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5 More Reasons Why a Small Business Should Hire a Photographer

Guest post by: Sally Witzky

Article Overview: Many small business owners don't realize the importance and value of having photography that best represents their company brand. Images, in the form of still shots or made into videos or slide shows, can be extremely effective in showcasing a company, particularly in these days of social media and online marketing. This is the second of two articles in this series so please check out the first article for continuing tips, whether you're a franchise owner, a manufacturer's dealer or a stand-alone small business. In the meantime, make your own list of reasons why your company should have an image bank. You'll be surprised at all the benefits and how having available photography that represents your brand can help your business gain visibility and grow substantially.

5 More Reasons Why a Small Business Should Hire a Photographer

As the second article in a series of two, we help the small business owner better understand the importance of hiring a photographer to create an image bank of photographs for use in marketing and advertising their business.

If you're a franchise owner, it's not enough to utilize the images that your home office provides -- it is extremely important to localize your business and develop your own personal brand as your prospects will be connecting with you directly as a business owner in your community. If you're a manufacturer's dealer, it's great to have product images to use and you should definitely take advantage of those, but it's also important not to stop there as that's only one piece of the puzzle. And if you're a stand-alone small business, it is even more critical to hire a photographer to build your own brand so that prospects and customers more easily remember your company so they can tell others about it.

In this age of social media, so much of the content that is appealing has a visual aspect to it. So if you're writing a blog post, you need a photo or two with captions to better explain your points. Same with a white paper, a slide presentation, a brochure. And then there's the social networks themselves like your company's Facebook Fan page, which -- to be effective -- requires photo albums to be created and updated in order to get more people to engage with you.

Our first article listed 5 reasons why a small business owner should hire a photographer. In case you needed more proof, here are another 5 reasons:

1. Starting a photography bank. I can guarantee you that few small business owners realize the importance of creating a bank of approved photography that can be used for both online and offline marketing efforts. But it must be part of their overall marketing budget. With the economy the way it is, you can get a good photographer to get you started with as little as $500 to get some basic shots and the costs range to a few thousand for a couple of days of shooting. Be sure to negotiate that the photographer will do some minor retouching (especially for the profile shots) and give you all the images on a CD so that you have a permanent copy and can load on multiple computers for accessing and storage. Also, be sure to negotiate the fact that you have all photography ownership rights.
2. Having photos for Case Studies. Many small business owners perform work that is visible and should be showcased as a case study on their website or in presentations for business development purposes or industry presentations. And if you're working on a large job that takes weeks to perform, you might require photographs in the various stages of development such as the early stage, the work-in-progress stage and the finished job. Certainly many business owners who are in the construction or related business might want before and after shots, whether they are installing a geothermal heating system or a dedicated home theater, or whether they are performing a makeover or creating a memorable event. We can't stress how important it is to write up a simple case study on the more intriguing projects that your company has performed. At a future point, we'll add an article with instructions of how to write a case study but it is imperative to capture high quality pictures while the job is progressing and to make notes about the job before you move on to another one.
3. Being able to use both primary and secondary shots. When we work with a photographer on behalf of our small business clients, we help them develop a shot list so that the photographer can properly estimate the job (they may be able to group some together) and so that we all agree on what shots we expect to get from booking of their time. Within our shot list, we specify the number of staff members, extra locations or backgrounds, wardrobe changes and various things that are unique to each business and their situation. In addition to those primary shots, we also will ask the photographer to shoot some secondary or stylistic shots that might be close-ups, shots at different angles or views, or of just cool aspects of a project that are unique which may not ordinarily get any attention. Asking the photographer to take those extra shots on location and during the main shoot is much less expensive than scheduling more time. And those secondary shots can be so interesting for use in social media - especially in blogging and how those blog posts appear on your blog and on your Facebook Fan page for example.
4. Using photos in Local Business Directory Listings. Most small businesses forget to take the time to update their online local directory listings on Google, Bing and Yahoo. Yet, it is one of the more powerful search engine optimization tactics to use for a local business. Many listings are free and then there are some that charge a small monthly, annual or one-time fee. Most of these listings will allow you to add a logo and additional photos or even videos to make your listing more interesting. Using well-branded photographs that are unique to your business, especially if you have a storefront, will help people to find you and recognize your business. And this is one of the many reasons why we suggest that you have a photographer take pictures of your signage and your building.
5. You can't be effective at social media marketing without photos. One of the very first questions we ask our new clients is "what photos do you have for us to work with?" Often we have to refer them to a photographer right away as they have very few photos for us to work with or the photos they have are outdated or out of focus. So if you plan to invest both time and money to increase your social media marketing, then take a serious inventory of your company's photographs. And if someone tells you that you don't need photos to be effective at social media, think again. Without a decent start of a photo bank, you'll end up with nothing but boring content. And boring content will make your readers run away faster than you can say "flapjack."

The last reason is probably the most important. Without having images that correctly represent your company and your company's brand, you simply can't be effective at social media marketing. Plain and simple.

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Article Tags: brand images, case studies, effective case studies, entrepreneur, franchise owner, hiring a photographergain visibility, image bank, local business directory, local business listings, marketing, online business listings, online marketing, photo bank, photographer, slide shows, small business, small business marketing, small business owner, small business owners, small business photography, social media marketing



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