could say these are the these are like the top three things that you should be paying attention to with your account.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: In terms of metrics or just in general metrics, I would be looking at their overall reach. You know, how how many accounts are they pulling in and looking at the breakdown of that reach? How much of how many of their followers are they reaching? Like how is their engagement with their existing audience? How many new followers, not new followers, new eyes are they bringing in each month? So, what does that number look like?
Just for general visibility, I'd want to look at saves, you know, to see who is saving their content, who's bookmarking it. That's a good indicator of that it's resonating. And then website clicks. In general, for most interior designers, I'm looking at how many people are we getting to their website. Because ultimately, for a luxury service like interior design, you're generally not seeing the conversion on Instagram itself or on Pinterest itself. It's not a $25 skincare serum. It's not a, you know, $30 bag that people are going to click add to cart and go. It's a intense vetting process for hiring an interior designer. They want to know about your process, uh, your philosophies, your past projects. And not all of that consideration happens on a social media platform like Instagram. It's the first bite for in most cases when they're finding you. They might find you on Google, but for this for purpose of this instance, we're saying it's a first bite, first introduction to you. getting them to your website where they can find out even more, where they can binge your portfolio blog, where they can read your FAQs, where they can get to know more about you and your story and submit that inquiry form is where we want them to be.
So then it also comes into play, you know, I want you to look at your website. If you're sending a lot of traffic to a website that's not really optimized and isn't giving them the information they need, that's a whole other problem. I'm not a website designer, but I do talk about websites with my clients because I've had to tell clients that we're getting a lot of traffic and, you know, we're sending 200, 300 clicks to your website every month, but if it's not converting, I want you to look at your website. And I've had some clients that I've really pushed to redesign or put out new blogs or redo their services page so it answers people's questions, add a frequently asked questions page, that sort of thing. But to circle back, I I can get going on a tangent. The metrics I would be looking at are your reach and studying that breakdown, your saves and your website clicks.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Feel free to jump on tangents anytime you want. We get we get to the good stuff there for sure.
Um okay. You've picked up you have picked up a new client, new interior designer client who wants to work with you. Um, if you could wave a magic wand and have them suddenly doing the perfect week of social media content, what would that look like
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: So, typically the platforms I'm recommending for interior designers in my magic universe where they want to do everything is their blog on a website they own, Pinterest and Instagram. So, my gold standard for blogs is anywhere from two to four blogs a month. So, let's say this week they're going to write a blog or we'll write it for them. Depending on what the blog is, it might be a portfolio piece. It might be diving into a question. Like right now, I have some clients writing content or we're helping them write content about tariffs and the impact that they're seeing. And then from there, I'd be looking at pinning seven to 10 pins a week. Some to that blog, some to past blogs.
Pinterest loves a fresh URL. That's why I recommend anywhere from two to four blogs per month. And these don't all have to be massive portfolio pieces where they're 1500 plus words. Some of these blogs can be 400 to 600 words just answering a question being helpful contributing to your SEO ranking. But having those fresh URLs that we can pin to pinning to projects, pinning to some Instagram posts. And then on Instagram itself, somewhere between four to six Instagram posts a week depending on the amount of content they have. That is a factor for clients. You know, I am not a social media manager who will tell clients, you know, you have to have this quantity of content to work with us. I'm pretty flexible. I can make magic happen with a very limited amount of projects as my clients will attest to, but the amount of posts I'm going to recommend depends on how many projects we have to work with, as well as how much video are they willing to give, how much video are they willing to get on, and how involved they want to be.
You know, if they want to be on stories, if they want to have their face on camera, that's going to impact it. But somewhere in that four to six range of Instagram posts and you know from in addition to that two to three stories that week.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay. Um, you brought up video. I've spoken with a number of designers and it's improving but there still is definitely seems to be a hesitancy towards putting their face out and talking to camera and talking to that's not going to change, right? Like it's not we're not going back to still
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: So the thing is carousels are performing very well. Some of my clients carousel posts outperform their reels. Two different audiences. The trend I typically see as a general rule rule. There are in exceptions to this but reals perform very well with your nonfollowers. They are great for visibility and reach. Carousels tend to perform with your existing audience.
They like to scroll through save. So there is a place for both. So to my interior designers who really hate the thought of being on video, you can still post still images like we do for our interior designers. I will not ascribe to the belief that you have to only be posting reals, that static doesn't work. There are people who still want to read textbased carousels. there are still people who want to see a photo. That being said, ignoring video completely isn't going to work. You're not going to get the same results. And I have clients who are on photo only or static post only packages because that's what works for them, whether it's their budget or their um the photos they have right now to or the content they have right now to use. And they're still growing and doing well. It's just not as much as if they were giving video. My caveat to that though is video does not have to involve you yourself talking to the camera.
I know that can feel really intimidating. I work with the designers in speed dial my membership on it all the time. Helping them script, helping them kind of dip their toes into the water and get more comfortable with it. But video can be videos of a project, of a site visit, of you know a room after and you do a before and after. It can involve B-roll of you but you not talking. So you putting a design presentation together or presenting a design concept to a client, working on your computer, sourcing at a showroom or looking at slabs. They can have you in the video without it being a produced captions added, you know, voice or face to camera reel with your voice. Those are great. And in my ideal world, every client would have within their month of content. I typically like to look at content in like a month chunk. They would have a couple of those reels where their cl potential clients, their followers can hear their voice and get to know them.
I think it's a really important exercise in trust building with their audience. You know, when you get to hear how someone speaks and get to know them, just feels like they're reaching through the screen versus this distant uh distant business or distant account. But video does not have to mean that you're, you know, recording and talking to the camera and having to come up with these scripts
They can be B-roll style videos, project videos, that sort of thing to kind of dip your toes in.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Yeah. And maybe do a a voice over over those images. Like take a static carousel, turn it into a video, and then have uh have the voice over, you know, where you're making that connection. Yeah. I mean, you know, when I started doing this podcast, I mean, and that hasn't been that long. I mean, the first few interviews I did, I was terrified, right? like I'm like, you know, I felt like a fraud. And then now, honestly, I could I could care less. I've got I've got friends who make fun of me all the time. They'll see my video on YouTube, somehow it ends up into their feed, and they're like, "What the sweet heck is this? What are you doing?" Right? And I'm like, "You're just jealous. You can't do it
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: Something I was told very early on in my business is that nobody you who is ahead of you, nobody you would admire is going to be throwing shots at you like people throwing shots are in the cheap seats is what this person told me and it's true like maybe not with your friends like friends can sometimes not get it and you have to just let that roll off your back. I am teased relentlessly by some of my friends because they are blocked on my business page.
I'm like I will be marketing the way I need to market and you will not be saying anything about it. you're not my target audience if and I have friends who are allowed to be there because they're supportive. But some of them I'm just like I'm not opening the door. But when we're thinking about marketing and and being in front of strangers like that and potentially being judged, remember that nobody who's ahead of you in business, like if you're an interior designer, nobody at Studio McGee or Light and Dwell or Pure Salt or any of these interior designers you look up to, they're not going to be mocking your reels. Even if you feel it's cringey, even if it's your first attempt and you feel like you're a fraud or you stumble over your words, not a single one of those interior designers, they're too booked, they're too busy, they're too focused on their own goals. And if they're looking back at you at all, it's to pull you up. So I that mindset shift has always helped me thinking about showing up on social media because I'm sure if I went back to the very beginning of my page, very cringey, it was junior year, college, Amber.
