Social media brand building can be intimidating.  Instagram is shoving beautifully curated imagery at you in every direction, and you're left trying to figure out how to compete while creating your own brand's visual niche.  In the most gentle way, I must say this: If you don't have beautiful photos, don’t even bother posting to social media.  Ugh, so harsh.  But seriously, you won't be able to compete in the digital marketing sphere if your images look like this:

When your competition is posting this:

As humans, we are visually stimulated by beautiful images.  Without spiraling deep into neuroscience, I’ll sum it up by saying that visual information is the key to human communication.

In marketing, the strongest visual tool we can use is beautiful imagery.  Pictures can convey a story instantly and can help us relate to one another more authentically than words ever could.  Every single thing you post as your brand, no matter the social platform, is all like a mini ad for your company.  You can choose to launch your brand to the top with eye-catching imagery, or you can rely upon poorly captured, poorly curated photos to represent you.  The choice is yours.  

These days, a brand that can’t compete visually on Instagram might as well plan their funeral now.  Instagram is a beast that will conquer you if you don't conquer it first.  Let's compare these two accounts below, both selling the same product to the same clientele.  If you're making a "what will I eat for dinner tonight" decision based solely off of branding, I know who most will support.  (In hopes of not offending anyone, I'm taking the company names out of these photos).

No matter how amazing your product is, it will only ever be as good as it appears online.  High quality professional photos are absolutely crucial for a brand to showcase its product.  Relying solely on user-generated content (posting images your consumers take) creates a disjointed brand aesthetic and an overall lack of visual continuity.  Own your brand image - don’t let others create it for you.  So much goes into taking beautiful photos: lighting, composition, context, etc.  If any one of those factors are off, you can bet that your viewers will notice (whether you think they do or not).  Here's another example.  The same product being sold to the same market, but one company feels a bit higher quality than the other, simply based off of their Instagram content (powerful stuff, right?!)...

I believe that every single company should invest in brand and lifestyle product photography.  I understand the obstacles that inherently come with running a brand’s online presence.  I know it is incredibly challenging to find something to take a photo of or promote, especially on a regular basis.  Maybe you just don’t have any great quality photos of things you want to talk about in your posts.  Keeping content fresh and regular builds engagement and ultimately leads to greater brand trust and recognition, but there is so much work that goes into maintaining beautiful and unique content.

Leave it to the professionals.  Expertly curated content is the product of trained designers with a background in art direction and a solid understanding of what creates aesthetic imagery.  Here are a few of my favorite Instagram accounts who I gather inspiration from...

Want to recreate your brand aesthetic on social media?  This is where I come in.  I’m happily offering monthly branded product photography for social media content use.  Each month we’ll decide what’s coming up for your company (maybe a big sale, upcoming relevant national holiday, new products, customer features, events, employee bios, etc.).  Maybe you just need a solid base of photos to work with that show your products in everyday lifestyle settings.  Whatever you need, I’ll shoot it - and I’ll shoot it beautifully and true to your brand.

Each platform that you could possibly be using your images on typically has a plethora of different formatting needs which I will take into consideration.  For example, vertical photos perform better on Pinterest, while the traditional square format is important for Instagram.  Newsletters, print or website imagery should have tons of negative space for headlines and added text.  I’ll suit all your needs and after our monthly shoot together you’ll have more than a months’ worth of branded, high quality content ready to go.

Want me to curate, schedule, caption and post it all for you too?  I’m happy to.

Curious about my work?  Here are some photos I recently took for a wine brand, where I built the content for their social channels and website...

Want to chat about it?  Reach out to me!  Shoot me an email at kelsey@goodchancecreative.com or send me a message on my Instagram @goodchancecreative.  We can go over what you're needing and I can tailor a package to suit your business perfectly.  xo, Kelsey