How to Best Capture & Feature Photos on Social Media
What makes for a perfect photo? Better yet, what makes for a perfect social media photo?
Think about it. What truly makes you pause your infinite Instagram or Facebook scrolling for 10 seconds just to soak in a striking display of visual imagery amidst the endless montage of off-centered selfies and unappetizing food pics?
Obviously, the answer to that question will vary, depending on who you ask (one man’s awe-inspiring mountain-backdrop selfie is another man’s perfect bench press from a tutorial photo). But one thing is for sure: the more immaculate the image, the more eyes there will be on your company’s content.
For starters, people are significantly more capable of processing information or having their attention captured through visual content. In fact, 65% of the general population identifies as visual learners, and 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual.
Once you’re able to balance stunning imagery with meaningful, relevant content related to your brand, your Social Media Marketing success will skyrocket!
This brings us back to our initial question: What makes for a perfect photo?
To truly capture someone’s attention via professional photography, you need more than a marvelous subject. It takes everything from attention to detail and lighting techniques to editing processes – and a wide variety of other capturing and posting components.
If your company wants to avoid being scrolled over for failing to post intriguing and striking visual content, here are a few tips to consider when it comes to perfectly capturing and featuring photos for your company’s social media pages.
Quality Equipment
If you want to shoot photography with the best of them, then you need to shoot photography like the rest of them. And if there’s room in your marketing budget, that means investing in top quality, professional grade equipment.
If your business often incorporates visual content into your website or social media profiles (before and after demonstrations, on-site documentation, project photo galleries, etc.), then investing in professional photography equipment isn’t a bad idea.
Professional-quality SLR cameras can cost you anywhere between $500 and $1,000 but will provide you with state-of-the-art photography capabilities, such as:
- Better focus points and viewfinder coverage
- Faster shooting and frame-per-second numbers
- Larger memory and data storage options
- More powerful processing power and larger image buffer
- More options for lenses and enhanced sensitivity toward light
The only setback with investing in high-quality cameras, aside from the money, is the extra training you’ll need to adequately handle and utilize such technology. But if photography is a crucial part of your visual content marketing strategy, then it doesn’t get much better in terms of quality when it comes to investing in top-notch gear!
Mastering Smartphone Photography
If spending money on professional photography equipment doesn’t seem to be in your digital marketing budgeting plans, then you’re still in luck (if you have a smartphone, that is).
Nowadays, we’re practically all carrying state-of-the-art photography equipment around with us in our pockets. But just because the image-capturing capabilities of smartphone photography have continued to evolve rapidly in recent years, doesn’t mean anyone can just perfectly utilize this intricate technology.
Now you don’t need to be a photography expert to take quality photos on your phone, but you also can’t just aim your iPhone at something and start snapping away.
Let’s start with the basics when it comes to shooting photos on your smartphone...
Preparation | You want to make sure all your photography settings are good to go before taking any pictures. Here’s a quick phone photo preparation checklist to conduct while you’re getting ready to shoot:
- Turn on the Grid feature to correctly frame your subject however you see fit (always utilize the ‘rule of thirds’ logic).
- Unless you have experience with white balancing, turn your phone’s photo setting to Auto White Balance, which will do a pretty solid job of finding the right lighting balance between your subject and its background.
- Touch the Exposure button and then click on the subject you want the phone to focus on, so your phone will adjust the exposure accordingly.
- Turn on the Image Stabilization feature on your phone, which will maintain focus on your subject, even if your hand or body shakes and moves the camera.
- Lock your photography settings in so you won’t have to keep adjusting them every time you’re getting ready to shoot.
Accessories | There are plenty of affordable pieces of equipment out there that will enhance and simplify your smartphone photography experience, including:
- Tripod: They come in all shapes and sizes to match your photography and phone needs, and they’ll do wonders for stabilizing shots, capturing various angles, and providing flexible, height-adjusting solutions when you need them the most.
- Ring Light: Great, inexpensive sources for adding a little lighting to your photos for when you’re shooting indoors. They’re also extremely portable and require way less maintenance than other professional lighting sources.
- External Lenses: If you’re trying to get more of that DSLR camera look for your phone, external lenses are an affordable solution to adding more clarity to your camera phone. They’re also extremely easy to attach to your smartphone.
- External Battery Charger: When you’re shooting photography on location, it can be quite an inconvenience to try and find a way to charge a low battery. External battery chargers help you always keep your phone charged on the go, so you can stay focused on your photoshoot.
Editing | It’s pretty safe to say that nearly every single photograph you see on social media has been edited to some degree. But it’s your approach to proficient editing techniques that will truly make your social media photographs pop out and catch more eyes. Aside from your preset editing options on your smartphone, a few editing applications to consider include:
- Photoshop Express: Provides an array of customizable editing options for the photos you take on your phone, including an extensive filter library, quick-fix technologies, in-depth color correction, and more.
- Snapseed: It comes equipped with tons of simple editing options, ranging from white balance editing, easy exposure alteration, contrast and brightness edits, defined saturation and sharpness, and plenty more.
- VSCO: Includes more than 200 different preset filters while also offering extensive video editing assistance.
Adding the Finishing "Features" to Your Social Media Photos
Once you have your beautiful photos captured, it’s time to master the art of posting and sharing them with your customers and followers.
From the hashtags you use with each post to the time of day you’re sharing photos, there is a variety of posting factors that play into how much engagement you’ll receive with your social media content.
One of the easiest ways to oversee all of these aspects of social media management is a secret weapon of a smartphone app called “Feature.”
Feature: Social Media Management Made Easy
Feature is a social media marketing app that will help your company create high quality, engaging social media posts that don’t come across as sheer advertisements and instead will provide your followers with timely, authentic content.
When you sign up for Feature, you begin by granting access amongst your team as to who can contribute to providing photos and content for social media posts. Whenever they upload content onto the Feature app, those users will also provide a caption to add context to their photo, be it a story behind the photoshoot or just simple who, what, when, where, and why facts.
After that, you’ll hand things over to the social media experts behind the Feature app. The team of social media managers at Feature will sift through all the content your company has uploaded onto the app, choosing which photos will work best to provide the most engagement with followers, as well as combining them with relevant, effective content.
Complimentary service features from the Feature app include:
- Caption and hashtag assistance
- Cropping or editing images as needed
- Adding graphics or accompanying information when appropriate
- Creating a strategic posting schedule for your chosen social page(s) and more
When you’re able to collaborate with experts on accumulating and producing relevant, quality, and engaging social media content, your brand will only continue to grow stronger with each post, like, share, and comment you collect moving forward!
Better Manage Your Social Media Through Triton Commerce
Finding the time to enhance and manage your online and social media presence with quality visual content can be easier said than done. If you’d rather leave your company’s social media pages in the hands of digital marketing professionals, we’re here to help!
Our team of social media specialists can equip your business with the creative content solutions you need to enrich your social media presence, from professional video and photography services to social media management. Contact us today to get started on your free Digital Marketing Plan!