My goodness. I don't want to think about especially because it was in COVID and there was the dancing and the pointing was really big on Tik Tok and Instagram. I for sure did that. You wouldn't catch me doing it now. But no, nobody who's who's ahead of you in your industry who is who is somebody you'd want to emulate is going to be trying to tear down what you do on social media. It's just it's people you can tune I know out. that's easier said than done, but it's important to to not let people who you wouldn't want to trade lives with comment on what you're doing.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Yeah. And none of us would give that advice to our kids, right? We would never say, you know, don't try. Don't try because you might be embarrassed. Like we would we're constantly would tell them, you know, you've got to try these things, these things that are difficult. So, you know, we should be able to take that own advice ourselves, right?
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: Exactly.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Yeah.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: And with kids, you know, it's easy for them. they have a much uh much less fragile ego and they're much more willing to quote unquote make fools of themselves. So sometimes with social media it's helpful to adopt that kind of mentality. If I mess up, I mess up. It's a post. It lives for 48 hours. Oh well. If you're not harming someone, if you're not insulting someone, you'll survive whatever you do.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Um, I've got a couple of scenarios for you. Um, let's pretend I'm an interior designer who has not been uh promoting the their work as much as they should have been. Uh, and I've got two or three fairly recent projects that I've put up some stuff, but not not to the level that you would have had me doing. Um, is it okay to go back in time and start using these older projects again like Today,
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: Oh, for sure. Absolutely. I there is not like a set time from when a project is done when you can use it. I have clients, you know, with interior design projects that take years, sometimes multiple years to complete that there's a lot of pieces involved. We're using projects, reusing them multiple times to fill that space before we get, you know, new blood, so to speak, in our in our content drive. So, absolutely go back. There's so much you can do with it. You can do carousel overviews of the whole project. Do deep dives into singular rooms. Share the process from the very first design presentation all the way to the completed project. Reals showing you know the project itself finished before and afters the inbetweens. This is why it's so important when you're working on a project to get those site visit videos, those update videos where you show how things are coming together. If you haven't, no judgment. But if you do have those, those are great to pull from to really show the process and put someone who's viewing it into the shoes of your client.
See, like this is what it would feel like to go from your house looking like this, the before. This is what the in between looks like. This is the finished result. Sharing on stories. If you've got a client testimonial, including that, you can do, you know, the basic text on the on the post. I don't love those for testimonials. I either love sharing a snippet of it in a caption and really telling the story of the client transformation or potentially getting on camera, talking to the screen, talking through the transformation and how the client felt. But if you want to go kind of lowle to start with um or low lift, I mean with the testimony, you can always copy and paste it. Sharing some before and afters, some polls on stories. There's just so much you can And if a client's coming to me with two to three projects to use and we have oh anywhere from 10 to 15 photos and a couple videos per that's a good two to three months of content at least truly.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Wow. Okay. Um because my next question was about uh that same designer who's got a new project and I I mean I've I've seen those projects that you're talking about where there the designer at the end of the job has paid somebody a professional photographer to come in and take gorgeous pictures and there's almost nothing else. There's pictures they've taken on site, but it wasn't done with a thought process of these images should be getting used for social media or your own internal website marketing or or whatever. So, let's say we've got a designer who's got a new project and you're working with them. What would you tell them like what kind of content, how much content, what should they be doing as the project progresses?
Amber Broder: In my ideal world, capturing everything. And it doesn't have to involve a professional photographer. For any of these before shots or in between videos, videos of mood boards, use your phone.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: Make it easy. If you have an assistant, if you have a friend who you can drag along to on a site visit, get them to just capture video of you walking around of the all the rooms before you want before and after photos and videos that we can use for transformation that we can also use throughout the project. I think it's really important to if we're working in this ideal case scenario, get buyin from your followers as the project progresses. So, it's not just here's my finished project. Um, it's ready to go. Like this is the first time you're seeing it. It's here's this project that I brought you along with the whole way through. It's through from when I first did the site visit and I showed you this really I'm making this up really ugly builtin that totally needed to get ripped down to this is the construction happening. This is the plan for the new built-in and this is the re-imagined living space. Like if we're running with that scenario.
So capturing as much as you can on any of those site visits, any design presentations, mood boards, flatlays, those do really well getting people's opinions. One of the things I love to do with clients is if they have a design presentation, a concept presentation, and they have two or three mood boards, post the three and say, "Hey, which one would you pick?" Now, the client's going to pick whatever they're going to they're going to choose, and you'll guide them to that. But it's fun to get their buy in like that. So any of those uh materials, presentations, site visits, meetings with contractors, uh sourcing like slabs, if you're sourcing tile, if you're going to a market, all of those come into play with content. So if you're asking yourself, should I take a picture of this? Should I take a video of this? The answer is yes, please. Your social media manager will really thank you.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Because you know what? If it's a to if it's a terrible video, it's a terrible picture, you're not going to use it. It didn't cost you anything. Everything's digital, right?
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: Exactly. We're not working with film. We're not, which I actually used to shoot in high school. Random side note, we're not working with film where there's a limited limited shot. I have plenty of shots I go into a client's Google Drive and I think we're not going to use that one. You know, that's uh maybe we'll throw that on stories. That's not really worthy of the the feed because we have a couple others. But I still want that because I wouldn't know that the others are more worthy of the feed or are going to fit the story more if I didn't have that to compare to. I want everything. And then part of my job is to organize it and sift through and figure out which works and which doesn't for our goals.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: I was speaking with a designer last week about they they'd had a project where there had been an issue with the contractor and but because the designer was was taking like a complete project management role.
Everything kind of fell into their lap and and so there was a lot of meetings going on and there was a lot of tension and it it ended up resolving in a way that it wasn't perfect but the clients respected that the problem was dealt with and it was resolved to a level that was acceptable and made sense to everybody. And everybody walked out of that meeting generally happy and friendly and you know there there there was going to be referrals coming from this and I know the clients and I spoke to the clients and I and so they told me what had happened and and they were pleased with the designer and and they were impressed with how they had dealt with the problem and I said what if we've been able to record that that meeting maybe not necessarily with audio like take the audio, strip it out, and like even something as stressful as that, the client said like they would have been okay with it, right?
But the designer never would have asked and maybe that meeting was completely not the appropriate choice. But there's there's so many scenarios where like if you're the viewer, if you're the if you're the Instagram scroller, right, and you're getting to see this day in the life, right, and you're thinking about a project six months down the road, it goes beyond just looking at pretty pictures of the finished project and even like the before and the afters. It's the middle. It's the mucky, messy, gross stuff. And you're like, "Wow." like this designer handled this problem, right? And that kind of builds up that credibility in their eyes. There's so much we can do with this stuff.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: for sure. And I if a client came to me and said like I had this story even if they didn't record it I'd look for another type of B-roll or I'd use another project's picture.
Sometimes what I'll do with clients to anonymize a story is pull a different project's photo to tell the story from the original project just to not have anybody feel like they were getting called out or anything. Um, but if they had B-roll of them like at a meeting or something, that would be the kind of story I'd want to share. Eliminating personal details, but how they worked through it, how they moved through it, because fact of the matter is those issues happen. And I think pretending that everything is always smooth, is what sometimes can get interior designers into trouble in general. This applies to all businesses, not just interior designers. But your your business and your client ser client delivery, your client experience has to match up with your marketing. You only market pretty pictures and something goes horribly wrong in a project and your and you don't handle it well or the client feels like a total lack of trust or feels totally left alone, that's not going to match up with their image of what they had of you from from your marketing.
So, that's important, too. And if there's ever an opportunity to ask a client, you know, would you be comfortable with us taking a quick B-roll? Would you be comfortable being on camera? And they are, that's great for your credibility, too.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: for sure. so with all of the different types of content that we've been speaking about, we we've um we've still focused mostly on Instagram and to a lesser degree Pinterest, but there's a ton of other platforms and I'm sure they have uh maybe some are are less successful for designers. I'm wondering about repurposing content, right? So, if I've had something that's done well on Instagram, can I just pull that ex, you know, that post or that reel, stick it on Pinterest, stick it on Facebook, stick it on Tik Tok, same captions, all that kind of stuff, or do I need to tweak and make changes based on platform?
