Written by Katie Lamberg in Marketing
Strong well-executed photography can quickly elevate the appearance of your brand, these images represent you and your company, poor quality and unprofessional-looking photos reflect badly back on you, giving your audience an unwanted impression of what you are trying to convey. However, if your photos are outstanding, you can give a real insight into how your company operates, you immediately become more approachable, friendly, and honest. It's a great way to stop being a faceless brand and really connect with your audience.
The honest answer is yes, but time needs to be taken to find the right images for your business, remember your audience isn't stupid, they can tell when you're not being totally authentic. Often you can spot a stock photo from a mile away, so be very careful to select photos that don’t appear to be stock images.
Stock photos can also become a problem when it comes to search engine optimisation, original content is always preferred, but this also comes down to where the images are in relation to relevant text. Images with related text near it rank better for the keywords you’ve optimised for. Your photos file name is also a site killer, if your file is named “shutterstock_69425.jpg”, you're going to get lost with all the others using that image, google needs to know what your image is so you need to tell it “sunflower-sunset.jpg”.
The image file sizes also play a factor, the bigger the image, the slower the loading time. So make sure you have your images scaled to the correct sizes, and I don’t mean the displayed image size here, the site will always load in the full image even if you're displaying it quite small. If you have a space on your site for a 300 x 100-pixel image, don’t upload a 600 x 200, it will fit on the site, but it will slow site speed, a big ranking factor. Scale your images according to size and then run them through a compression tool, such as TinyPNG.
Nonsense, there are many ways photography can be used to benefit your business, from showing off your products and services to showing off your team. I can’t think of a single business that wouldn’t benefit from photography. It really helps to build up the culture and environment of your company in the mind of your audience, making them feel like they are a part of your journey.
For example, say you're a welding business, now imagine your website explaining you’ve worked for many years in the industry blah blah blah, nothing specifically wrong with that, but now imagine it being visually communicated to you, sparks from the metalwork, the reflections in the visor showing the hard work, character and drive this company has been through over the years. Sounds alright, doesn’t it? Not only does it show you and your business off, I think it helps your audience get invested in what you're doing.
The best part of having your own brand library of professional photography is that you can use it anywhere and everywhere. Now I’m not saying for you to use the same photo on every marketing channel, it may look nice, but it will get stale fast. However you can certainly load up your website, social feed, and even your marketing material with your new photography, again this will open you up to potential clients and customers as it will give a genuine feel about you.
From a branding perspective, photography can help lift your business to new heights. Think about the brands you purchase regularly. It’s simple really the better the images, the better the quality of your final product.
So if you were in two minds on if photography was the right move for you, hopefully, you won’t be anymore. For more information or to discuss updating your brand photography, get in touch with our team today.
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