Blog > Content Marketing Ideas for Web Designers: Showcasing Expertise through Blogging
Posted By Create
Finding and acquiring new clients is an art form. It’s one that all web designers have to pick up and develop; alongside their passion for design work.
There are plenty of ways to get your business and your work out there. There are networking events to attend, ads to place in the local, you may already have a few customers who are singing your praises and finding you new clients (the best kind of marketing).
Then there’s Content Marketing which is an entirely different beast to have to tackle.
Unlike other methods of marketing where you’re just trying to get people to look at you and what you do, content marketing demonstrates what you do and provides a deeper insight into your expertise.
This can be incredibly powerful for you. It can help expand your reach far beyond your locality and establish you as an authority in your niche. It can help you to find more clients and potentially reach a place where you’re picking and choosing only the jobs you want to work on.
This blog is here to offer you some ideas of the types of content that can support you in showcasing your expertise online. It’ll also offer you some inspiration on how to get started with these ideas if you’re new to content marketing as well.
Share Your Case Studies
In terms of content ideas to demonstrate your expertise as a web designer, this sounds like the obvious place to start. The fact that this is the obvious component for your content marketing doesn’t diminish its value, however.
Case studies can help your potential clients understand more about how you work and how you might be able to help them. They can see real world examples and feel more prepared to engage with your process.
With this in mind, it’s really important to have case studies as part of your content strategy. There will be a bunch of potential clients looking for the reassurance your past work brings.
With your past client’s permission, be sure to go into as much detail as possible. Share the brief, how you approached the work, what challenges it presented and how you overcame them, how your client felt about your work. Shine a light on every part of the process possible.
Then be sure to encourage people to contact you about their project at the end of the case study. The chances are they will feel inspired and more ready to take action having read how you’ve helped previous clients.
Curate Popular Content Around Your Niche
Maintaining a content calendar with new and original writing each week is a surefire way to burnout with all the other priorities you have to manage.
The good news is that you don’t have to always write your own content to establish yourself as an authority in your niche.
There will be a constant stream of new and trending topics being shared daily that you can curate for your own audience. Whether that’s new design trends, inspirational work from other designers, or ideas to help your clients develop the picture of what they want from their website.
You can compile these into a monthly roundup post that you can then send out via social or email to your readers. Be sure to give your take on each item you share, and link and give credit to the authors you’re sharing from.
This will present you as an up-to-date source on all that’s going on in your industry in far less time than it takes to write an original piece of content!
Engage With Storytelling
If you get two web designers in a room together, they’ll get to talking about their work to no end. They’ll be throwing around the lingo and discussing trending topics like it’s everyday conversation.
Sometimes, when talking to clients with that same gusto, you might find they start slowly backing out of the room…
The problem here is that while website design is your passion and you're brilliant at what you do, the people who need your help aren’t usually on the same wavelength. Storytelling is an excellent way to bridge this gap and help your audience get excited about the work you do.
Think about the scenarios and personal anecdotes you can share that are relatable to your audience. You want to share the experience in a way that your audience can connect with.
For instance, picture a small business owner who, like many, once saw little value in having an online presence. They operated their business relying solely on word-of-mouth and local advertisements, unaware of the vast opportunities a well-designed website could bring.
Then, they crossed paths with a web designer who patiently explained the potential, the reach, and the competitive advantage a website could provide. Describe how, step by step, you transformed their scepticism into excitement, guiding them through the process from concept to launch.
Through this story, your readers can relate to the initial doubts and scepticism that often surround web design projects and envision the transformative power of your expertise.
These stories not only showcase your skills but also humanise your profession. They illustrate that you're not just a web designer; you're a visionary, an educator, and a catalyst for growth in your clients' businesses.
Storytelling helps you paint a vivid picture of your work, making it more accessible and exciting for your audience. It transforms the technical into the relatable, creating a bridge of understanding between you and your clients.
Showcase Demo Page Builds
Every professional website designer with Create gets a free sandbox account to experiment with and try out new ideas for pages and websites. But why keep everything behind the scenes when it could make for good content and potentially some straightforward business?
It’s often that, as a website designer, you’ll have to adjust and adapt to the requests of your client. However, you can use your sandbox account to create example pages for any kind of website entirely to your own brief.
You can explain why you’ve made certain design choices to build this page and showcase why the page works. This is the perfect way to display your unique style and the type of projects you like to work on to your prospective clients. It’s unfiltered by the requests of anyone else and displays your work in its pure form.
Not only is this a relatively straightforward piece of content to make, you’ll probably find you end up having quite a bit of fun with it too!
The best bit is that you can have a call to action at the end explaining that while it is a demo page, it is available to purchase as part of your website building services. If someone comes along and sees your demo page and feels it’s perfect for them, you’ll have made a nice easy sale from your writing!
Share Tutorials and How-To Guides
Explaining how something is done or showing how to do something is arguably one of the best ways to demonstrate your expertise in your arena.
One of the first responses we often hear, however, about writing tutorials is that you don’t want your potential clients to then go off and do the work themselves.
This is a valid point depending on what topics you tackle. Some readers may feel completely empowered to take the leap with the knowledge you’ve shared. You may find that some feel comfortable taking a few first steps but then need the support of a professional. There may be some in your prospective client audience that just want to understand more about how you work.
With your design knowledge, you may be able to offer tutorials on supporting topics that will smooth out the process when a client comes to contact you. For example, you could show them how to design their logo or put together a design brief.
In each case, there is a whole lot of opportunity to establish yourself as an authority that is more than willing to support and lift up their community. There may be a risk that some take the information you’ve shared and run with it, but there will certainly be those who appreciate the work and knowledge you share and therefore trust you with the work they want done.
Answer The Burning Questions
One of the great things about the internet is that there are no shortage of questions that people want answered; and if someone has asked the question, there are bound to be more who also want to know.
Take to some of the forums where you know your audience / prospective clients will be hanging out. Any questions that they’re asking here could be turned into content that demonstrates your expertise on your website.
You’ll always have content inspiration to hand from the questions your clients want answered, and providing them with the answer is a fantastic way to initiate a relationship with them and start building rapport.
Don’t forget to go back to the forum and share your new piece of content with the person who asked. They’ll appreciate the in-depth response and help that you’ve provided them!
Wrapping Up
With a mix of the content ideas in this blog post, it should hopefully be quite straightforward to build out a content calendar that you can stay consistent with and continually build your blog with.
Each of these content ideas offers a different angle from which you can showcase the service you offer, the expertise you can deliver and how you are able to bring the ideas of your clients to life.
Remember to always include a call-to-action at the end of each post. This is how you can tie your content, your stories, your inspiration back into your service. Each demonstration or example of your expertise is an opportunity to encourage your potential clients to reach out.
For more ideas on growing your blog, be sure to check out my articles on promoting your blog and growing your blog through data analysis.
Also, if you want to make sure you never miss out on our blog content for Web Designers, be sure to subscribe to our emails. We’ll keep you up-to-date on all the ideas you need to continue to grow your portfolio!