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: The answer is yes, you can just stick it on another platform, but not if you depending on your goals for that platform.
If all you want is omniresence, get on everything. Have a pre like if somebody looked you up on TikTok, if somebody looked you up on LinkedIn, if somebody looked you up on X or threads and you just want to have a presence so people can find your business, you can just copy and paste. But that won't be using the best practices for each platform. So if you had a post do well on Instagram, you could use the same photos on Pinterest, but I'd rewrite the pin copy to be focused on what Pinterest looks for. So Pinterest is looking for your pins to be the answer to somebody's search. So you're going to really want to look at your keywords. You're going to write a pin description that feels a little clunkier than what you'd write on Instagram. On Instagram, you're writing for engagement. On Pinterest, you're not getting comments. People aren't telling you that they love this. They're looking for an answer. So I'm not saying keyword stuff, but you're going to want a caption that reads a little bit more keyword heavy than what you'd actually put, say, in an Instagram caption for conversation.
If we were to take a real for example on Instagram, the user behavior and the preferences of content on Instagram is slightly different from Tik Tok. They can work and you can always test it, but I do recommend at least writing with the native text in each app, not, you know, downloading the same reel that has Instagram's text because, weirdly enough, the platforms can read it. They know if you re if you pulled the video from Instagram or the video from Tik Tok. And if you really want to repurpose between the two, I would typically go Tik Tok to Instagram because the trends start on Tik Tok. I'm not a big fan personally of Tik Tok for interior designers because I find it to be so videoheavy that it tends to be a heavy lift for interior designers and unless they're really comfortable with video, I find it's a lot of work for not as much reward. Typically the people who are potential clients who are further along in their buying buying journey, thinking a little more seriously about a purchase, they're not hanging on Tik Tok.
Tik Tok tends to be a younger or more of a DIY audience. Like DIYers, home bloggers, they can do well on Tik Tok. I personally haven't seen most much success from, you know, the mid-level interior designer on Tik Tok. But in terms of researching trends, what I like to do is look at Tik Tok and see what's doing well there. Any like audios or any trends, the um god forbid trend, the this and trend that has been going around like this and not having any Slack notifications that started on Tik Tok. So you will see a lot of trends begin there. You can be ahead of the curve if you start posting it. You know, typically I see trends follow in one to two weeks depending on how much traction it's getting on Tik Tok. So, for that platform specifically, I'd look at going Tik Tok to Instagram, not the other way. Uh, LinkedIn, same thing. You could just repurpose, but I tweak it slightly to the platform to be more about the way that they structure things.
Same with Facebook. Facebook, you don't really use hashtags. So, we will repurpose posts from Instagram to Facebook, but I'll cut the hashtags. And if I say link in bio in the Instagram caption, I'll put the link in the Facebook post because it's clickable there. It's not Instagram. So the answer is yes, you can repurpose between the platforms. I would make small tweaks at least to fit the platform best practices, but I also do not believe it's necessary for interior designers to be on every platform. What most of my designers are on is they have a website with a blog, they have a Pinterest, an Instagram, and they'll cross-ost. That kind of is it. Some will hang out on threads. That's a very conversational platform. If you loved Twitter and you love getting involved in conversations, that's a great option. But I just I don't see Tik Tok. There's going to be marketing experts who disagree with me. It's fine. I love Tik Tok.
I spend way too much time scrolling. That's how I put myself to sleep at night. I scroll on Tik Tok. Um but it I don't see it being the best use of your time as an interior designer. Same thing for LinkedIn. Unless you're specifically in a very corporate or B2B space, your audience is not looking for their interior designer on there. That's where they are in their nineto-5 or their nine to eight in a high intensity salary job because they have high household income to fund an interior design project. They're not looking for interior design there. They're ready to sign off of LinkedIn at the end of the day. So, I do want interior designers to be careful. It feels great to have a presence on all platforms. You feel like you're, you know, everywhere and people are going to find you, but it matters if it's the right people.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: I agree. It's, you know, that that paro principle, that 8020 rule where, you know, 80% of your money comes from 20% of your clients. Probably the same thing applies to your social media accounts. And I would assume uh Instagram is that 80%. and Pinterest, but but for different reasons.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: as much as people complain about Instagram and I hear it all, it still is. When I look at client numbers, when they tell me in the membership what they're seeing, Instagram is still driving their leads. Is it slower? Yes, because Instagram is ultimately made up of humans and humans are impacted by little things like the season and big things like the world economy and shifts in tariffs and policies. But it's still driving leads. I still have clients telling me every week they are getting clients from their posts. So, it is where I think a lot of buying decisions are made when it comes to interior design.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: And we're talking exclusively about organic content. I mean, designers who have a successful series of posts or reels can, if they want, turn that into an ad and focus it exclusively on a on a geographic area like and and pump that message up. put a little bit of money behind it. So, you know, while organic reach is more difficult on Instagram than it was, you know, during COVID or 5 years before CO, it's still like you can use it almost as a test case and then turn it into an ad and they're more than happy to make that process Easy.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: Oh, they they want money. And the c and the warning I'd give to that is I'm not anti- ad. I think if you have content that's performing well, you can explore boosting or you could export true Facebook ad setup. They're two different things. But the caution I give is that I sometimes will see interior designers think, "Okay, I'm going to throw 25, 30, 50 bucks behind this post. You know, it did really well, but they don't want to boost any other post or they don't really want to have a comprehensive ad strategy. They don't want to work with someone who does ads." And you are going to get more reach when you pay versus when you don't, at least consistently. You might have a post blow up organically, that still does happen, but over time, the paid posts are going to get more reach. You're paying for it. Instagram loves that you're giving it money. It's going to show your post to more people. But if you stop doing that and you get stressed about your numbers after that, your numbers are going to return to what they were organically. You're going to feel like you're getting less reach. And I have had clients get super stressed out. Well, well, my reach tanked this month. Everything's in the gray. Okay. Well, 50% of our reach last month was from ads. 0% from is from ads this month because the ad stopped running. you're going to have less reach when you stop paying for it. So, it's something to consider if you're okay with that and you want to test it, you want to boost some posts. I know plenty of people who use, you know, a low-level five $7 a day just to get more reach and traffic. Some social media agencies will boost, you know, one post a week for a client just to bring in that extra visibility. It's a great strategy if you know what you're paying for and you're okay with what happens if you turn the ads off.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Yeah. So that's and that's where working with somebody who understands, you know, why that is going to happen is is so important.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: And here's thing ultimately what I tell my clients is you make your decisions. I'm going to tell you what I think. I've had clients, you know, unfortunately get really not happy with me when when the metrics go down after that. But it's a ads are a quick win in general unless you are putting a full force strategy behind them um in terms of like driving to your website and thinking about the whole customer journey.
And there are people who specialize in that, who specialize in paid media, but it can be a great visibility boost. Just be aware of what it's going to do and what it's going to take to keep getting that visibility boost. Instagram's not going to give it to you for free.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: No, of course not. They're in business to make money like all of us are, right? Yeah. Um, we touched on when we're talking about the different platforms, we touched on captions and descriptions. Um, circling back to let's go back to Instagram again specifically. Um, I have no clue how
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: Sure.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: to like what an effective caption is, like how long it should be. Is it like like a like a real in that, you know, you've got to have that hook right from the start? Do I write long captions? Do I put hashtags? There's all all that kind of stuff. Can you give us a little bit of your knowledge on captions and descriptions and stuff?
