9th March 2017
The Importance of An Image – Tips For Your Business Photos
How does your business look?
What we really mean is what does your business actually look like? What are people seeing when they look you up online; either via your website, your blog or your social media platforms?
What image are you projecting? What story are you telling? How do you appear to potential clients? Can they actually see you? Do they get to meet your team? Can they see what it is you do, how you do it, where you do it and what products or services you offer?
If you own your own business or if you’re responsible for the online presence of a brand there is lots of evidence that suggests that having unique photography to represent your business or brand is essential. It would seem that having a library of great images should be a focus of your advertising and marketing spend. Here are a few reasons why……
First Impressions….?
Apparently when people enter your website, it takes them between 4 and 10 seconds to decide whether they’re going to stay or go. What that ultimately means is that you really don’t have long to grab a visitor’s attention. You need to capture them fast….and keep them!
So with just a few seconds to grab a potential client’s attention, you haven’t got time to impress them with fancy jargon and loads of carefully worded copy. The web is cluttered and competition is tough. You need to capture the attention of your target audience and you need to do it quickly.
Entice them with a great logo, a punchy strap line to sum up what it is you do and an image that packs an attention grabbing punch.
Of course, the copy, the detail, the impressive jargon is all needed. But only once your web visitor has made the decision to stick around!
We live in an era of skim reading. Web users are time starved but information hungry. Potential customers get your website up on their device and very quickly give it the once over. If they like it, they’ll stay to find out more. If they don’t, they’re off. Before you can shout “hey don’t go, I’ve got loads more impressive stuff to show you”, they’ve back-clicked out and moved onto the next website. And let’s face it, that next website is probably your competition.
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Your business has got to look great when people come across it. That first impression really counts. A whole chunk of information can be conveyed with just one image. Photos are a great way to tell your business story. An image can show emotion, style, atmosphere, quality and information – all in one go. So make that image count and put some thought into it. What is your brand personality? Who are you trying to attract? What are you trying to say?
The ‘Trust’ Factor
People are twice as likely to trust a business or a business owner if they can see a photograph of them online. Showing no images inspires very little trust in a business. I don’t know about you, but seeing ‘the whites of someone’s eyes’ is really important to me when I have meetings, or if I’m searching for a supplier or suchlike. If you have an image of yourself, and/or your team, it gives the friendly and familiar tone to your business and immediately creates some kind of rapport with your audience.
It’s a Photo Obsessed World Out There!
A few silly facts…..
There are a billion photos on Instagram!!
300 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day
What do these numbers mean for your business? What they mean is that your audience, your website visitors, and your potential customers LOVE photographs.
We live in a world ruled by the smartphone! By 2020, apparently 80% of adults will own a smart phone which means that all of those people will be walking around with a camera in their pockets.
Not only do people LOVE photographs, they are now much more VISUALLY SOPHISTICATED. They like photography and they expect to see it. What’s more, they know a good photograph when they see one. On the flip, they know a bad photo too.
So, photographs really do matter when it comes to your business. They are fast to create, easy to portray the right message & they will make you and your business stand out from the crowd.
Time to Revive your Website and Social Media
If reading this has made you think that you ought to do something with your Website and Social Media pages, please Contact Me to arrange a Headshot session or perhaps a Personal Branding Shoot?
Many thanks for reading!
Ginny & Holly x
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