How can I create meaningful content?

Having trouble finding your brands voice on social media? It can be hard to navigate and understand what you should be doing and how you should be doing it. These days, posting a photo and logging off won’t cut it, engaging with your audience is beyond important and will not only gain you a bigger audience, it’ll help sell your product or service even better. Lucky for you, we’ve put together five different points on how to create engaging content.

1) Listen to the analytics. What kind of posts get the most saves, likes, shares and comments? What kind of posts start a conversation with your audience? Use your analytics to help you create engaging content. Your audience engaging with particular content is them telling you what they like, listen! The more people that engage with your content, the more new people that will see your content and the more your audience and business will grow! When it comes to running your business through Instagram analytics are incredibly helpful.

2) Form a community! If one of your followers takes the time to comment or message you, take the time to respond. If you respond, they’re more likely to engage with your other content. Don’t just post a pretty image with a quick caption and go and ignore your comments or messages! This will create your own little community and make posting a photo that little bit more meaningful. Personally, if I take the time to message someone or a brand and they don’t take the time to respond (even if it’s three weeks later!), I probably wouldn’t engage again. Nobody likes talking to a brick wall.

3) Show your audience a bit of behind the scenes. It helps your customers and audience relate more if they can put a face to the name (or names!) and see that there is real people working behind your brand. This will help your audience feel connected and involved in the process. Extra points if you get on and start talking on stories, it helps your audience understand who you are, what you’re about and what your business is about!

4) Provide value to your audience. Why should people want to follow your business? Why should they want to comment on your posts? Are your posts providing value that another account isn’t already doing? If you’re selling a product, show your audience what your product is made of or how it is made. If you’re selling a service, share some tips and tricks that your audience can take with them and will remember. If they know someone who is after a service or product that you provide, you want your business to be the first one they think of. Content and creating a community is a two way street, you can’t expect your audience to be engaged without providing anything of value.

5) Use a tone that suits your audience. Nobody wants to read aggressive or super sales-y captions. People will get bored of it very easily and probably, stop engaging. Each business and brand will have their own tone of voice but make sure its one your audience can relate to and can understand. There is nothing worse than reading a caption and not understanding half of it. Also, cut that long caption in half. Most of us probably stopped reading after the first two sentences. Less writing, more pictures.

Finally, be consistent.

Imitation is not the highest form of flattery - how to find your own style.

If you’re a creative of any sort, you’ve probably heard the saying ‘imitation is the highest form of flattery’ and gently rolled your eyes at the thought of someone copying your work that you’ve spent years developing, flattering. It’s not. It never will be. Let’s throw that old saying in the bin and put our foot down to defend our right to our work and our brand, which takes time and effort to build and establish.

When you’re starting out in the industry, it’s hard to find your feet and it is completely normal to look towards your counterparts for guidance and inspiration but there is such a fine line between inspiration and flat out, copying. So? Here’s a blog post on how to find your own style as a creative and why you shouldn’t copy your creative counterparts.

1) Do your best not to look to other people for inspiration. Pinterest is the best option to create mood boards and find inspiration, where you can draw different ideas from completely different places and put ideas together to create your own style, figure out what part of the images that attract your eye you like and use the idea to create your own magic. Find inspiration in things around you, rather than from that creative you follow, copying isn’t worth it because 1) you always get caught and it’s an awkward conversation and you’ll lose your credibility as a creative. 2) the copy never, ever looks as good as the original and you will just get frustrated. There has been moments I’ve wanted to recreate one of my own images and I just can’t do it a second time.

2) Find your voice. In a world full of creatives with hundreds of people doing the same thing, you’ve got to find your own style and run like the wind with it. Find your voice by looking for things that really fuel your soul and you WANT to photograph, for me it’s colours, wine and beauty products. For you? It might be your morning coffee or your favourite Hydrangeas. You want people to see your work and go ‘is that yours?’ without even having to put your name, it’s what will set you apart from other creatives. The stronger and more distinct your artistic voice, the more likely you will seize opportunities.