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: So, one of the mistakes I see a lot of interior designers making is writing super super short captions like a great Monday or a new bathroom. That's too short for anyone to engage with. You need something. I'm not saying you have to write a novel, but we need a little bit of substance. And this is not my uh formula. It's not my model. This is taught by a lot of people, but it's what I show to a lot of my clients when we're writing captions. It's a sandwich formula. So, you start with the top piece of bread, your hook, and that is the opening one or two sentences that will make somebody as they're scrolling their feed look at your post get that gist of it and think, "Okay, yeah, I want to read more." So, you think of it as the opening statement of a newspaper article or, you know, the first thing you see when you start a magazine article.
What makes you want to keep reading and not flick to the next page? That's your hook. with an interior design designer. It might be like this is the one thing that changed this client's project forever. Something like that that draws them in the meat of the sandwich. So, you know, if it's a burger, your burger patty, your tomato, your lettuce, your onion, that's the meat of your story where you're getting into the details. There's depending on the post, maybe you're going into the details of the bathroom remodel or you're sharing a story from the project or you're sharing, you know, on a recent client post we were doing like how the tariffs are going to impact interior design. So, we're talking about three different ways we're seeing makes up the bulk of your caption. Then you're ending the last piece of bread in the sandwich is your call to action. So, what do you want somebody to do with this post? Sometimes people get stuck on every call to action has to be about sales. every call to action is like inquire about my services. No, people are going to burn out with that. They don't want to hear every single post. Book a call. DM me to learn more. We're a little over that. But calls to action can be, you know, leave a comment if you agree. I want to hear what you think. Share this with a friend. Hit follow for more. In general, 90% of posts we're making have a call to action. Sometimes there's just no natural call to action. It feels awkward. So, go with your gut. But 99% of the time, I'm following that sandwich structure with my captions. And then I'm focusing on readability. The other mistake I see a lot of users in general, it's not just interior designers, make is long, long paragraphs, no white space in the caption. And something I like to flip to my clients is, would you want to read this genuinely? Like as you're scrolling, you have limited time.
You're at a red light. You're in the toilet. I don't know. Who knows? you're waiting to pick up your kid from school. You have limited time scrolling on Instagram. Are you gonna read the block of text that you like can't even pick the words apart? Or are you gonna scroll and read the caption that's written with bullet points and you can pick out the main story and you can follow it really easily and there's something for you to do. You're going to read the second one. So, making sure there's some white space, using emojis that are brand appropriate, like I love white square or the black squares or bullet points, circles. Uh, if the client is a little more whimsical, we might do like some of the hearts or stars. But breaking it up visually to make it easy to read is another thing that I think too many people skip over. They either try to make it so short because they like are burned out from creating the post.
They don't want to put a ton of thought into it. Or it's a good length and it's good content, but it's too clumped together and you need to break it up a bit and have more white space.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Um, so this that that is a great explanation. If I'm not good at Instagram, that's still going to be confusing for me in terms of like uh how I how I do it, right? Conceptually, I get what you're saying.
It's it's how to do it. And I think that kind of ties into um where I see a fair amount of designers who do post on Instagram. There's no plan behind it, right? It's just I I know I have to put something up today. Oh, here's a great and it's a legitimately it's a great picture. Fantastic. But things should work together and designers should understand that because when they are working on a project and they're planning how they're going to renovate this entire home, there's a plan, right? You can't just go in and say, "Okay, Monday, let's do this." "Well, what do you want to do tomorrow? Talk to the contractor." "Well, let's do this." No, it has to be organized. Can you speak to the importance of planning and um and maybe start from like a a top down kind of point of view and then work into like where we're getting more granular on a day-to-day basis?
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: So planning, it's it's the difference between marketing your business half-hazardly and being consistent and actually getting results from Instagram. H coming up with, you know, a post on the fly. It doesn't work unless you live and breathe marketing. I tell my clients sometimes it's not do as I do, it's do as I say because same way I couldn't go pull together a design presentation on the fly if you gave me 30 minutes to do it. You can't pull together an Instagram post.
That's why it burns you out if you're not planning. You think, "Oh, no. I have to post. It's 2 p.m. I have to get something out." Of course, it's not going to have the same effect as if you put, you know, not even a ton of time, but 20, 30 minutes into your overall plan. So, I recommend every client have a monthly overview of their plan. I start by the month. And I don't mean create a month of content at a time if that doesn't work for you, but look at your month at a glance and think about what do I want to talk about? Yes, your services. Yes, who you are, what you do, any projects you have coming up. But on in a more general sense, like what events are coming up? Are there any holidays that apply to your brand? Are there any, you know, project developments that you're going to share? Kind of map those out into a monthly calendar and see based on your capacity, based on content assets you have, based on your goals for social media and your goals for your business.
Like if we're entering a particularly busy time, I like to frame it to clients as what are we going to be successful with? If you have a huge amount of installs and you're traveling three weeks of the month, probably not the month we're going to try to plan six posts a week. We might do two to three, you know, every week to stick to that consistency but not burn you out. So having that bird's eye view of the month and then I do like to plan to create the content in advance. I think it's more successful if you have dedicated batching time than if you try to come up with it on a day-to-day basis. You'll still have more success trying to do it day-to-day if you have a monthly overview. But I do think it runs the risk of you either rushing a post and not enjoying, you know, what you ultimately ended up with or just skipping it entirely because you get to the end of your long busy to-do list and you think, "Yeah, no, I'm pushing that to tomorrow."
And then it keeps happening. So depending on again your preferences, I structure this with every client differently. Some clients like to sit down and do it weekly. So if they have three posts a week, they sit down on Monday for two hours, let's say, make those three posts and they have them set for the week. Some clients like to do bigger batches. We'll do it every other week. So they're not doing it as frequently. That's up to you and your schedule. And kind of as you're listening to this, if you're an interior designer, think about what would work for me. Is it one hour every Sunday to write out my post for the week? Is it one big content batching block every month and I want to create four weeks of content at a time and just set it and forget it? It's up to you. There isn't one right way. And a lot of my advice always comes with a catch or a caveat that it depends on you, your capacity, your schedule, your preferences, because there are so many quote unquote right ways to do this.
But in general, month overview, having a sense of what your month is going to look like, then coming up with some type of batching process that lets you create content not on the fly. There are ways you can make this easier. Um, the tool I like to use, I have a free download on my website. It's the Air Table content calendar. So, Air Table is a project management tool, but it's really helpful for social media planning, and I already have a content calendar set up with the kind of the main categories you need. So, your post topic, place to write your caption, place to write uh any notes about the topic, upload the photo, upload the video, and you can use that. There's a month calendar view, and then there's a grid view with the individual records. You can download that and start playing around. There's other tools if that doesn't work for you. Some schedulers have a tool like later. You can do Google Sheets. You can do pen and paper.
I don't mind what tool you use. I mind that it works for you and works for your brain. Um, and then from there, I think the you can use things like Canva for templates. Like if you have real covers, you can create templates in there. You don't necessarily have to pay a graphic designer to do them. You can make them yourself. Canva is a very accessible tool. Make things like story templates, uh, uh, carousel templates if you want to do text posts. Have them ready to go so you're not starting from scratch every time you create a post.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: That's great. I was going to ask you about tools and you covered that. Anyway, uh yeah, I I need to do that because I when it comes to for me to do something creative like that, I need to kind of have that hat on. I'm going to do my creative stuff and but if I'm bouncing back and forth between, you know, the more back of the house business type aspects of my business and then immediately try to jump to something creative, it's like, no, it doesn't work that way.
I need to shift gears. And I mean, even though designers are naturally more creative, I mean, it's a different it's a different thing.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: It's a different task on your brain. It's any any type of context switching is very hard. As somebody who creates over a hundred pieces of content a month, people ask how I do it. It's not trying to come up with each client's post on the day it's going live. Not just because they need to approve it, but it's because my brain could couldn't function like that between all the roles I play in my business. I'm lucky to have a team, but it's still me wearing a lot of hats. And then all the roles I play outside of my business, helping with family, riding horses, taking care of the dogs, uh being a human, I can't context switch every hour. It doesn't work like that. So, I create for my clients batches of time where I'm creating content and I'm getting in that mode.
