5 ways to get more content out of a photoshoot

To succeed in marketing your products or services online, you have to capture and hold your audience’s attention. A customer would scroll past your online shop if it has nothing “catchy”. This is probably because people now have an attention span of 8 seconds, but visuals have been proven to work better in keeping their attention. 

Since everyone remembers images faster than text, to get the best marketing strategy on social media platforms, your brand needs more images and videos than text, especially on Instagram that is visually oriented.

Note that having the right image is not enough to bring in more engagement. Your visuals need to be attractive, relatable, and memorable. Images you post on your social media handles should stick to your audience’s mind, it shouldn’t be shoddy, too busy, or distracting and it should contain short write-ups.

Now, to get the best out of the images you post on social media, and lessen the chances of being swallowed by the  350 million pictures and the 8.95 million photos and videos posted daily on Facebook and Instagram respectively, you need to do something different. Once in a while, give your audience a new background, new concept, new face, or anything new. Not only does it show originality, but it also shows your hard work and dedication to pleasing and being involved with your audience. 

And there’s no better way to do this but by carrying out a photoshoot

What is a Photoshoot?

First of all, a photograph is simply a picture taken by a photographer using a camera. A Photoshoot, on the other hand, involves a photographer or individual taking multiple pictures of a model (for a company or brand) in one or more locations. This could be indoors in a studio or outdoors or at any location.

Companies or individuals will then use these images for their websites or social media and other marketing channels. 

Thinking about carrying out a photoshoot? Read on to get an overview of what is required. 

How to plan a good photoshoot?

1. Understand your client

This is the first step towards successfully handling a company’s social media page. You have to understand the brand, the services they offer, and their values. Ask questions where necessary because this will guide you towards the content they will need to effectively grow their brand.

2. Develop creative concepts

Next, you have to come up with a creative concept that will further accentuate your brand’s value. Remember, this concept must align with your brand else it will fail its purpose.  

3. Pick the right location

When it comes to a good photoshoot, location is very important. Whether the pictures will be taken indoors or outdoor depends on the concept of the photoshoot. When you use a location, visit ahead of the scheduled date to check out the place especially when it’s not your studio. This will help you to fix any issues that will affect the images.

4. Get the right models or brand ambassadors

This is one of the most important decisions to make. Understand what the session requires; a model with experience or an amateur. You can check with the brand too if they have ambassadors who might fit in the role for the shoot. 

5. Create the right atmosphere

Keeping your models relaxed is one of the best ways to have a good photoshoot session. You can play soft music in the background to create a relaxing atmosphere. Communicate with the models during the session, explain the concept to them. 

Be open to their question, and don’t lash out if there is a mistake. Believe me, if you keep a smooth and friendly environment with the models, their happiness and satisfaction will reflect on their faces and subsequently in the images. 

Booking a Photoshoot session may take a toll on your pocket, so you have to make the best out of it. The steps below show that the final and edited pictures from a photoshoot shouldn’t be the only thing to use for your social media campaigns. 

5 ways to get more content out of a Photoshoot

1. Show Behind The Scenes footage

Behind the scene (BTS) content is the unedited visuals that tell a story about a brand’s campaign. They come in a video format and are taken when a crew of workers is not aware of them. BTS content is appealing because not only does it capture a brand’s interaction with its workers, but it also reveals unplanned and unscripted emotional moments. Livestream.com carried out a survey that revealed that 87 percent of people will watch a video if the BTS is part of the content. This is because it covers the whole photoshoot process; from the inception of the idea to its planning, shooting, and other experiences. 

There are many things you need to create an incredible BTS video, and images are at the top of the list. Capture interesting moments during the production; moments like the make-up session, the wardrobe, the preparation and setting of the camera, the models before shooting begins, the director interacting with the models, and other moments worth being on camera but unscripted. 

Meanwhile, you should include the final images in the video, preferably at the end. Ensure you add a licensed music background to the video, and don’t forget to add your brand’s logo and other important graphics.

In the YouTube video below, Nikon made a Breaking Free BTS video to launch their new Nikon D750 flexible camera. Notice how they never lost focus of the aim of the video: marketing their product, while showing happy moments and interacting with the dancers. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSVHpWtJNUc

2. Use different editing styles

While image editing is easy, it requires skill, time, and dedication. Not only this, you have to determine what kind of editing style to apply, and which editing tool to use.

There are a lot of editing styles that you can apply to the pictures from a photoshoot and it will be termed new content. The most popular editing style is clean editing. This is simply cleaning up the image by adjusting basic things like sharpness, clarity, color, and temperature. 

You can also decide to use vintage file editing, warm black, and white editing, and HDR editing on one picture and you’ll end up with three different pictures that will save the cost and stress of organizing another photoshoot. 

Image source: https://expertphotography.com/photo-editing-styles/ 

Another editing style is a high contrast look. This gives the image a dramatic and edgy look. 

Image source: https://expertphotography.com/photo-editing-styles/

There are other editing styles including; mid contrast, matte finish, damaged film look, vintage film, cross-process, and many others dark and moody, and so on.

Just so you don’t limit your editing talents, below are some good video editing apps that you can use to make the most of your photo shoot:

3. Create Gifs

Graphics Interchange Format(GIF) is an image used for static pictures and animations. To create a gif, images are compressed into one file without reducing the quality. One of the major advantages of using GIFs is that they can tell a story in a flash. Again, Gifs are relatively small in size compared to other files. This makes them load online faster and without losing quality, they also give a professional look to a brand’s website or social media. 

The major reason you should make GIFs after a photo session is that with them, it’s easy to spread the word of the aim of your photoshoot all thanks to its size. However, with GIF, editing is not possible, because it has a limited color pattern which makes Gif images look dull when compared to other images. There are a lot of ways you can make Gif including; Photoshop, using mobile apps like; GIPHY Cam, Gif Me! Camera, Pixel animator: GIF,  Maker, or screen recording. Or you can watch a YouTube video to learn how to make a GIF

4. Create a short video

To get more out of a photo shoot session, you need to create awesome videos. To do this, you can use images taken during the photoshoot and string them together to form a video. Or you can make short and interesting video clips and post them as new content on your page.

To start with, keep your videos short so people don’t lose interest, start with something catchy, include subtitles, use good lighting. Background music can be added but ensure you don’t use songs without the rightful permission. You can use an external microphone for more audibility.

5. Before and after

Before and after pictures are usually used to show the aftereffect of a brand’s product or services but when used in a photoshoot, it shows a brand’s physical growth. Before and after pictures are not usually used in feeds or campaigns, but they are good for social media stories. They serve as a good way to build trust with your consumers. 

To create a Before and After picture, you need to gather images of your brand’s previous photoshoot years or months back and compare it with an image from the current photoshoot. This would serve as a physical proof (or testimonial) of your brand’s growth -and a backup to what the statistics are saying about your brand. 

Conclusion

Photoshoots are important in social media marketing because they serve as a new content idea to keep an audience engaged. So, instead of using your old images, or worse, using free stock images, you should think of carrying out a good photoshoot with your influencers to give your audience something new. 

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