I’m no longer a photographer…
I’m now a visual, content creator and storyteller… because visual content is Royalty!!!
Back in the day when I first became a photographer, meetings with clients whether an agency, magazine, business or a Corporate the discussions would be around campaigns and single or double-page spreads. Now the most common discussion is about how to create Content – especially related to a social media strategy.
Why visual content?
We are emotional, visual beings, in need of entertainment. So to see a professional image or a short video which paints a picture while including emotional content is much more likely to grab our attention and create a re-visit – more so than just text. Even a photograph with a well-placed “grabbing” text will create more of a buzz than just a stand-alone one-liner.
So what constitutes royal, visual content?
- Interesting, personal stories related to the brand, company and its people.
- Original and professional images whether photographs or short videos.
How do you do this?
- Get a professional content creator to create your relevant visuals
- Let your clients, audience/ market get to know the “real” you, your brand and the”behind the scenes” of your organisation.
- Besides the product photographs, get pictures of your team going about their job. Do short video clips, telling people who you are while interviewing and introducing the people in your organisation.
- As we all prefer authenticity the videos don’t have to be perfect so, normal lighting, blowing wind, or light traffic in the background is ok and all just adds to the authenticity…so long as you get your message across.
Since 2005 I’ve been photographing the maintenance shutdown that happens on Table Mountain. This year, they decided that they wanted the public to be more aware of what happens during this shutdown as it’s a very big engineering operation – with the cable being changed and the cable cars refurbished, taking place in a very unique environment – with a lot of the work done on the slopes of the mountain and on the cables high above, all with the aim of ensuring the safety of all of those that travel to the top of the mountain .
So together we devised a strategy which included;
- A “Photo of the day” posted via the various social media platforms
- 2-3 short videos per week – which included interviews of the technicians working onsite.
- Live video feeds of the big events
- A photo album on completion of the whole job.
Because of this the comments, shares, and likes did indicate that the public enjoyed being informed with what was going on during this unique, 5-week shutdown period.
And finally…here are some stats related to the ever-growing visual content.
- Around 63% of social media is made up of images.
- Roughly 85% of the most engaging posts on Facebook have images creating about 57% more likes, 104% more comments, and 84% more click through’s, compared to the posts without images.
- On Twitter, posts with images get 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites, and 150% more retweets than those without
- Instagram is an image-based platform but there are roughly 95 million images and videos being posted per day…so the content has to be attention-grabbing.
I’m no longer a photographer, I now create visual content…
More about the maintenance shutdown can be viewed at www.garyhirson.com and the videos can be viewed on my Youtube channel.
If you’d like to contact me to chat about your visual content, please feel free…to do so.