And I have to account for the fact that sometimes it takes me 30 minutes to get in content creation mode that I'm mcking around on my computer scrolling on Instagram for inspiration, looking at Pinterest, looking sometimes I'll open up a client's Google Drive and it takes me 20 minutes to get started with a post and I'm not doing anything else in that time. I'm getting my brain in content mode. Once it's flowing, it comes a bit easier. But even me who's done this for interior designers for three years, done it for social media for over six, it takes my brain a little bit of time to get going in that mode. If you don't live and breathe social media, I think it would take you even more time to get your brain into that just that flow state. And that's why doing it on a day-to-day basis doesn't work for 95% of people, I would say, because to get yourself in that mode, it takes you out of your routine and then you have to really access it and then you're only doing it for one post and then you turn it back off, it's almost like a waste of all the buildup.
So, if you can create that batching session every week or every other week, you get yourself in that mode and you get to benefit from multiple posts in that mode.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Let me come back to what you were saying earlier about um if you if you realize you don't have a schedule and you haven't put out anything this week And now you're like, "Oh geez, I've got to get something out." So now, not only are you not in content mode, you you've added that heap of pressure like, "I need to do this." Right? And so now, what are the odds that you're going to put out something of high quality, right? And if the goal is to get people to come to you, you don't want to just put something Out.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: You're most likely going to get frustrated more than instead of getting people to come to you and getting engagement and starting conversations, you're going to get frustrated.
You're either not going to like the post you've put out. And because designers are creatives, they hold themselves to a high standard. It's a very visually focused industry. You're maybe going to burn out and not even put the post up because you're like, I can't do it. I I have I have time pressure. It's not coming out right. you're gonna put it up and not like it or you're going to put it up and be un dissatisfied with how it performed, so to speak. And it just breeds a culture for you in your brain of treating social media as it's a last resort, but I need it to do all this heavy lifting for my business. And those two things don't mesh.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Let's shift gears a little bit and discuss Pinterest. Um designers, a lot of designers, most designers use Pinterest. Do you find designers use Pinterest in a way uh to help their business or just you know their own personal boards that they use with clients?
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: I find a lot of designers are still just using it for their clients, you know, putting together boards, using it to source inspiration. But because it's so designheavy, it's one of the most popular categories on on the platform, it is really easy to start using it for your business.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: And how would they do that? What would be what would be your plan for them to do that
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: So, first thing is claim their website, get linked up to their website, and optimize their their Pinterest for interior design. So, instead of it just being a personal page, you're looking at, you know, describing your business. Let's say your design style is a casual coastal interiors. You're based in Florida. You'd want that all over your Pinterest in your name, in your overall pin description, like the bio of your account. You'd want to start creating boards that you write descriptions for that have those keywords in them. Start pinning content, not only your own, so links to your blogs, links or save pins from other in other designers, other places on Pinterest to add to those boards to flesh them out and start using Pinterest as not just I'm going to save other people's stuff to my boards for clients, but I'm going to take what I've made on my blog or take this post I wrote on Instagram and pin to it on Pinterest and start sending more traffic. So when people look up the answer to this question like casual coastal interior design, I start becoming an answer for it.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay. Um, does Pinterest have an equivalent to Instagram in terms of engagement, of conversation?
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: It does have messages. It but not in any way like what Instagram does. You're not looking for DMs on Pinterest. I haven't gotten a DM on Pinterest ever and I don't think clients have. The main thing you're looking at is saves. Are people saving your pins to their boards? You know, are they looking to you for inspiration? Are you meeting the need of what they searched for? And then clicks. Are they going to your website? Pinterest, unlike Instagram, its goal is not to keep you on the platform. Instagram is a little selfish. I like to say if we're going to ascribe a human characteristic to an algorithm, it's a little selfish. It wants you to stay on its platform.
It wants your money because you're looking at ads. It wants you to stay engaged. It wants you to uh interact with content. Pinterest functions more like a search engine tool than a social platform. It wants to give you the answer. Google's not trying to keep you on page one. It's trying to send you to the the article that makes the most sense for your query. Same thing with Pinterest. it wants you to click off. So, it does reward pins that it feels like people are clicking to that is answering their questions. So, it really is not about engagement. And that way, it's not another social media platform to add to your long to-do list. It's a completely different tool than Instagram. It's helping you with searchability. It's helping with visibility. It's helping with discoverability. In a way, Instagram's algorithm isn't. Instagram's algorithm is not SEO driven for the most part. It's getting a little more search friendly.
You know, with some of the Meta AI tools and how you can search different uh content descriptors now and they're adding descriptors to content. If you've seen the search bar when you open up comments, it will like throw a couple keywords in. It's still primarily engagement and conversation focused. It's very social in terms of social media. Pinterest is a search result. It's a search engine. It's for discoverability and traffic.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay. Um, so, so what would be then uh a good practice for designers in terms of a call to action? someone has found a pin of yours and they're impressed by this style or whatever, how do I get them to come to me other than just posting a, you know, for more information, click my link here.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: So, every pin is clickable on Pinterest. So, when you create the pin, there's a website. So if they click that pin, they can be taken to your website. They'd also have the website linked if they opened up the pin description.
So you'd write the the pin description in a way that indicates that you're going to answer that query. So if it was, you know, five coffee tables, if you want a luxury living room, you would want those keywords everywhere. And I would recommend having some variations of the pin for that blog post. Let's say it was a list that you've written on your blog that has the text on the pin itself. So somebody one of the best ways to get clicks off a pin is to not make them click into the pin description to see if it's what they need. Have the text on the pin image itself. So it says, you know, five coffee table recommendations. You might try different uh headlines to see which works. From an interior designer, five luxury living room coffee tables, the coffee tables you need for your home. Some you might just do images because then those might get more saves than clicks. But you want to make it clear that what you're sending them to is going to answer that question.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: And if we were sticking with just that one topic of the coffee tables, would it be wise to kind of create from that same chunk of content a variety of different posts like you're saying, the have the ones that have the text in the front of the other ones that don't and get people to do different things.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: you don't want, you know, to only po post one pin per blog post. Like each blog post, you can have seven to 10 or more depending on how many variations you want to do. You can go crazy. It kind of works not the same way, but the same core idea of trial reels. This is being shown to people whose interests um and search behavior aligns. It's not in someone's feed where you're overwhelming them.
If you write, you know, six slightly different headlines for a pin and they're seeing all six, most likely no. The algorithm is going to show them the order of what it thinks is most helpful. So, yours are going to be mixed in with other people's and they won't necessarily see even two of your pins to the same blog post in the same search result. And that's why when we do pins for for clients, they're seeing one pin of a set typically outperforms and we're like, okay, well, you know, text is working really well for you with this topic or image only is working really well for you with this topic or this collage did well or this, you know, topic did really well on Pinterest. We're looking for any of those trends that indicate what user behavior is on the platform. But to answer your question in short, no, like go crazy. you want a lot of pins per post and you can make a lot in Canva if you tweak things slightly and pair that with, you know, two to four blog posts a month.
You do seven pins per, let's say that's 14 to 28 pins, so almost a pin a day. And then you pin a couple times to your services page, your about page, your inquiry form, and you have more than one pin going out a day. And it should not take you as much time as what one Instagram post a day would take.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Fair enough. And would you schedule those those Pinterest posts to go out staggered over a day or over a number of days? Does that does that matter to Pinterest or can I just dump them all out at one time?
