Bring your brand images into focus
There are two inescapable facts about our digital world that for some reason always surprise people when I say them:
The window of opportunity to capture someone’s attention is, at best, a few seconds.
Images help. A lot.
Despite these two inescapable and completely not new trends, professional communicators continue to put most of their energy, thought and resources into the words they post online while treating the images as an afterthought. If that’s you, it’s time to change your thinking. I don’t see either of those trends slowing down any time soon.
Take for example the image accompanying this post. This picture was taken by the wonderful Angela Divine Knox, a photographer and branding expert here in the Twin Cities and CEO of The Divine Group. Angela and I spent a lot of time talking about what I wanted my brand to be “like” online. We picked personality attributes for my brand – professional but fun, expert but not stuffy. And then we created images to match. I also wanted to show a bit of my own personality since the company is (at this point) a solo venture. So I picked fun props that say something about me. In this example, I love turtles (both the animal and my favorite band, Trampled by Turtles). And I love succulents – this “turtactus” is one of more than 50 plants that I own.
In all, the images we took during our photo shoot accomplished exactly what I hoped. They portrayed me as professional but fun, expert but not stuffy. They were bright and happy, and they truly represent both me and my brand. In the months since I launched Serna Social, I have received many compliments, and I would say that at least half of them have been about the pictures on my website and social media channels. Why? Because images are the thing that people are attracted to, and very often, they are what people remember.
Now obviously there’s more to me than turtles and cacti. I am an avid baker. I love to ride my Peloton bike (yeah, I’m one of those people). I love my dogs. And I love to do jigsaw puzzles. But taking a photo of me having fun, with a turtactus, while riding my bike, baking some cookies, completing a puzzle and walking my dog is not only impossible, it’s not advisable. Such a photo would have totally muddled my message. You have to learn how to edit yourself when it comes to your images. All of those facts about me are cool, but they don’t further the story of my business or my brand. Ask yourself: What are you trying to convey? If your answer is more than about two things, you’ve overcomplicated.
To quote Donald Miller’s excellent book “Building a Story Brand,” How many sales are we missing out on because customers can’t figure out what our offer is within five seconds of visiting our website?
It may seem impossible to get to that kind of simple clarity. But I encourage you to try. Because again, people aren’t going to take the time to understand complicated. Your online message has to be clear – so clear it’s obvious in an instant.
Here are a couple more statistics to chew on:
As of 2015, the average human attention span had shrunk to just 8 seconds – shorter than the attention span of a goldfish. Anyone want to guess if that number has gone up or down in the last six years? (See article in Time)
The average person scrolls through 300 feet of content on their phone every day (as reported by Facebook Global Creative Director Andrew Keller) . That’s equivalent to the height of the Statue of Liberty if you need a visual reference. And that’s a statistic from 2018. So chances are that figure is even higher now, and that’s average users. We all know there are people who doomscroll way more than that.
Facebook posts with images have 2.3X more engagement than those without images (BuzzSumo)
When people hear information, they're likely to remember only 10 percent of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65 percent of the information three days later. (Brain Rules)
So… If it’s been awhile since you refreshed your brand’s imagery, or if your imagery lacks the specificity we’ve been talking about here, it may be time for a bit of a refresh. Remember: you aren’t very likely to get people back once they’ve scrolled on by. So you have to do everything you can to capture their attention when you have the chance. All eight-ish seconds of it.
Final thought: if this type of content interests you, give Angela a follow on Instagram. She’s always posting tips and pointers on brand photography.
Disclaimer: I’m not paid or compensated in any way for endorsing Angela. In fact, I gladly pay her for her amazing counsel and photography.