Standing out online is no easy task. To break out of the noise, sometimes all it takes is a little help from one low-cost tool—a camera. Read on to find out how a simple point-and-shoot camera can enhance your online presence, build brand loyalty, and help create stand out content. Plus, we’ll share tips for putting your photos to good use.
Improving Your Visual Content Online & Offline
While surfing the web, do you come across text-only articles that make your eyes droop and brain lose focus? Of course you do! We naturally lose focus when no visual cues are guiding us. In fact, marketer and entrepreneur Jeff Bullas discovered articles that include images increase the number of page views by 94 percent. That’s a jaw-dropping statistic, and proof that images are essential to marketing.
Besides increasing your page views, having a camera and putting time into company photographs can reflect well on your business. Showing drive and passion for your company’s image, and therefore your customers, is an easy way to build trust and confidence that your business is reputable and hard-working.
Showing drive and passion in images is an easy way to build trust and confidence.
Enhancing Online Presence & Search Rankings
With a new camera and plethora of company photos, you’ll be ready to improve your website, social media channels, emails, newsletters, ads, and more. Posting personable, relevant photos to your social media gives followers an inside look at your business and makes it seem like they’re following a team of people instead of a faceless company.
Another fantastic part of having a company camera is being able to create fresh, low-cost marketing content. Many small business have a tight budget and buying bulk stock photos isn’t always an option. With a camera, it’s easy to set up a simple photo backdrop with props and invite employees to stop by for a five minute break. Now, you can share every employee’s photo with a short profile—that’s at least a week’s worth of content! By switching up your images and post types, you’ll not only be more attractive to followers and customers. You’ll also improve your online rankings by building the diverse, quality posts that search engines love.
Posting personable, relevant photos to your social media gives an inside look at your business and makes it seem genuine.
Building a One-Of-A-Kind Content Bank
If your business is alive and well, you likely have a product or service like no one else. Use this to your advantage by building an awesome, inspiring content bank! Grab the camera and capture shots of employees, on-site jobs, impromptu office lunches, birthday/holiday celebrations, or fun company traditions. These images are the lifeblood of your company, while well-designed logos, graphics, videos, websites, and images show you’re a team of professionals who will get the job done.
Another great reason to have a camera and develop an image bank is to avoid oversaturating your followers with the same 15 images. Shockingly, people recall 10 percent of text-only information after three days, yet retention jumps to 65 percent after three days when a relevant image is used. So if you use that same cat image again and again and again, your audience will become bored with your content, fast.
People recall 65 percent of information, after three days, when a relevant image is used.
Building Brand Loyalty and Authenticity
Speaking of creating fresh content, it’s important to keep your customers in mind to build brand loyalty. As you shoot photos around the office or jobsite, think of engaging images your customers will want to see. A shot of your company car? Probably not. A shot of your company car piled high with marketing gear you’re hauling to a community career event? Absolutely! Think smart, think like your customers.
By putting yourself in your customer’s shoes, you’ll begin capturing images that create personal connections and give insight into your business. A few more ideas for building credibility are photographing on-site jobs, before and after projects, sales lunch outings, new hires, and company meetings. Building brand loyalty through authentic company photos is important for all companies, especially business in retail and service industries such as restaurants, tattoo parlors, restoration services, and repair shops. These businesses benefit tremendously from making personal connections in their communities, since the employees customers see online is who they’ll see in the store.
Businesses benefit tremendously from making personal connections.
A Small Business Investment with Impactful Results
For a few hundred dollars, you can buy a quality camera and start snapping photos of your business, employees, and more. Enlist an employee with an eye for photography, or even consider hiring a professional photographer for a few hours. Even if you do hire a photographer to take photos of your team and office space, it’s still a good idea to have a camera on hand for snapping shots at company meetings, holiday parties, volunteer events, and on-site work.
Once you have a solid bank of photos, you can use them to improve your website. If you need a hand with web design or working on your brand image, reach out to us or just fill out the short form below and we will get back to you quickly. We have years of experience helping small businesses improve their online image.