Amber Broder: Pinterest likes consistency, so I would schedule the pins out over a month. Typically, we schedule anywhere from two to four weeks in advance for clients, depending on how far ahead we want to get. And if you know that you're going to have, you know, 30 pins go out over the month, I would schedule one pin a day. It likes to see the same type of thing.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: If you know you're going to pin two pins every day, Monday through Friday, I'd keep to that schedule. Pinterest doesn't love getting a ton of stuff dumped on and then getting nothing new. It likes being fed new content. And new content doesn't mean you write new things, more like new pins.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: do you use a specificuling software or do you use native like ones because I think Pinterest has a scheduling platform.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: We prefer native for ease for ease. It's just it's in the platform kind of the same way we use Meta Business Suite for Instagram and Facebook. There's issues with any scheduler. There's always going to be issues with a nativeuler, but we like it because it's already baked into the platform. And I've found more issues trying to use an external than I have with native.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Fair enough. I I see I'm seeing a lot more like you were talking about uh the search on Instagram with AI and uh the platforms are going to start using all of that kind of stuff a bit more too, right? And which should make things a little bit easier for doing multiples of things.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: Yeah, absolutely.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay. Um let's can we touch on uh engagement and uh like growth strategy a little bit? Um, I think most, and I could be wrong, so tell me if I'm wrong. Uh, most people think engagement on Instagram is somebody leaves a comment and then you get on there as soon as possible and you reply. But there is also, you know, we should be engaging on other people's pages and other people's reels and other people's posts. It's not just about us, right?
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: for sure. So that's the way a lot of people look at it. They either look at engagement as, you know, their likes and comments. What are they getting on their post? Or they think of engagement as somebody left a comment, I responded, or I liked someone's post in my home feed.
But that's a very passive way to look at engagement. And if we want to use engagement as a growth tool, you need to be building new connections with people. Whether that's people you follow already, whether that's people who don't know you yet. Going out and responding to their posts, leaving thoughtful comments. I get asked this a lot. You know, what can I say? Thing is, I can't tell you what to say. I can't give you formulas for say this thing and you will get them to follow you. You need to be a genuine human when you're engaging. So, read their caption. If they've asked a question as their call to action, you know, said, "What do you think?" or "What would you do?" respond to it. The amount of credit you get from with with somebody if you actually respond to the caption they took time to write and the call to action they thought out is huge because there are so many people either commenting a very bland love this or they're trying to it's a term coined by another social media expert I really admire Alli Mason blowfish and they're trying to like regurgitate what you said to build their own credibility and market themselves.
Very gross tactic. um it stands out a lot if you genuinely engage and and build connections human to human on Instagram. So leaving those comments, replying to stories, you know, if you see somebody doing something you think is really cool, if it's an idea you've never thought of, if they're doing something fun that you connect to, like the amount of people, even interior designers, I connect to over horses because it's such a part of my brand. It's such a core part of my why and people really connect to that because it's different. They remember me. I'm not just the interior designer for or the social media manager for interior designers. I also ride horses and they connect to my dog and they connect to, you know, I have a British family so I travel every summer to see my my grandparent and my uh cousins. So, when you share stuff like that and you build personal connections, takes you out of I'm just another photo I'm engaging with or I'm just another person I know through a screen.
They start to get to know you better and that typically breeds reciprocal engagement. So, it's not a I plug in one comment, I get a comment back, we checked the box. It's how do you really build a relationship? And going off that, what I typically see is people are slower and a little stingier with their follows now. Like, they want to know you're actually want to see what they're posting. They they don't want to, you know, you like two of their posts, leave a comment, and they follow you, and you never follow back like that. It feels transactional. So, if you like somebody's content, follow them, engage with them, show support over time. Don't do the follow unfollow tactics. Don't try to like keep track of who's following you. Honestly, it's just not a good use of your time. End all beall, but it doesn't create that type of supportive connection that you want on Instagram. Did I answer your question? I kind of I kind of got going.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: You know what it made me think of as you were describing all this? It it feels like dating, right? It feels like, you know, the you would never say that, right, to someone's face if you were physically out on a date versus what you might do or say if you were just using a dating app, right? And in a way, this is the same thing, right? People Yeah. when someone leaves a a thoughtful comment on one of your posts, right? That that gets everybody, you know, makes them a little bit happy. So, why not do the same thing? And I guarantee if you someone's going to be sitting there scrolling tonight while watching TV and flipping through their Instagram and if just you know if something caught their eye, made them laugh, made them smile, they thought something was beautiful, whatever, they took 10 seconds, thought about it, said, "Okay, if I was them, you know, what was I trying to do with that post?" And then leave a comment that, you know, highlights that and gives them, you know, a little bit of respect. Suddenly it's like wow you know who knows where it'll lead. You could probably do a hundred of those comments and nothing comes about but maybe the 101st thing something does right
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: It's something that takes time and and going back to your point, it makes Instagram feel more enjoyable. We all complain about the algorithm. We say, you know, I'm putting in all this work. I'm getting nothing for it. But if you have some real connections, like I've met most of my clients through Instagram, but not only my clients. I've met some of my closest business friends, like people I've met in person, I've traveled with, I've worked with. We met through an app, through one of us DMing each other, through one of us commenting on a post or relating to each other.
And that's really why I'm still such a proponent of Instagram. why I'm still, you know, shouting from the rooftops about it even when everybody says it's the worst platform ever and the algorithm hates me because it offers one of the rarest opportunities in social media to make human connections. I don't see other platforms supporting that. Facebook, organic reach is dead. Pinterest doesn't do engagement the way Instagram does. Tik Tok, it's a lot of new people. You have these massive comment sections, but people aren't really talking to each other. DMs aren't really a thing on Tik Tok. People are going for mass growth, mass morality, and they're not having these conversations. Instagram to me is really one of the few places, if only if the only place on for connection through social media left where people can really have conversations and see incredible stories flourish out of those conversations.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay. Uh, this is excellent. I'm learning a ton here from you. This is great. Um, okay. So, let's let's say I'm an interior designer who listens to this amazing podcast and says, "Holy smokes, I want to work with Amber." Um, what's the first step? What do they need to do? And what will that look like?
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: The first step is going to my website and submitting an inquiry form. So, we have a little bit of a detailed form where I want to get to know a bit about you, your business, your goals, and from there I'll reach out with, you know, if we're a good fit, what your next steps are. I'll let you know depending on usually it comes down to budget, timeline and goals what service is the best fit because we have a range of options for different budgets and different needs. We have of course the full service social media management that covers you know doing it for you but we also have audits, one-off calls and the membership for if you're in more of a DIY done with you stage.
So, I like to hear a little bit about you first and then I'll reach out with what what I think you should do next or if needed, we can get on a quick uh consult call to discuss.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Um, okay. So, let's look at at those different option levels. What would be what would the first month look like at on each of those levels? So, let's start with like your full meal deal, your full service package.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: So, for social media management, we have a full month of onboarding. This looks like your kickoff call, going through the questionnaire together, getting all of your assets, setting up all of your tech, all the systems we'll use. And I know that sounds scary. It's not that scary, but it does take a little bit of onboarding and time to get you acclimated. uh building out your content strategy, doing an audit of your account, whether you're doing Instagram with us or Instagram and Pinterest, or adding on other platforms, auditing, setting it up if needed, optimizing your profile, building out that first month's content calendar, and creating the first month of content.
So, first month is always a big setup phase. For other services, for audits or for the membership, it's more of a dive right in. Those are, you know, the audit is a one-off service. So, you pay for your audit within seven business days. You get a profile optimization. So, rewritten bio, how to set up your page to attract more eyes, more followers, improvements for each type of content, going through auditing your posts, your reels, the stories I can see, your highlights, and engagement tips and tricks. And you get a couple fun bonuses with the audit, too. Highlight cover templates, aloom walking you through it. Uh, but that's kind of in-n-out, one and done. That's for the interior designer who just wants a quick fix, is ready for somebody to tell them what I can do better. You know, I'm ready to put it into action. Speed dial is the membership. It's where you get ongoing support, but there isn't an onboarding phase. So, you join, you get a private Slack channel for unlimited content reviews.
