Sourcing content and images for Office Interior Design Blog

[CompleteOffice]

Im currently building a blog on Wordpress, and I will be blogging about Office Interior Designs. When I look at my competition they have some great blog posts about office interior designs and I have no idea about how they get: a) The ideas to blog about, how do they find out about these office interior designs b) how they get the content for them, how do they know what to write about each one, do they need permission etc, c) if i am interested in doing a blog on the same office interior design as them, how can I get information )and permission from the company that done the office interior design) on the office interior design so i can blog about it and also how do i get the images and stuff. an example is http://www.officedesignblog.com/invensys-rail-office-concept/726/ I would like to cover this aswell, as i think my future readers would like to know about this. how did they get the images, and the information about the project so they could write a blog post about it? And how would I go about doing the same thing?

[StoresDirect]

As I write blogs for my company I am often in the position of having to come up with ideas on subjects which I don't have a huge interest in. I found it helped to come up with a list of types of post to use, then go further and work out paragraph by paragraph what should be in each type of blog. One of the blogs I manage is about wood burning stoves, so some of the types of post I do are:

• Woodburners which have been featured in the interiors magazines
• Comments on news stories relevant to the stove industry
• Posts built around questions I was asked repeatedly by customers before I moved from sales to SEO
• Buyers guides

Taking it a step further, I can break each of these down paragraph by paragraph so I have a template to follow. For example if I write about a stove I saw in a magazine I follow this format

• Introduction - includes magazine name, issue and page number for the article with the stove; a little bit about the homeowners; either identifies the exact model featured or says I will be talking about similar stoves to the one featured
• Main body - I give my opinion on the way the stove was used in that setting and/or talk about relevant practical issues
• Conclusion - further resources or suggestions for readers thinking about doing something similar

In your position I would look at the other office interior blogs as an ongoing discussion and work out what you can bring to the party. What knowledge or experience do you have which could be of value to a reader? How can you present your views so they get people's attention and invite participation?

There's a big difference between publishing your own picture of a great interior and re-using someone else's without consent , but there are some open source image sites out there which just require credit when you use their pictures. If it's practical you could contact designers and companies with great interiors asking about writing about them or if you can visit to take your own pictures. Once your blog has been going for a while you could even approach other blogs about doing some guest writing for them.

[CompleteOffice]

the images they have must have been obtained from the company doing it, but the images aren't the real issue, how did they get the information about the interior design in order to write a blog about it?

[StoresDirect]

Interior designers need to publicise their work to keep getting work. Try making a list of designers then checking their websites & following them on Twitter/Facebook to see what they are/have been working on. You should be able to get names of designers from features in design magazines, reputable directories and professional interior design organisations.

[CompleteOffice]

There all good ideas.

I could do that, but I still wouldn't know how to get enough information about the particular office interior design to write content for the blog and the image permissions.

[StoresDirect]

For detailed information about how to create this kind of content you are probably better off looking for answers on the various blogging support sites and developing relationships with bloggers who work in this field. SEOMoz users are helpful, but there may not be many of them who blog about office interior design!