Instagram is the new autograph
When you become successful, popular, even famous (from smart marketing of your excellent product and services,) your fans and clients won't want your autograph - they'll want a photo of you with them - one that they can immediately share with their friends to say that they've met you. If images are more popular than writing, what does this mean for your business?
The Forth Rail and Road Bridges banking out of Edinburgh airport
Images are like words - you have to practice to get good at them
Anyone who's been writing a blog for any length of time will cringe a little when they go back and read the early posts. It's natural - it takes a while to get good at most things and this is certainly true in the creative arts. The best way to produce good imagery is to take a lot of photographs.
Mount Rainier - Leaving Seattle early evening
If it's not published it doesn't count
You're not a tortured teenager keeping a private diary, you're doing this in order to produce imagery that can support your business. Use Instagram to get into the habit of publishing your work and seeing it online. The more you look at your work the faster you will learn and the greater the number of useable images you will produce.
Los Angeles - Night time with curvature of the earth
Yes - you now need to be a photographer too
I know - first you had to be writers and now you have to learn to be photographers too; what can I say - it is how it is. Of course you can outsource this, some of you already do, but no-one is going to tell the story of your business better than you, so if it isn't rocket science and you can learn how to do it - why not give it a try?
I promise - next week I'll write about something else, but
if you're not changing your behavior to develop strong imagery then you're
going to miss out. If you'd like to incorporate imagery into your marketing plan - get in touch and we'll have a chat.
The images in this post were shot with an iPhone 4 out of various airplane windows coming back from Scotland. They have nothing to do with marketing but they sure make the point that you don't need fancy gear to produce a strong visual.
Written while listening to: Nathalie - Instrumental Music to Create Flow