Where Photography and Social Media Meet
It may seem like a silly title, an obvious statement, but I don’t think it is. Photography and videography are one industry and social media is another. Yet you can’t do social media without visual assets, photography and videography. I started my business in 2014 because I worked in-house at large wine companies without enough assets to do my social media manager job. I would try to add shots to shot lists, I would ask for more more more, yet photo shoots were done in a very specific way, “the way it’s always been done.” Surprisingly, not a ton has changed.
I wanted Untapped Media to be all things content: creating assets in a way that was actually filling libraries and giving social media managers/marketers enough to choose from when building content calendars. I approach photography like a marketer, I take the time to understand the nuances of your brand, not just the photo we’re about to setup and produce. I want to know where your pain points are, what part of the asset library is lacking, how can I help produce what you need that’s on-brand and has variety. I include organic social media usage licensing in all of my projects, in some cases, email marketing and website. I’m pretty sure that the photography industry is going to revoke my membership card for doing this. My take is that if we don’t do this as professional photographers, we will be replaced by “content creators” who are influencers-turned-content-marketers, primarily versed in marketing themselves, by AI and by newbies to the industry who don’t quite grasp what our work product is.
Every shoot is an opportunity to nerd out. I build time into shoots to get various angles and compositions, the b-roll of the shoot. It’s my time to be creative - usually these shots are the ones that clients like the most, they end up on covers of catalogs or on email headers because they’re more than just a product photo. I want to produce this work, I know what it’s like, as a social media marketer, not to have enough to work with. There’s only so many ways to crop a hero image (if you even have the rights to crop!)
What I was hired for: holiday catalog imagery of product
What I got when I had the time to nerd out: ended up being the cover image of the catalog
What I was hired for: a brunch scene
What I got when I had the time to nerd out: usually pouring shots end up in social and in email - we have to fill the glasses anyway!
As a social media marketer, assets are one of the top things we need to talk about as we start our project together. Let’s figure out if you have enough assets to get through the next six months of content based on the content strategy. If not, where are the holes? What shoots can we put together to address this? When I work on your social media, I become your brand. I speak like your brand, I can anticipate what is needed, I can answer customer service questions, I know what assets I need to create content, and I know what works and what doesn’t for your community.
Bringing these two worlds together seems obvious to me. I’ve had a challenging time over the last decade communicating that these worlds can overlap, they have to. Find a partner in social media and content creation, or multiple partners, who understand the spaces. It will pay off in spades.