You can literally send me every piece of content before you post it and I will review it. Tell you what I think of the photo order, what I think of the hook on your reel, your video, your captions, anything, everything. You can get reviewed. We do monthly group Q&A calls, monthly trainings on different topics. We just had one on Pinterest from the Pinterest manager. We work with for our clients at ABC Social Media Management. I partner with a Pinterest manager to help our clients. So, she came in and did a training. We have a resource portal with everything you could need to do marketing on social media as an interior designer that I'm constantly adding to. And you get um trying to run through the list weekly real audios and prompts to run with in your account plus all the content ideas we have in the portal. You get quarterly account audits running through you know what I've seen in your account over the last quarter, what I tweaks I would make, things I would change to continue towards your goals.
That's really like having a social media manager on Speed Dial. That's the name of the program. It's you have me without spending a thousand dollars or more a month. You have me in your back pocket. You can ask any question. No question is too big, small, silly, dumb. You get unlimited support and you have a nice little group of interior designers who are on the calls with us uh talking through their problems. You get to learn from them, too. It's not technically restricted to interior designers. It's just who I work with. So, a lot of the members are interior designers, and it's a nice little blend of community and that one-on-one support.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay. let's look at time and the financial investments for those three programs. What kind of time uh will a designer need to put in on a weekly, monthly, daily basis? And what's going to cost?
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: So, let me start from audit work all the way up. Audit is 197 one-time investment and time kind of depends on you know how many things you have to change. I'd say in general the quick fixes to your bio, to your page that I'd recommend can be made within an hour, maybe an hour and a half. But then in terms of improvements to your posts, your content, your reels over time, that'll kind of be worked into your content time in the following weeks, months. So, it's a little bit harder to say. It kind of would just get baked in. Speed dial is 197 a month uh flat fee for everything included. every month you get all of the things I listed before. Kind of depends on how much time you want to put in. You know, I have designers who send every piece of content and I might be talking with them in Slack for up to an hour a day, you know, messaging back and forth, going over content. They might be asking questions. So, you could spend, you know, five, six hours a week if you're going into the portal and watching the resources and looking up, you know, we have a guide to an effective Instagram bio, so you can set that up.
We have a webinar on Instagram strategy. We have the Pinterest strategy webinar. We have Pinterest Mad Libs templates in there. So that again would kind of get baked into your other social media time like if you're creating pins, but you could hop in there for an hour a week and just use it as like a quick check-in and accountability buddy. Or you could be in there every day asking questions, getting support. Big range there. And it's flexible because it's designed to be it's designed to meet you where you're at with whatever you're doing. It's also something that if you have a team or if you have an in-house social media manager that works for you, but you just wish somebody would check things or you just wish you could ask somebody outside, but you don't want to pay an exorbitant consultant rate and you're not interested in hiring an agency, you can also join Speed Dial. It is primarily for people who are in that DIY stage, but if your in-house social media manager, in-house marketing person wants a little extra support, some extra resources and ways to learn, they can be in there, too.
And then when it comes to full social media management, it starts at a th000 a month and goes up from there. Most of our clients are in the $1,500 to $2,500 a month range for their services and packages are very custom. I have three tiers listed on my website for Instagram. We have Pinterest listed. But what a lot of people don't realize is I will customize from there. you tell me I want this but I don't want that piece and I want stories or I don't want reels but I want you know Pinterest and not this part. We customize because it is so tailored to your business. It's tailored to what you need and what you want and your budget. So kind of our rough minimum is a th000 a month but from there we can go up to if somebody was going the whole menu like the whole shebang they wanted Instagram, Pinterest, email, blogs, we'd probably be looking at the 4 to 5k range a month. So, it really depends on deliverables.
In terms of hours, onboarding takes anywhere from three to six hours over that first month, depending on how much back and forth we need on setting stuff up. We have our kickoff call gathering assets. Like, if it's something you're going to have spend a lot of time in your phone going through, that's going to take a little bit more time. If you have everything already organized, you know, that'll cut down on that time. But then once we're in management and we're going monthtomonth, generally I find most of my clients do not spend more than 30 minutes a week thinking about social media, they're reviewing the content for Instagram, Pinterest, we don't do approvals because there's so much of it going out. We just say, "Trust us, we got you. We're using your pictures and we don't hear any complaints." Um, but they take the time to review their content. So, they're reviewing anywhere from three to seven pieces of content for Instagram a week, depending on their package. And the way we have it set up is very quick.
We learn their brand voice very easily. So, they're spending, you know, maybe maximum an hour, but I haven't had a client tell me they're spending more than 30 minutes reviewing their content, checking in with me as needed. And then every month, most of our packages include a 30 minute uh check-in call either monthly or quarterly. And that time would be added, but really no more than an hour a month or an hour a week. an hour a month. Four hours over….
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: yeah. Yeah, fair enough. Um, so like anything else, you know, if I'm going to spend money on this service, I'm going to want results immediately. So, I'm assuming that within the first week, you're probably going to give me what, like 10,000 new followers on Instagram, right? That's that's how it'll work.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: I wish I had that super If I had that superpower, I wouldn't be doing this job.
I'd be doing something else because I would be manipulating uh h the human psyche. But no, I I like to tell interior designers one of the reasons you will see social media managers priced that way when when they're experienced, you know, you might get somebody less experienced for less. But part of it is also a a qualifier. It's not just the value of the work we do, but it's a qualifier for what stage of business you're at for this investment to make sense for you. You know, when you're early on starting out, it's actually not the best time to hire a social media manager. I don't want to be taking that very important early revenue from you when you're still building to, you know, with organic social media taking so much time. I want it to be an investment that makes sense in your overall budget, not it needs to generate results now because that would just that's something I can't make people do. I can't make people swipe a credit card. And there's other pieces at play beyond just the organic social media.
There's your pricing as an interior designer. There's your positioning in the market. There's your website and is it converting? Doesn't matter how much traffic I send if people lose interest at your website because it doesn't load for a minute or you know they can't figure out how to inquire you don't have an inquiry form linked. So all of those pieces kind of factor into the investment being a qualifier for where you're at in your business. Typically, I found if somebody is feeling comfortable at the $1,000 to $1,500 a month mark, they're generating enough revenue that this is going to support their business goals, but they're not looking for it to, you know, save their business. They're not in that dire of a straight. And I tell I don't want you working with me if I need to save your business. This is a long-term investment. Um, and if we're talking about how long it takes, typically we see increases in the vanity metrics in their growth in the first month, especially if we're picking an account, picking up an account that hasn't been posting too much, they'll see more engagement, more uh likes, comments, followers just from us having more activity in the account.
But in terms of leads, project inquiries, it's so dependent. And I can I don't want to ever be held to something I say because there will be the client who you know the rule doesn't apply for and they get upset. So it's so dependent. Typically I'd say around 3 months is when we start to see traction in terms of meaningful website clicks, inquiries. Some clients it might take six months. Pinterest it tends to take longer. Pinterest is a very much a long haul game. you're looking at six to nine months for inquiries because people are tending to they're more savers. They're shoppers on Pinterest, they're researchers. Um, but you're looking at a minimum, I would say, of three months. So, that's why we do have a three-month minimum commitment for social media management. And then we move to month-to-month uh to get things going. And it's it's not an investment I take lightly when clients invest with me.
