For centuries we relied in our senses to stay alive, and our sight took a fundamental role for our survival skills. Since the beginning of our existence, our vision helped us from avoid a poisonous food to select the best partner to extend our species. Therefore, the importance of imagery did not emerge with internet, on the contrary, it is intrinsically rooted in us…but it was intensified by social media.
“Today everything exists to end in a photograph”
Now more than ever, words are not enough to demonstrate credibility in your business. We are in an extreme visual era; 3.2 billion images and 720,000 hours of video are shared online daily. Therefore, your business must be active showing attractive content to not be forgotten.
“Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.”
At this point you might feel a little deflated or anxious for this data, however you should keep in mind that bombarding people with content that is not valuable might produce the reverse effect. I usually eliminate accounts that are popping out with daily posts that are irrelevant and not attractive because they clearly prioritise quantity over quality. What you share should be valuable and pleasing to the eye.
Valuable Content to Post for entrepreneurs
The content should be useful for you and interesting to others. A big number of followers feels good for your ego; however, you pay your bills with real clients, in my opinion.
People are in social media for three main reasons:
To Be Educated.
To Be Inspired.
To Be Entertained.
Educate your clients
Don’t assume that they know your business. There are plenty of false assumptions from customers which are worth to clarify. Furthermore, every enterprise is different and runs in unique ways. Therefore, educate about your business, products, and services.
Use the educational post to give advice and tips using a simple vocabulary. Please, don’t go too technical if you are writing to your clients, and if you need to use technical language, provide a short explanation of that peculiar word or term. The objective is to be an expertise who is comprehensible and approachable.
I started to use carrousels in Instagram to give advice to my followers regarding photography.
Reveal with images or videos the process of your work and what makes you different from your competitors.
Furthermore, showing your knowledge makes you trustworthy and provide authority to your brand.
Inspire your clients
I know that this might be a difficult task for some people, however I am going to give you one advice to overcome this challenge: The easiest way to accomplish this is to connect your inspiring post with your “why”. If you still are not aware of the power of “why”, I invite you the play the video bellow to know what I am talking about.
So, why you do what you do? Many of us have passion to collaborate in the process of transformation of people or things. Document this process with professional images that attract the attention of your viewers. They are going to resonate with your brand and the experience you are offering to them.
Entertain your clients
Ohhh, good luck with that. Not my thing. You watch people dancing while pointing at captions or doing choreography in groups among other “creative videos”. The important objective here is to be original. Instagram announced that originality is going to be reward, they don’t want many copycat videos, because they pull back their viewers from the App.
To be original it means to be authentic to your viewers, be personal in your creation. Have your own voice, ideas, and images. This takes us to the final part of this blog, Be Unique with your Personal Branding.
Be Unique with your Personal Branding
I am going to tell the story that I heard from a clinical psychologist regarding the natural world to make my message very clear.
Scientists were studying the animal behaviour of the zebras, but they constantly faced the same problem of losing track of the individual animal they chose to study. Therefore, the researchers came with the solution of painting the zebra they were studying; however, this zebra was eaten by the lions. Then, the researchers decided to put a tag in the ear of another zebra, and the lions ate it as well. The defence mechanism of the zebras is to look alike so you can’t identify them. Lions and scientists were confused by the similarity.
Once you paint or put a tag on one zebra, it become an individual…outstanding.
Do you know what I learned from this story? As an entrepreneur I don’t want to be a zebra. 😜🦓
You don’t want to blend with your competitors and create confusion to your clients because everyone is looking alike; here there are not lions. Clients need to see you clearly as a unique and appealing choice.
Using stock photos feels like stock photos, sorry. They are cold and impersonal. If you want to be remembered, don’t be average. Call a photographer and talk about what you need and be honest with your limitations. Again, don’t make assumptions about the photography industry, talk to find a perfect goldilocks negotiation to find the support you need.
TIP: You can hack some graphic design skills using Canva, this is going to help you to make your website, blog, or social media account more interesting. You can do it for free, or you can pay to have access to their many designs. Anyway, make your own content taking advantage of the base template to make it unique.
You can hack some marketing design with Canva, but modified the templates to make it personal.
…And don’t be a zebra. 🦓
Bye for now.