How to Make Your Brand Images 1000x More Powerful
It’s not enough to create amazing pictures… You have to set them free.
It’s like wearing a sack dress to a school reunion after 6 months of slavish devotion to Kayla Itsines. Like Kimmy K in a sheer feathered mini dress and shaved head, with no iPhone to capture the moment. Like the plastic wrap your grandmother kept over her prized settee.
What’s the point of having something amazing if it can’t be found or shared?
Product photos and visual storytelling are driving the way brands communicate and sell, both online and off. Social media has changed the landscape, traditional print media outlets are merging with their online counterparts and visual content is being produced at a frenetic pace. Last year, trend forecaster Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkinsestimated that we upload 1.8 billion photos to the internet a day.
Brands today understand the impact that pictures can have on growth and reach, but frustratingly, the existing systems available for surfacing and distributing brand pictures don’t work. Time, money and opportunities are wasted on expired file transfer links, clogged inboxes, and ad hoc spreadsheets.
Do you own your own brand? Are you a publicist or marketer working in-house? Or do manage multiple brands at a PR agency?
In order to increase your brand’s visibility and compete in today’s fiercely competitive market you need to do two things well:
Create high-quality visual content; and
Seamlessly get that content into the right hands – as fast as possible!
Who are the right hands you ask? Anyone who can help you reach a bigger audience. Bloggers, editors, retailers, brand ambassadors, social influencers…
Create great visual content that’s ripe for the picking
We already know that with high-quality content comes great exposure. Having great product and brand pictures to share is no longer just nice to have; it’s an absolute necessity.
And in 2017 it’s very likely that the first encounter someone has with your brand will be online [not in store]. This means that how you present your brand – the way you choose to shoot it, the models you display it on – is as important as the quality of your products.
Not everyone has their own studio space or the budget to have every image shot by a professional, but producing content doesn’t have to be expensive. With affordable DSLR’s and sophisticated mobile cameras at your fingertips, high-quality content can be created in minutes.
Take the time to do your research before shooting. Look through the magazines and blogs that you want your product featured in and take note of how the photos are presented. Then you’ll be able to replicate that look yourself when creating your own images.
Get those pictures OUT THERE, stat
With all the opportunities to get your brand noticed – websites, blogs, social media, retailer channels, custom publishing as well as traditional media outlets – making sure that your pictures are accessible on-demand to those who can grow your audience is super important.
Media exist in a 24/7 news cycle. Their digital storage space is limited and working on tight deadlines means that when they need something, they need it now [or 5 minutes ago] in the correct resolution and with essential credit details: price, product name, stockist details, in-store dates.
The easiest way to become a media favourite is to have everything a journalist needs ready to go – before they even have to ask.
Here are six simple steps can you take to get maximum exposure for your visual content:
1. Do a stocktake
What visual assets do you already have? Are they useful? What imagery are you missing – what will you create?
2. Organise your pictures so they are easy [for you] to find
Whether it’s by category, date or campaign. Pick a system that works with your daily operations and stick to it. Nothing worse than knowing you have an image that would be PERFECT for a media request – only to realise you can’t remember where you filed it…!
3. Set your photos free
With so much time and money spent creating your beautiful visual assets, don’t hide them away in the murky depths of your computer! Give them a life of their own and store them on a digital platform like Flaunter, while still controlling exactly who sees them.
Our photo library is a journalist’s heaven, providing a centralised library for them to access relevant, free content on demand. Yep, having your pictures available online 24/7 automatically means that your brand can work twice as hard at being noticed – even while you sleep 😉
4. Share in a no-brainer way
Don’t clog media inboxes with large image files, send links that expire or transfer files that require huge syncing time. These are frustrations we hear from journalists every day. Make your simple sharing easily receivable. The best way to do this? Secure HTML links that won’t expire [unless you want them to] and require zero syncing time.
5. Track what you share
Who says PR can’t be measured? That was the old days. When sharing your pictures and media info make sure that you’re using a platform that allows you to track interactions with your content – views, downloads… That information is critical.
6. Keep your content new, fresh and up-to-date
Remember to continue creating and sharing new, interesting content as often as possible. Bloggers and editors never sleep! And an iPhone can make an excellent photo studio 😉
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how amazing your pictures are, or how much blood, sweat, tears and hard-earned money you’ve put into creating them. Making those pictures easily discoverable and available on-demand is how brands can truly stand out from the crowd.
Banner image: Urban Outfitters – Tumblr
