Photos and Your Online Presence

Got some great pictures? Painters Courtney & Wise, our clients in Sydney, sure do! They sent me a collection of photos from the past few years, including everything from disgusting shots of moldy walls to lovely things like this photo of a regatta or something (no information on the images, so I get to use my imagination). We’re making good use of all these great pictures. Maybe you have some nice images hanging around that you’re not using. Here are some ideas for making the most of them:

  • Add photos to your profiles at Google Places, BrownBook, and the like. For Courtney & Wise, the photos of their work say a lot about the quality of their company. You might have pictures of your products in use, snapshots of people from your office, or images that show the character of your company.
  • Create a Pinterest board showing off all your cool stuff. I’ll be doing this for the painters, for sure. If Pinterest isn’t your style, there are plenty of other photo-sharing opportunities in social media, from Facebook to Flickr. (If you’re sharing  photos of public places, do your civic duty by sharing them on Picasa, where if you make them public they can be used to improve Google Earth.)
  • Make a slideshow for YouTube and add the video to Spoke, Google Places, BrownBook, and all the other profiles where you can add videos. Some places allow photos, some allow videos, and some allow both, so this step can seriously improve your reach. If you’re more of a PowerPoint user than a video maker, remember SlideShare lets you post your PowerPoints, and in some circles they’ll be shared more than a video will. Here you can see a video on the Courtney & Wise Spoke page:

  • Use the photos in your blog. That may seem obvious, but really it’s an opportunity to use images that you wouldn’t choose as profile pictures. In the example below, I’ve used some in-progress shots that don’t show the painting to best advantage — but they sure show that these guys are pros. This is also when you can crop details from a photo; I did a post on choosing between paintbrushes and paint rollers that used three inch sections of an 8.5×11″ photo. The pictures are nice and clear, and I can still resize the photos and use them for other things.

painters blog

  • I’m also using photos to illustrate articles at websites about painting and decorating. Many business directories let you write articles about your area of expertise, which is of course a terrific way to showcase that expertise. You’ll get a link to your website, and we’ve already found that Courtney & Wise gets good traffic this way. The shot below is from an Australian home decorating site, and you’ll see that it has not only a nice “visit our website” button, but also links to other articles I’ve written for the company.

Different kinds of content are good in different places. Having photos to work with expands your options. So if you have some in a folder on your computer, pull them out and put them to work.

 


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