3) Shoot for fun, shoot often. Even if I don’t have any work on, I always put aside some time during the week to do my own shoots so I can play around, find new techniques and create imagery that fuels my creativity. It also means you have a good collection to add to your portfolio, even if you’ve had no work. This also gives you the change to experiment and find your style, put different colours together and try different camera angles without the pressure of doing the images for clients.

4) Try new things, even if it completely fails. Do you know how many times I’ve taken images and thought ‘what the hell was I thinking with this one?’ maybe hundreds, it may be thousands. Sometimes I can shoot for three-four hours and hate absolutely everything. It takes time. You won’t become an expert overnight and not every shoot is going to be perfect. If one idea fails, try another. A lot of creatives see a perfect image on Instagram and think ‘how hard can that be?’ but in reality it’s taken hundreds of shots and hours editing. Don’t be too tough on yourself and always try new things, devote some time each week to experimenting and coming up with new ideas, rather than just adopting them from others.

5) Have a think of what kind of clients you want to attract. When you think of your dream clients, what do they look like? Write them down. Manifest them. Create imagery that if your dream client were to see, they would want to hire you because your style fits with their brand. A brand with a very sophisticated, neutral style isn’t going to go for a creative who does a lot of colourful imagery so figure out your style based on what type of clients you are intending to attract and give it your own twist.

So, have we covered all bases? Now go out there and have fun, play around with your style and don’t directly copy people in your industry. After all, we’re all friends here.

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery but really, it’s just annoying.

How to: set boundaries as a freelancer (a mini guide)

Boundaries? Who’s she?

When it comes to being a freelancer, switching off isn’t easy. You’re sitting relaxing with your friends outside of your designated ‘office hours’ and your phone dings, it’s an email from a client and you resist the urge to open it. Five minutes later, you open the email and now you’re in a deep spiral of all the work you’ve got to do for the client when you’re back in ‘office hours’. We’ve all been there.

It’s time to set boundaries! Here’s a mini guide to help you set some small boundaries that will make your life that little bit easier when it comes to freelancing.

1) Set office hours and stick to them. Do your best not to reply to clients outside of these office hours unless it’s urgent. This will help you stay present outside of work and prevent you from checking emails when you’re having downtime with family and friends.

2) Keep your conversations with clients in one place. If clients direct message you for rates, direct them to your email or another preferred method of contact. This will help you keep a record of conversations and keeps it professional. I personally have a lot of people direct message me on Instagram for rates which makes it really hard when my rate sheet is a PDF and sending it through any other way makes my skin crawl a little (a screenshot of the rate sheet just doesn’t work the same). It also makes it easy to follow up on people who have asked for rates rather than going through your DM’s trying to find them. So.. all conversations in one place, you got it?

3) Set deadlines for each scope of work. This will let your client know when the work will be completed by and prevents them from continuously asking when it will be finished. This means you can spend more time working on the project and less time on emails. If the deadline changes, you can always communicate this. If it’s a long project, keep them updated at each step. I know for me personally, a lot of photography work depends on the weather and if the weather man is wrong and it’s raining when it said it would be blue skies and sunny then it ruins my whole working day which means I always keep clients informed if anything changes. Communication is important but there is such thing as too much communication and it prevents you from getting on with the job.

4) Let your client know how many revisions of the project they are entitled to before you start. (Did you hear that? We said before, not in the midst of it!). This will help you with time management and ensure you don’t have to re-do the project ten times before they are happy. It will ensure you and the client both have a clear understanding of the brief and no ones time is wasted. Not every project or image is going to be perfect the first time around, sometime’s its a communication issue, other times it’s a misunderstanding of the brief. Either way, re-shoots and revisions are expected and you need to make time for them and think of this when deciding your rates!

