Choosing and Using Photos for Your Websites

Launching a website is the most common reason why business owners wanted to invest in professional photography for their businesses.  So here are a few things to look out for when choosing and deciding the type of photos to use for your websites:

Use only high quality professional images. Your website is your storefront. To ensure you give a good impression for your prospective clients, only the best can do.  If you are not in the position of investing in professional photography, do invest in learning how to use your phone camera to take better images.  Absolutely no to blurry, amateurish looking photos.

Use photos with real people. Avoid using stock images if you can.  Stock images can be used by everyone and anyone.  Your business deserves better than generic.  Showcase your uniqueness.  If you are a product base business, use images with real people using the product rather than just a product shot.  Showcase the kind of lifestyle and feeling your product can bring in real life is a more effective way of marketing your products.

Use images/photos that are consistent and relevant with your brand. The photos/images you choose need to be appealing to your ideal clients. Consider also your brand colours in the images.

Use images with real and natural emotions as opposed to the cheesy smiles.  Photography is a very effective way to connect with your prospective clients if used intentionally.  Images that are authentic and show genuine emotions can capture the viewers’ attention and emotions fast!

Make sure your photos are optimize for SEO . Naming your photo files with words that are meaningful and best represent the image.  For example, if you have a photo of a red flower, named it red-flower.jpg as opposed to image_023.jpg.  Try to be consistent with your naming.  Avoid using punctuation. Use hyphens rather than space or underscore to separate the word.

Beware of the size of your image files. Do not use high resolution image files for your website as it will take forever to load up on your webpage giving bad user experience for your website visitors.

These are just some of the things you should look out for when choosing and using photos on your website.   Your website is an important part of your marketing strategy that needs to have picture-perfect images.

If you want to elevate your pitch and differentiate your business from the crowd, book an obligation free call to find out how we can help you to connect with your prospective clients at a deeper level with your images for your website and all your marketing needs.

Where to use your professional photos for your business

Most often, business owners would only consider professional photography when they are launching their websites. But once their websites are up and running, having another professional photography session would normally be at the end of their to-do list if it ever makes it on the list again.

But regularly updating your professional photos is so important to grow your business in a visually crowded space especially you are using online platform to market your business. If you are consistently generating and sharing content, then professional photography has to be included in your ongoing (not one-off) marketing budget. Many business owners, re-use their old photos again and again because they don’t have sufficient amount of professional images to keep up with the amount of content they are generating and sharing online. Imagine your audiences, who are following your content keep seeing the same old few photos every time you put out new contents. How likely will they be intrigued by your visual and stop them from scroll?

I know what you are thinking; everyone is showing up on video nowadays. Why should you be investing in professional photography on a regular basis when video is “the new thing” ? I won’t be arguing with you on this one, as I am in fact increasing my use of videos in my own contents too. But in the world where individual’s attention span is getting shorter and shorter, still image is still the fastest way to capture your audience’s attention and evoke feelings in a split of a second, so photography should always be part of your marketing strategy. This is exactly why big corporations, and well known brands always include photography as part of their advertising campaigns.

The bottom line is,  high quality visual is essential for your business.  But having regular professional photoshoot is no small investment.  To maximize your return, be sure you make good use of your professional photos whenever and wherever you can. 

So here are the places and ways  (other than your website) you can use your professional images:

• The obvious one is social media marketing. These includes FB, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest etc.  Statistics shows that a post include an image increase engagement substantially. But do use images that can differentiate yourself to stop the scroll.

• Sales and Landing Page.  You want to grab the attention of your audience and stir their emotions in a crowded market with high quality images that are uniquely you. Remember purchase decision are often a result of an emotional response.

• Your Lead Magnets like cheat-sheet, workbook, ebooks etc. Incorporate authentic photos of you can strengthen your personal brand and ensure consistency across all platforms and all marketing material. 

• Submit your own photos for interviews/features on newspaper and magazines.  If you have a library of up-to-date image of you, you can save a lot of prep time on photoshoots for every appearance. The best thing is that you have a full control of your image as you can just pick and submit  image of your choice at your finger tips.

• Stick a photo of you on your business card can help people to remember who you are. But do avoid printing large quantity of business card as you want to update your photo on your business card on a regular basis and not using old photo of you that have little resemblance to your current look.

• If you are writing a book or planning to write one,  use your own photos on the cover.

• Why not include your photos on your emailing marketing content, and email funnels. 

• Last but not least, your profile photo for any other PR engagements, collaboration, events etc.

There are just so many ways and channels you can use your professional personal brand images.  Having regularly professional photoshoot to update your bank of images and using them across different platforms can ensure coherency of your brand and also ensure all your contents are always on brand and of “scroll-stopping” quality.

Can you imagine the feeling of never running out of professional images to use for your business? With annual subscription, you can get a new bank of images every quarter to add to your image library. Contact Peggy to find out more.

Why high quality personal brand photography is essential for your business?

If you are using social media to grow your personal brand and your business, I’m sure you notice how “crowded” it is on the virtual space. There are billions (according to statistics in 2018 ,3.2 billions  be exact)  of images posted online every single day.  Every one of your post is a “touch point” with your prospective clients, an opportunity to make an impression and foster connection with your ideal clients.  Can you really afford to waste such opportunity to grow your business?

Us human are visual beings. We eat and shop with our eyes.  We tend to remember 10% of what we hear and 20% of what we read. However, we actually can remember 80% of what we see.

And, have you ever notice how long it takes for you to decide which photo to click into when you are scrolling through your social media posts?⁠  For me, it's instantaneous like natural reflex. That's because our brain only take as little as 13 milliseconds to process an image (according to a team of MIT neuroscientists).⁠

Yes, it takes only a split of a second for your ideal audience to decide whether your message to them are being read or not.  Photography is the fastest way to capture your audience attention. This is why big corporations are still investing in professional photography as part of their advert/marketing campaign despite the obvious popularity of moving images (or videos).

Many small business owners rely on stock images and those who have invested in professional photography are mainly using standard portraits or headshots well posed with similar background as their peers for their business.   But if you want to elevate your pitch and take your business to the next level, you need to distinguish yourself and be different. 

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How? 

Simply be you, because every one of us are different and unique. Everyone of us have our own stories to tell.  Allowing your audience to see the authentic you beyond that perfect smile in standard headshots and portraits will differentiate you from others.

Professional personal brand photos that are created with intention to tell your stories not only grabs people attention and reinforce your professional image but also have the ability to tap into your audience emotions to create that know, trust and like factor to response to your call to action.

If you want to find out how storytelling personal brand photos can help to elevate your business,  get in touch for a free consulation with You & Your Stories.