How to use photos on social media to boost your business

Photos are driving engagement across social media channels in unprecedented ways. Any small business or entrepreneur, will now most likely, have accompanying photos across their social media accounts. Why? Because people want experiences, rather than detail. They want something that they can really visualise. This is what drives Facebook and its sister company Instagram. Social is all about the photos. If your business has social media accounts then using images is vital to achieving success.

But it’s no good just ‘plonking’ on any old image about your company. No one is going to care that the post has just arrived or that you just got in a new Nespresso machine. Instead, you should be using photos across social media platforms in a creative way.

You could consider using...

Positive images

One thing you could consider is uploading images that are very positive. What do we mean exactly? Well think about this: it’s a Monday morning and everyone is back at work. People want to see something that will make them feel good and a bit more motivated for the week ahead. Why not take some fun pictures of your team whilst they're enjoying their lunch? You could use these heartwarming events to show you care about more than just your product and show your followers the human side to your brand. Who knows, you could be surprised about how much engagement you get from this!

Testimonials

You might be looking to upload photos which are less ‘fuzzy’ and more direct. But at the same time you don’t want to do the obvious hard sell, that won’t work on social media. However there is another alternative: you could use photos for positive testimonials. Nothing creates value and trust in a product or service better than recommendations from others who have benefited. If you have collected testimonials from your website or over the phone, then use photos of these satisfied customers. This is a very popular tactic used by personal trainers who use before and after images to show the progress of their clients. If you have images of happy customers using your product, you will be on to a winner.

Test and tweak

As with anything social media related, the key thing to recognise is the importance of research. You might think one image will work because it looks good to you. However a large segment of your audience might not be agree. If you want your photos to truly boost your business, try and understand what type of image will work best. Facebook and Instagram both have their own built in insights tools that can give you a clue about what your audience might be partial towards. You will be given clear metrics which will help you break down some of the more convoluted data into information that could help you.

Make storytelling key with Instagram Stories

Instagram is now widely regarded as the best social platform for images. All you need to do is log in and you will be inundated with images and photos on basically everything. If you’re business is all about pretty pictures, patterns and creativity then this is the tool to use. And one feature that you should know about is Instagram Stories. If you aren’t familiar, Instagram Stories is a feature that allows you to upload photos or videos, which then disappear after 24 hours. As a business this is a great way to offer your audience a unique insight into what you do. Maybe you and your team are at a conference or perhaps you are launching a new product and want people to see what is happening behind the scenes. This can be a great way to build excitement over a relatively short period of time. And you can also add links to your Instagram stories as well to allow people to visit your website if they want to.

Take high quality photos

If you want to make your business big, bright and visual you are competing against many other businesses and entrepreneurs in a very saturated market. This means your photos have to be that much better than your competition. Make sure your images are high resolution as this will immediately grab attention. Images that are striking and beautiful have a much better chance of being successful than ones which are of lower quality. Serban Enache wrote about this in detail in an article on Entrepreneur “ go for content that captures people’s attention and draws then into some sort of action -- vibrant photos with bold colors that suggest excitement. Don’t be afraid to be creative and playful” We couldn’t agree with this sentiment more. Be bold, grab attention but also stay on point. If you do all of this images could help boost your business in a big way.