In the third part of my Instagram Marketing for Small Businesses, we will discuss your imagery. If you missed the first two posts, in the series, HERE and HERE they are!
Because Instagram is an image based platform, and there are millions of people and images being added on a daily basis, in order to catch someone’s attention, your imagery has to be eye-catching in some way. Not only that, but, the whole of your imagery has to have some sort of draw or cohesive message that makes people understand what you do and what you want to convey.
As a professional photographer myself, I understand the difference that it makes when you post professional images vs. phone images. That’s a different conversation and post, however. Even if you aren’t able to hire someone to take photos for you, it’s important to put some amount of thought into what you want your imagery to say about your brand or business, and how you would like that to be displayed on your page to the world.
Message
What is your brand and what is the story behind it? If you can nail this down, even in a summarized 3 or 4 sentence synopsis, and be thoughtful about how you are taking and using your imagery to convey this message, you are well on your way!
That said, that is not always easy for people to do. It’s worth the time to sort this out. If you have no message or no idea what your brand story is, it will come across in your posts, your images, and the lack of cohesive message you are conveying on your page.
Relevance
If you have decided that your page is going to be a business page, and you want it to tell the story of your brand, then you have to make the conscious decision that you won’t post as many personal images. For instance, if you are a food blogger, you will want the majority of photos to be of food. If you post a cookie recipe photo, and then a photo of your new shoes, and then one of your dog, then one of a non-relevant selfie….
That’s going to muddle your message. Those things are fine for a personal page, but, if you are trying to craft a brand story and use the platform for marketing, there has to be some thoughtfulness about what is posted, and you might have to hold back on images that aren’t relevant to the message you are wanting to convey.
Curation
This is something that is important, but, in my humble opinion, can also be overdone.
That said, it is important to try and keep certain aspects of your page streamlined. For instance:
1). If you are posting images that have text in them, try and stick to the same font each time.
2). If you are posting images with a color background, try and stick to the same color each time.
3). If you are posting images, try and stick to the same tone each time. i.e., cooler tones, warmer tones, same backgrounds…. I use 2-3 of the same backgrounds most of the time in my photos of food.
Show Your Face
Again, this one depends on so many factors, and also what you do, but, since we are focused on small businesses, with a emphasis on entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, it’s good to show the world that you are a real person once in a while. If you are your brand (like, say, Oprah, or Tony Robbins, or musicians or actors…), then, obviously, you want to use mostly photos of you.
Since my page is all about my photography, I like to keep images of myself to about every 9 or so photos, give or take.
The Top 9
It's been said that the first 9 photos on your Instagram page are the most visible ones on your page at all times. That sounds obvious, but, I'm not sure how many people actually post their imagery with that ion mind.
If you aren’t able to be on the platform a lot, or at least enough to be able to post regularly or deliberately, it’s worth creating 9 really stunning shots and just having the page be semi-static. Although this isn’t really ongoing ‘marketing’, per se, it is at least a really clean, nice page and message that allows people to get a good idea about what you and your brand offer.
We are well on our way to getting your page up and going! Our next post will be about hashtags, so, stay tuned!