The idea of creating visual content for your brand can be very exciting. It’s a chance to get creative and find different ways of showcasing what your brand stands for visually, instead of just through words. An image is extremely powerful. It is said that the human brain can process images up to 60,000 times faster than it can with words! Visual images also transcend language barriers, so if you want your brand to resonate with people of all languages, it’s a good idea to ensure your visuals are well-thought-out and created with quality.
These are the four important things we ask our clients to consider and do, before we even start planning the photo shoot or the video storyboard.
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Set your goal
Goal-setting is asking yourself questions like:
What is my purpose for creating this content? Is it to promote a product or service or to educate and inspire? Or is it to position yourself as a thought leader in your industry? You need to know what want to achieve through creating these videos and photos. Whether its increased audience engagement or achieving your sales target (both can be very different).
It’s also good to keep your brand’s vision in mind from the start. Take ours for example:
Our vision is to help companies and professionals build their brand so
they can continue to make a difference in their area of influence. We believe in doing good
work that supports family life, healthy communities, and building a better future for all.
Which is one of the reasons we’re creating this blogpost for you! 🙂
Most importantly, you need to be clear about what your brand message is. In other words, what are the one (or two) things that you want to communicate to people about your brand or that you want people to remember about your brand. It should support your big dream / vision for your business.
2. Understand your audience
Now that you’re clear about what you want to accomplish with your content, you need to be clear about who your audience is. One way of doing this is by creating an audience profile. This means imagining specific people with names, lifestyle habits, and problems (that your brand can solve). These few profiles will represent your general target audience.
We have an easy-to-use template that you can follow to create your audience profile in our free eBook, available for download at the end of this article.
Once you have done your audience profiling, ask yourself,
“How can my brand help to provide solutions to his / her problems or ease the burden and journey alongside him / her?”
Asking this will help you create content that your audience will value.
3. Create content pillars
Your mission is to accomplish two things with your visual content:
- Consistently communicate your brand message.
- Create content that your audience will value.
There are many ways of doing this without sounding repetitive. It’s all about having a variety of ways to present the same messages. Planning your content by “pillars” will help you achieve this. The common content pillars are:
- Educate – Content that teaches the audience something new. It could be how your product is made or something that adds value to their lives.
- Entertain – These could be videos that are just plain fun, sharing truths about life but in a funny, engaging and easy to relate manner.
- Inspire – Make a difference in your audiences lives by inspiring them to take action. This content is meant to evoke emotions, be motivational, and can cover topics of life issues and the bigger picture.
- Inform – Informative content allows you to stay relevant with global trends and issues by helping your audience stay up to date with what’s going on. It could also involve information about your business or a Behind-The-Scenes peek into the life of your business.
- Offer – This kind of content usually has a clear call to action that is linked to the value of a specific product or service that you are offering. Content like this is for when you intend to convert your audience into customers. Focus on creating an irresistible offer that meets your customers needs instead of simply selling at them.
4. Choose a medium and platform
A medium refers to the format which you will present your content in. It could be an infographic, a photo, or a series of short videos. Think about the platform you want to use as well: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube are popular social media platforms for corporate businesses. But again, it goes back to your audience profile. A good strategy doesn’t use all platforms, but a combination that is unique to your brand and audience. Once you know your platform, you’ll have a better idea of how to create the right content for these platforms as well. In our free eBook we have compiled a list of social media platforms and the recommended use for each.
Get your FREE eBook:
A Beginner’s Guide to Creating Visual Content for Your Brand
Click on the button below to get your eBook! It has more details of what we discussed above and also includes a few secrets to how we achieve great brand and lifestyle images and videos for our clients. So the next time you work with a photographer or production team, you’ll have a better idea of what they’re talking about and trying to achieve during the shoot! You’re welcome. 🙂
