Can Social Media Have a Positive ROI?

Marketers rely on data and numbers to tell them how successful their marketing efforts have been to their company. Specifically, they want to know how many dollars each marketing campaign is bringing to their company and if the return can justify the investment. Identifying return on investment is a difficult task when it comes to social media.

The value of social media is much more expansive than a dollar amount. Marketers have to take into consideration brand amplification, customer engagement, and other non-concrete statistics to measure the success of each social campaign. How can you prove that your social media marketing is worth the money you are putting into it? 

Customer Connection

Social media sites make it easier for customers to get in touch with your company. The more you interact with and engage your audience, the more they’ll see your company as reliable, relatable, and someone they’d like to do business with. 

In addition, interacting with customers on social media can give you new insights into how your fans behave and how you can reach more potential customers. 

Brand Amplification

Using the paid advertisement options on social media sites can help you reach a specific audience that never would have known about your business before. The advertisements can be targeted by geography, interests, and a number of other factors. If your company has a strong brand voice, social media makes it easy to get it out there. Way out there. 

Social media is a very useful and powerful marketing tool for any type of business, from small startup to corporate giant. While managing the social media page could take a bit of time and effort, the benefits will be well worth it. Eventually, your customer engagement and brand amplification will begin to convert prospects into paying customers.

How Your Business Will benefit From High Quality Commercial Photography

Commercial photography is a general term used to cover a wide variety of services, but it involves taking pictures for business or commercial usage. Commercial photographs may be intended for a variety of purposes but they typically all focus on either selling a product or promoting a business.

Selling Your Products

Commercial images of products tend to either focus on the design of the product or on the product’s uses. Product photography is very common in the retail industry where items are always displayed and sold on a company’s website. These images provide potential customers with visually appealing details of the product and allow them to make an informed decision on whether or not to purchase the product.

A few examples of products that we’ve photographed include:

Promoting Your Business

Commercial photography is also widely used as a means of promoting or advertising a business. You can use commercial photographs on your website or in various advertising pieces, including direct mailers, brochures, annual reports, billboards, blog articles, etc. Often times, companies will have professional photographs taken of their building as a way of promoting their corporate image or they may have professional pictures taken of their key personnel to show the credibility of their company.

Some of our promotional work includes:
 

Investing in a professional commercial photographer should not be taken lightly. Professional commercial photographers understand the way things sell and are able to produce compelling visual images that speak to a particular target audience, therefore encouraging people to make a purchase or providing trust in a company.

WHY BRANDING IS MORE THAN JUST A LOGO

There is a misconception amongst people that if you want to build a brand, all you have to do is to create a logo for your company and the brand is built. In reality, a logo is just the first touch point of a customer with a brand, but then a logo is never a brand. A logo is like the billboard of a movie that tells you what is the movie all about, but if you have to know about the story of the movie, if you have to watch the performance of the actors, you would have to watch the movie itself. 

A Logo is The Tip of The Iceberg

They say that a logo is just the tip of the brand iceberg, and how true they are. Brand is all about building that faith in the customers that would help them feel connected and associate themselves with the products of the brand. A logo is just the first step in that mission of building faith. Looking at a logo a customer understands that he is dealing with a particular brand, but what makes him deal with that particular brand is what a brand is all about.

Logo and Brand are Interconnected But a Logo is Not a Brand

Usually, the process flows like that that as the customer sees the logo of a company his mind recollects the experience that the customer has had with the brand. This would include his personal experience using products of that brand, or the things about the brand that has dropped on his ears. If favorable, these memories make the customer feel confident about the brand and make him purchase the product from that brand. 

In the overall process from looking at the logo and then finally making the purchase, the role of logo is just to trigger the memories about the brand. It is the reputation of the brand, connect of the customer with the brand and the faith that the employee has on the brand is what makes him buy the product finally. A brand is a sum total of quality, impression, experience, and knowledge of a customer about the product or the company, and a logo is the visual representation of the brand that triggers the memories related to a brand.

It cannot be denied however that a logo is an integral part of building a brand as no matter how good a brand is built, its purpose would fail if it is not able to connect to the customers and that is what the logo is all about, it acts a connecting link between the customer and brand.

Why Executive Portraiture Matters In Today’s World

Gone are the days when business professionals met potential clients face to face. Back then, the charisma of the individual was the magic factor that helped close a deal. However, in today’s business environment, potential clients often get their first impression of you and your business from the executive portraits they see on your website. The quality and appearance of your executive portrait sends a powerful message about you and the standards you’ve set for your business. As such, it’s imperative to consider having a professional portrait taken that depicts not only your status, but also the level to which you intend to take your business. It’s a worthy investment!

Today’s business is conducted at great distances, and it’s now possible to enter into agreements with people on the other side of the world - with people you’ve never met and perhaps may never meet. The only idea of you they may ever have is your executive portrait. The importance of a portrait can’t be dismissed, as it portrays exactly who runs the company. It also reveals the company’s professionalism, dedication, and trustworthiness, and indicates the quality of work the company does.

In addition, executive portraiture has the ability to give a corporation a relatable, human face to the potential clients it interacts with.  It’s hard to get that kind of rapport if you’re using stock photos or unprofessional photography.

When a company is trying to reach potential clients through social media, having an executive portrait is very important. Having a high-quality photo on your LinkedIn profile or Facebook page will help you make a positive impression on those interacting with your business for the first time. Potential business partners or clients are far more likely to do business with a company they feel they can trust.

Having a professional executive portrait taken can open many doors for your business and create an infinitely more positive experience for those visiting your website and social media channels. It’s worth it to make a simple change to vastly improve your business. 

The Photography Business: Are YOU Ready To "Go Pro"?

Do you have what it takes “go pro?" Find out in this highly-engaging ebook by Curtis Newborn. In these pages, he uses stories from his years of experience to demonstrate important things he’s learned. The photography business is a very personal, emotional and immersive world… but it’s still a business. That means you need to possess not only the creative spark and energy, but also those strong business fundamentals that bring things into focus and put you on the path to success.

During a highly-engaging speaking engagement at the “Out Of Chicago Winter 2016” conference, Curtis presented these principles for launching a photo business to a very enthusiastic group of entrepreneurial photographers. This ebook will give you the basics of that informative presentation, and it’s a great first step towards starting your own business. 

You can get the ebook free by filling out a quick form here, and then if you want to learn more, we have a full series of “Business Growth Workshops” to explore for expanding your business.