Tips to leverage & build momentum from your business event photography
There is a lot of work that goes into creating an event, so being able to build momentum from it is vital, especially when putting it on for your business. That’s why I wanted to put together this list a easy ways you can use the images captured at your event to leverage the marketing power of them and engage with more viewers.
Share on social media (Daily highlights)
This is my favourite, especially for those of you running multiple day events and want to get more people through the door for the next day or two. This is also great if you want to use the imagery to build your personal brand or promote tickets for upcoming events you’re running regularly. One of the parts I offer in my event photography services is to deliver a selection of images the next day so you can start to publish and share the experience straight away.
I’ve found through years of doing this that when a client, ie you, share these images, the participants engage with them more often which leads to greater social media reach, especially through Facebook & LinkedIn, meaning you get more organic reach for your marketing. If you start to get the participants commenting on the post as well, it gives you instant feedback on the experience and more than likely, positive social proof reviews that future participants will see, resonate with and book for the next one.
2. Make sure there is branding in the background
This one ties into the first time really well. When you dress your room, ensure there is branding in the background. This could be branding for yourself, event sponsors or stall holders, depending on the type of event. This seems too often be an underutilised piece of event branding because every time a participant takes a photo, do you want them to look at it and be reminded of you? Or have other see the image when it gets shared online? This could be banners, sponsor holding page on slides during breaks or even branded clothing so when someone inevitably wants to take a selfie with you, your branding is there!
From the photographers perspective, I know that the images I capture will be shared far and wide and often in places I didn’t even know existed. One example was an image captured of a university lecturer who loved the photo so much that she used it as her primary campaign image when running for council which meant it was seen far and wide, across multiple news outlets and social media. This was great for my client and the university who both had their branding in the background!
3. Create blog posts with the images to talk about specific moments (but tell your photographer the highlights you really want to feature)
I love this one. Although Blogs were one of the early forms of content sharing on the internet, mainly because the bandwidth originally couldn‘t handle video well, it’s still a great medium. There are three main benefits that I see with using blog posts to share images from your events.
First, you have a more storytelling capability. With the format of blog posts using being long form content, or somewhat long form, then you can really share some more of the details, stories and moments from the event that may get lost on social media. These moments could be some of your favourite, a recap of the highlights or the 5 funniest/take aways/impactful moments from [your event here]. You get the idea.
Second, it helps with your SEO. If you do a little bit of keyword research before posting your blogs, you can target them to certain keywords that your ideal attendee could be searching the web for. For me, it might be Gold Coast Event Photographer or event photographer brisbane (see what I did there? Haha). The more posts I create that have those search terms, the more likely Google is to index my site and match me to them when someone searches. So I’ll ask you this, what would be your top 5 search terms per blog post?
Thirdly, data. I love the term, data driven decision making; and I’ll explain. Data is really valuable to helping you market your business and events better. When you can understand more about your audience, their demographics and interests, then you can do more targeted advertising, messaging and spend less money in the process. The two forms of data that can help drive this are Google Analytics for demographic information and search terms as well as Facebook retargeting for ad campaigns in future. See, when you drive people to your website, you have a lot more opportunity to capture data to repurpose over time. This could also include adding a lead magnet into your blog post to capture prospects and start them on an automated email sequence.
4. Share in a media release. Give the media what they want and fast.
What might feel like a slightly old-fashioned style of marketing is the media release. However, don’t underestimate the potential reach it can have! Traditional media has been through many phases and are constantly evolving with the times and trends, although sometimes slowly. With where journalism is at the moment, there is a massive cry out for good and interesting stories to publish and because there are less journalists working now, they have more pressure to get stories published quickly. This is a phenomenal opportunity for you to send in a good story that might have happened at your event or come from it.
Due to the time poor nature of the industry, when you send the story accompanied by a couple of images (remember to send vertical and horizontal versions) that match and are of high quality, you’re likely to get it listed either online or published in print.
I used to be a columnist at a local newspaper that got me massive publicity for writing a weekly article. I now have over 200 published articles and a few hundred images published in magazines, blogs and newspapers around the world. Even now, I write my own stories, send them to an editor with accompanying imagery, a caption to credit it and it’s often published the next week. If you’re doubting this method, I would encourage you to give it a try because it is still very effective.
Whether your event is to launch a new product, open a venue, empower attendees to be better business leaders or train them in something new, send a media release and leverage the imagery that gets created.
I remember doing an interview with Mickie Kennedy who founded eReleases which lets you put a media release out across the US newswire for about $400USD. That’s potentially a massive audience to reach for a minimal investment.
5. Create a highlight reel
My final tip for this post is to create a highlight reel. If you work with me, we may end up creating a video highlight reel as part of your package, but there are other ways to do it, too. When you get your daily highlight images, or even your final delivery, I recommend putting a ‘Reel’ together. This is a 60-seconds or less video that could be clips from what my team & I have filmed for you, or, a selection of images presented like a slideshow.
If you’re trying to get traction on social media now, video is one of the best ways to do it and using accompanying images starts to create a well-rounded campaign. By creating a ‘Reel’, you can use it to share on Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, LinkedIn & Facebook Reels as well as any other platforms you’re using. I work with clients on a regular basis to develop this type of video content for them as well as in some of my own personal projects, and even if they’re starting out from 0 followers, consistently creating for this format has proven to create incredible results in a variety of industries. One of my clients reached 26K+ followers in 2 weeks on TikTok with just 7 videos because of the strategy we put in place.
I hope that these tips help in creating even greater reach and results from the use of your event images.
If you would like to discuss more about your upcoming event and how myself and the team might be able to help capture the Emotion, Energy & Engagement of it, I invite you to CONNECT.