I want it to be the right fit for you. And I turn down a lot more clients than I say yes to because I need to be sure that you're going to benefit from it. I'm not here to take your money. I like the work I do a lot and I really enjoy it and our team is good at it. But I have now been from working with a bunch of different clients and a bunch of different industries. I've seen that it takes a certain foundation and certain uh pieces of the business in place for social media to act as the gas on a fire versus trying to spark wetwood. And I'm not I'm not insulting someone's business when I say wetwood, but when you're in those early stages, it really isn't the right time to before you know your positioning, before you know who you're trying to attract, when you're in that I'm just going to work with anybody. I'll take anything. You know, that's where Speed Dial comes into play. At less than $200 a month, you can get every piece of content reviewed and get that support from a social media manager, but you're not spending possibly even more than you're you're making, hoping your social media brings in leads.
You're building it up. And then when you come to the question of I don't have enough time to keep up with my social media now, like now I have a couple projects. I want more. I want better fit clients. I know who I want to market to. I have some content I can use. Now, I need this task off my plate. I need to get that time back that I can focus on my projects and I need social media to continue supporting my business. That's where I step in.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay. And have you had the experience where uh people have graduated from speed dial to the the full management package
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: I haven't yet. Speed is quite new. I started it just about a year ago. Um, one of the girls has been with me since it started. So, over a year. few joined last summer, so not yet. But that is kind of the idea that it's an option if you want it.
Like those would be designers I'm super comfortable working with in speed dial. I know their business really well and it's an easy step up. But some of them are finding that they like the content a lot, especially when they have someone to gut check them on and and give them that guidance and they're finding it's not taking them as much time. So currently, no one's really interested in graduating. They're they're enjoying what they're getting out of the the 197 membership.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Well, there you go. Right, that sounds um that's it for my official list of questions. Um is there anything else about your business that uh we haven't discussed?
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: I think we covered everything. That was that was a really good podcast. I think
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: There's a lot there. I'm just looking at the clock now. We've been It'll be good. Um Oh, actually, I just thought of something.
We were talking about algorithms and um we're talking about Instagram today. Can you put on like your prognosticator hat and kind of see where you think things may be going in the next three months, six months?
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: I really see with the current, again, not to get political, but political climate how people are feeling about the world at large. Instagram and social media in general is going to be even more of an escape for people. They're going to be looking to get out of the day-to-day. They are typically going to I see want less news. They want less information overload. They want their social media feed to be a place where they get away from it. They want to turn the news off and turn to social media as like, okay, this is, you know, where I send funny reels to my friends. This is where I find something inspirational. So, they are not, it's not that they're not going to buy from Instagram. The buying behavior is going to look different.
I think it's going to continue to shift as the economy changes. They're going to need a lot of trust in you to buy. They're going to need content that kind of pokes at those surface level emotions first to connect to you to want to stick around and then you weave in the selling naturally. So the reels that make somebody want to send to a friend, inspirational posts, things that get them inspired or excited or feel lighter, that's the content that's going to do well. Content that is personal is going to continue to feature. I think people want to know people, especially the big brands. You'll see a lot of big brands, brands that you would think, you know, they have a full in-house team or they have a massive marketing agency that they're paying 20K, 30K a month to for all of all of their channels. There's they're why are they posting like a creator? They're posting it because it's the content that people are responding to. They don't want to feel like they're being, you know, presented this billboard of buy my thing.
They want to kind of get away from that escape, feel like they're talking to a friend. So, that type of conversational, one-on-one, personal, relatable content is going to keep doing really well. And for designers, that doesn't mean you have to try to be an influencer. That doesn't mean you have to create reels that are off brand that don't make sense for you. But I bet if you think through what you hear clients tell you on discovery calls, what you hear clients express in design meetings, you know, what are things that your potential clients would relate to? Is it, you know, stressing over tile decisions, feeling like there's too many decisions, so they just can the whole project be before they work with you, you know, like they it's sat on the shelf for two years or is it, you know, getting, you know, furniture delays or is it, you know, finally seeing the tile brought in? It can be industry specific, but what would feel relatable that isn't just a inquire, work with me, here's my services type of post.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: That makes 100% sense to me. I guess that's uh I guess that's why you do what you do.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: Well, I try. It's it's ever changing. Um, I will say that's one of the things that you have to be comfortable with. Whether you're working in social media and marketing, whether you are using social media to market your business thing is what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. It probably won't change that fast. It's not that uh quick, but what worked a couple months ago won't work in a few months or will work a little bit less and you'll need to tweak and you need to be willing to adapt and evolve and not get sucked into a shame spiral or a you know tie your ego and your worth to how your platforms are doing because there's so much out of your control. Control what you can put in the effort and study them and look at user behavior. Ultimately all these algorithms come down to user behavior.
What are the people telling the algorithm they want? That is the content that will perform. And so from there using it not as a gh oh I don't know you know the algorithms limiting me. I I feel so hopeless. No. Talk to your people. Going back to engagement. What can you learn from actually talking to people? What are they asking about? What content is resonating with them? What are you hearing on calls? What are you hearing from other interior designers? and treating your social media as a conversation piece, as a connector, and partially as a portfolio. Like, absolutely still share your project photos. You want them to be available to people who find you.
You'll put the fun back in social media and it will feel a lot less of a hopeless place.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, how do you how do you track that stuff? what's what's new, right? Like that's that's always a thing. And I and I'll hear marketers talk about that. They'll say, "Oh, you know, like uh I saw Gary Veaynerchuk on a video talking about how he would uh for he would do a a carousel post and he would put a static image and then the second uh piece was a video and he and this was months ago. He was talking about this and he says like, you know, this is working for me so great." I'm like, well, I know he's got a huge team of people doing this stuff, but how do you keep track of of what's new, what's working today that that you know, nobody was doing three months ago, and in 3 months from now, this won't be Okay.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: So following some of those people, you know, keeping up with Gary Vee, there's a couple other people on Instagram. I like to follow Shannon McKinstry. I subscribe to a couple email newsletters. Social Media Examiner later. Um, Tik Tok is a great place I like for keeping up with trends, not necessarily, you know, practices like testing the second slide on the carousel, but looking at what's coming down the pipeline in trends. So many of the audios of the video trends that we see hit Instagram. They start on Tik Tok, looking at, you know, what's being picked up there and then also expanding off of the social media sphere and looking at what's going on in the world. I think you know reading the newspaper is a dying art. So looking at what is going on in the world at large and how that might impact social media, how that might impact buyer behavior and consumer decisions and staying up to date with things outside of the marketing realm helps as well.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Well, this has been great. I want to thank you for this. Um, if possible, I'd like to circle back maybe in six months and uh discuss Instagram and uh Pinterest again and see what's changed and what's new.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: Sure, I'd love that.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, fantastic. Thanks, Amber.
Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management: Thank you so much.
The Interior Designer Social Media Blueprint
According to Amber, successful social media strategies for interior designers depend on five structured elements:
Building a monthly planning system that provides strategic direction
Implementing content batching sessions to maximize creative efficiency
Diversifying platforms while maintaining realistic expectations for each
Establishing engagement practices that build meaningful relationships
Creating metrics tracking that focuses on business outcomes rather than vanity statistics
The difference between interior designers who struggle with social media and those who thrive isn't design talent—it's having a structured, strategic business approach to content creation.
Transform Your Interior Design Business Through Strategic Social Media
Interior designers who implement Amber's approach report meaningful business transformations:
More consistent client inquiries through strategic content planning
Improved creative satisfaction from focused content batching sessions
Reduced platform dependency with diversified marketing channels
Enhanced personal boundaries with scheduled social media management
Greater business stability against algorithm and platform changes
The goal for many interior designers extends beyond follower counts to creating a sustainable marketing system that complements rather than competes with personal priorities. Strategic social media integration achieves this balance by refining how interior design expertise is presented to potential clients.
Connect with Amber Broder - ABC Social Media Management
If you want your social media content to work better for your business, Amber is eager to chat:
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