By Emeka Ikechi, Director, Vanity Studios
If your social media is performing poorly, turning it around can depend on your business and industry, but one area that is always worth paying attention to is imagery. Here are three top tips:
1. Quality counts
Creating great images in a high-quality format helps you appear professional and high-quality yourself. Great images start with great composition and setting. Having either lots of negative space or lots of clutter can seriously impact the quality of the image. Including engaging visual elements, such as people’s faces or cute animals, on the other hand, can help attract positive attention.
When considering the quality of the image format, more pixels isn’t always better. Every social media site has a strict size limit and specific resolution at which they will display images. Smaller images will be scaled up, which can look incredibly grainy and low-quality. However, larger images will be scaled down, which can also make them look very grainy. While the effect often isn’t as pronounced, the more the image is scaled up or down, the grainier it will look. It is best to aim for images that are the exact size and resolution the site will display them at to avoid scaling.
2. Show don’t tell
If you can demonstrate how your product or service is used to improve your customers’ lives, you will create an image and idea in customers’ minds. They will imagine enjoying themselves on your holiday, eating your delicious food or looking stylish wearing your watch, for example.
The key is to make the images relatable. This is why images with people in them work well - the customer will substitute themselves into the image, gaining an instant sense of what it might be like. Once that image has been imagined, it is hard to shake off.
So, rather than a shot of new jewellery against a plain background, perhaps try showing an image of someone aspirational wearing the jewellery at a trendy party. And instead of simply showing a beach hut against the azure blue sea, show people walking, swimming and laughing as well.
The same rules apply if you are simply selling your own personal brand. Whether it’s images of you or products you are reviewing or recommending, create images that are more than just a picture of you, or a flat picture of the product. Instead, show you/it in action. Show how buying the product will solve a follower’s problems, why engaging with you will make their life better.
3. Don’t always choose colour
Bright, colourful images may be eye-catching but that doesn’t mean black and white images should be disregarded. Opting for a monochrome image can be an excellent way to stand out in a sea of brightly coloured pictures, especially on sites like Instagram where people endlessly scroll through swathes of visually similar photographs.
Again, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to using colour vs black and white. You should test both types of image and see which works best for you. However, a good rule of thumb is that the more luxurious and product-focused the image, the more likely it is to work in black and white. Watches, jewellery and cars, for example, often stand out in black and white. For experiences, such as holidays or trips, colour can flesh out the imagination and make it appear more real.
The best approach is to get a copy of the same image in both colour and monochrome, testing both out and gathering results. You will then have a better sense of what works for you and your brand, whether you are sharing a product, experience or headshot.
Pictures help customers imagine what it is like to work with you or use your product, making an abstract idea feel a lot more real.
Imagery is important when it comes to improving both engagement and recall, and one final thing to remember is to keep your images fresh. While it is fine to reuse and repurpose images, they can quickly feel stale, especially if you reuse them a lot. Switching up your imagery regularly keeps people interested and engaged.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emeka Ikechi is Director of Vanity Studios, a contemporary studio for photoshoots in the centre of Shoreditch in London. Since 2009, Vanity Studios has been providing clients with high quality professional photos and an excellent photoshoot experience, with the team of photographers and make-up artists ensuring each client receives bespoke photography that meets their requirements.
https://vanitystudios.co.uk/