5) Have a lunch break, a real lunch break. We know, sometimes it’s difficult to step away from the computer or a creative project but to keep working hard and being creative, fuel is necessary! Step away from the computer and turn off your emails on your phone for a set amount of time and sit and enjoy your lunch, properly. Your business isn’t going to crumble because you decided to have lunch. (we promise)

How to avoid the temptation to undercharge?

1) It undermines and damages the industry. Yep, we said it. The people charging low rates are usually hobbyists, which often means it doesn’t effect them in the same way it would effect professionals in the industry who use it as their sole income. If they aren’t hobbyists, they are selling themselves short and it won’t work out well in the long run. There is plenty of information out there that includes the ballpark rate you should be charging and where you should start, if you’re just starting out you don’t need to be charging the same as the creative down the road who has been doing the same as you for ten years but you also don’t need to undermine the whole industry and charge $10 per image. Find a rate that works for you, the quality of your work and is around the industry standard.

2) Raising your rates can be incredibly difficult, once you’ve lowered your rates and realised it’s not going to cover your time, it’s incredibly hard to raise them without upsetting your clients that have been paying discounted prices whilst getting premium products. Starting off with strong rates that reflect your work and cover your time will help avoid unnecessary conflict and clients going elsewhere. You want clients that appreciate your work, will pay you your going rate and appreciate that just like them, you’ve got to make a living wage as well.

3) You will attract the wrong clients. Yes. Is there such a thing as a wrong client? Yes. They want everything, for nothing and know no boundaries. They will be coming to you because you are the cheapest, not because you were their first choice. They’ve probably emailed or DM’d every product photographer in your area on Instagram and stopped until they found the cheapest. You want your clients to work with you because they genuinely love your work, not because out of everyone they contacted, your rates were well below industry standard. There is always going to be a market for really low prices, there is also a huge market of people that will be more than willing to pay what you want - and deserve. If clients really love your work and photography style, they will pay you for it.

4) Overworked and underpaid. There is nothing worse than burnout and charging less will see you at the end of the week tired, uninspired and not much to show for it money wise. You’ve spent a lot of time acquiring your skills and professional experiences and you’ve put your money into materials, resources and tools. Your rates should reflect your investment of time and money. This doesn’t mean you need to charge as much as the creative who has far more experience than you, it means find a price that is reasonable for your business and ensures you aren’t overworked and underpaid.

Don’t charge small dairy milk flat white prices when your work is worth large oat milk latte with a splash of caramel prices.

Four (good) reasons you should invest in product photography

Product photography may be one of those things within your business that you grit your teeth about and dread putting a portion of your budget aside for but we can assure you, it’s worth it. Your marketing budget will mean nothing if your imagery and advertising isn’t going to be captivating in the first place. Here’s some reasons you should invest in product photography and why it should be an exciting part of your business, not the part you dread.

1) Imagery of your product is one of the first things that customers see. It helps them understand your brand and what your product is, a vital part of your brand identity! It’s important to keep up your brands social media presence to remind your customers you are there and keep them engaged with your brands, beautiful imagery paired with great captions will help with this.

2) Visual content is forty times more likely to get shared across social media than other content. Want your product to reach a bigger audience? Quality content is key. Make your audience WANT to share your content! Fun content like stop motions or videos are also more likely to get shared as it can show a different side of your product.

3) 72% of customers believe that seeing Instagram images of a product increases their chances of buying it. Quality imagery is the perfect tool to create an emotional connection to your brand and helps your customer to visualise how the product will fit into their everyday life. The rule of thumb is that the customer needs to see your product at least 7 times before they'll take action to buy that product or service. Constant, quality content not only creates an engaging audience, it helps to sell your product!

4) Beautiful imagery can help evoke feelings, dreams and ideals associated with your brand, it helps to captivate and engage your followers, allowing them to be part of your businesses adventure. A well thought out, tailored Instagram feed with imagery that flows will help bring your brand to life like nothing else, if a brand has a beautiful imagery that showcases their product and an engaged community on their Instagram/Facebook, they’re doing something right.

Are you ready to take your imagery to the next level and engage your customers?