Images are powerful tool in social media. Good images get shared and can take on a life of their own, As a page owner, how do you get value for your effort when it comes to images?
Here are a few tips I’ve shared with clients in the past –
1. Where possible (and appropriate), add images to albums rather than timeline. Think about the types of albums you might create that are relevant to your project or business.
For example, if you’re an artist, create an album for specific bodies of work or individual exhibitions. Each exhibition should have its own album. Your visitors will learn how your page is structured and they can use the albums to revisit your archive of exhibitions.
If you have another type of business, your albums might be – New Products, Behind the Scenes, Our Team, #FunFriday, #HumpDay etc. When you’re thinking about this, go back to what you business is, and what you’re marketing strategy is trying to achieve.
2. Make sure you resize your images. Remember when you read Facebook’s T&C’s before you signed up? Remember the bit where they said that they own the copyright for every image that you upload? Well, that’s not a problem if the images you upload are meant to be your social web images. If you’re a photographer, only upload images (or the version of images) that you want used to promote your work. Make sure the images you upload aren’t the “best” or final copies.
3. Add a watermark or text to your images. A good image can/will quickly escape your network. Adding a watermark means when your image gets shared over and over again, users will be able to return to its page of origin if they want to. (Also, don’t add such a large water mark through the middle of the image, use something discrete in the corner works better). You don’t have to include the entire URL of your website, just add the Twitter handle.
4. Choose 10 or 15 images that best reflect the event. Some page owners have difficulty selecting the best image and end up adding EVERY. SINGLE. IMAGE in their cameras!! No! Please don’t. Your visitors don’t want to wade through 50 images where 2 or 3 good ones would have been enough. Please give yourself permission to delete images that aren’t up to scratch.
In the example below, choose only ONE of these images, don’t add each one individually. Or alternatively, create a collage of all of the images to upload.
5. If you’re uploading images of your customers or “friends”, make sure the images you upload make them look good. Unless you’re deliberately uploading an album of anti-selfies, upload others how you would wish to be uploaded. And going back to 1, why not put your “Peeps” into a “Our Mates” album.
6. While most people like to be connected with your brand, otherwise why would they have stood there and let you take their photo in the first place, if you don’t know the person, ask “can I Facebook this pic?” before uploading. There are still a few digital-footprint-averse folk out there.
When trying to work out how to organise your page, remember FACEBOOK. IS. NOT. YOUR. WEBSITE! Your Facebook page is just a space that you use to promote your business or project, engage with your customers and let them know that you’re human and real. You should be using your Facebook page to drive traffic back to your website or shop. When organising your page, consider how its content fit into your overall marketing strategy.
Images in this post were taken by Leesa Watego at the SEQICC Annual NAIDOC Business Breakfast. The performers are the Nunukal Yuggera dancers. The apps used were Beautiful Mess (top image) and DipTic (bottom image) on iPhone4S.