Whenever you’re a small business, there’s seemingly no end to your responsibilities nor your ever-growing to-do list.
Product development or acquisition, website design and maintenance, employee management, written and visual marketing, customer outreach –are just a few of the daily realities faced by those in the small business sphere, and they all play a critical role in your overall success.
However, these are just some of the biggest ones. There are a million small pieces within and beyond these that need to be just as on point as everything else.
Your social media photography is one of them. And considering how often overlooked this is, most people could use a bit of a refresher course on everything surrounding it.
So, in the spirit of helping out, here are some of the basics of social media photography for small businesses.
The Benefits of Social Media Photography
Oh, social media. Most of us regularly partake to stay connected with friends and family, the news, and all of our favorite pages, and everyone else still watches the occasional TikTok (even if they deny it).
But social media is good for more than catching up with college buddies or watching 50 cat videos in an afternoon – especially for any of you who own a company.
In reality, it’s an invaluable tool that can both keep your current audience in the loop and expose you to an entirely new one, meaning your customer numbers and conversion rate will constantly creep up. And, ultimately, that means more money in your pocket.
Who doesn’t want some of that in their life? Of course, it’s not as simple as throwing out any random post and hoping it sticks to the virtual wall.
Some types of content just don’t work as well in this day and age; most written stuff is included thanks to our minimal attention spans and the overall shift towards visual posts.
Thus, you should be dialing into social media photography. This is because Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and the like have become increasingly passive for consumers and businesses alike.
Using visual content, product images, and other photographs acknowledges that and uses it to its advantage. It grabs attention, even as someone is quickly scrolling through their timeline, which is critical if you want your brand exposed to as many people as humanly possible. There are several other benefits attached to focusing on good social media images, including the fact that it:
- Educates prospective customers about what products you offer (and what those products can offer to their lives)
- Serves as a continuous reminder about your business, so your name becomes more recognizable
- It helps establish a more cohesive brand image and ranking
- Encourages prospective customers to view your brand as more trustworthy and professional
- Shows your audience that your brand understands them and how they relate to you
Characteristics of Good Photographs
Those benefits go a long way to making your business thrive and flourish more than ever.
You can’t just expect any old photo to do the trick, though. Merely showing off social media photography that’s not quite as high-quality as one might expect or displaying a product from an unflattering angle can actively turn off potential consumers, driving them away rather than bringing them into the fold. We don’t want to do that.
Thankfully, knowledge is power. If you know what makes up a good image, you can replicate that in your own work. Need a little help there?
There are a handful of significant characteristics you should strive to achieve in everything you post, namely:
Proper Lighting – Picture this (pun totally intended): you see a social media advertisement. The featured product looks fine, but the photograph is washed out, overexposed, yet also somehow poorly lit. Are you likely to interact any further with that?
Unique Perspective – Compelling, practical photography, regardless of a specific type, tells a story.
It doesn’t have to be a particularly complicated one, but it has to say something more than “here’s a boring obligatory social media post.” One way to do that is to utilize angles, showing off a unique perspective that other businesses might not.
Basically, avoid anything eye-level or head-on and be thoughtful with your composition. Straightforward, but it’ll make you stand out on feeds everywhere.
Symmetry – Success on any of the major social platforms relies on that aforementioned compelling composition, and a huge aspect of this is symmetry.
Pleasing to the eye and reliable, it gives the viewer and audience something to look at that’s simultaneously grounding and visually stimulating.
An ideal guideline for this is to use the rule of thirds instead of centering your product or photograph subject. Interest is added, and your business’ post will get all sorts of new clicks. A win-win all around!
Targeted Visuals – Your social media accounts act as a very extension of you and your business.
The entire goal is to represent your brand, branch out, and appeal to your target market. That’s kind of hard to do when photographs and other visual posts are too general. The solution: don’t go general.
Target your content for the audience you have. Share pictures that resonate with and relate to them, and you can’t go wrong.
Professional Quality – Last but certainly not least, one of the main characteristics you should be gunning for with any social media photograph you post on your many channels is professional quality.
That’s what people come to expect from a business, and they’ll accept nothing less. Miss the mark; you’ll instantly lose out on customers as they’ll see your brand as amateurish and untrustworthy.
But meet their expectations, and you’ll gain a reliable, fresh audience in no time flat.
if you’re looking to increase your online conversion but still feel you are not sure where to start – check out these resources below:
