How to Combine Writing and Photography to Grow Your Business
As an aspiring photographer, I made the same mistake for years.
After finishing a photography session, I’d curate the photos I wanted to post on Instagram, edit them in Lightroom, come up with a short, witty caption, and then hit upload. For the most part, my photos performed OK. But I never truly saw any substantial growth in not only my Instagram account, but also my photography career.
In late 2018, however, things changed. I travelled with my long time travel buddy, Greg, to Patagonia in southern Chile, hiked up to Mirador Las Torres, which consists of three epic, jagged mountain peaks and a turquoise lake, and snapped some of my favourite travel photos of all time. On our drive back to our hotel at the end of the day, I edited my photos for Instagram as per usual, but, instead of coming up with a quick caption, I felt like the story from the day needed to be told. So, as Greg drove us through the winding mountain roads as the sun set, I crafted a mini story instead. After reading and reading my caption, I hit upload.
The next morning, I woke up to a mountain of likes, comments and shares on my post, eclipsing any level of engagement I had ever received - and the notifications didn’t stop coming for almost 24 hours.
Inspired by the success my photo and mini story received on Instagram, I wrote a blog article when I got home chronicling our adventure that day in more detail, utilizing even more images throughout to help showcase the story. Fairly quickly, my Mirador Las Torres story started gaining readers. In fact, it’s still one of my most read travel stories on this blog.
The Power of Combining Writing & Photography
Now, increasing Instagram likes and blog views is great and all, but, as my Chile story alluded to, the real benefit of combining storytelling with photography is that, when done strategically, you can better connect and engage with your audience through your content. If you’re a business, that means better connecting with your customers and potential customers, too.
Sure, if you’re a business, I imagine you already combine writing and photography to some extent. But, to effectively harness the power of these two mediums and grow your business, you need to go beyond basic product pages, social media posts and web pages that simply describe your products and services, and start telling the stories behind your brand, sharing your expertise, and ultimately portraying the why behind your business. Strategically combining writing and photography can help you do just that.
Not sure where to start? Here are a few ideas for how you can start combining writing and photography to grow your business today:
Social Media Posts
As mentioned above, a lot of people (myself included) focus on the image when posting on social media, but put little effort into creating a compelling caption. If you post a beautiful image with a short caption, potential customers may stop on your post briefly to look at it, but they’ll quickly scroll past it, looking for the next beautiful image in their feed.
To keep your customers’ attention for a bit longer, try turning your social media posts into mini stories. To do this, first select a series of images that help tell a story. This could include behind the scenes photos from a recent project your team worked on, or the process of creating one of your products. Next, write your caption as a short story to help provide more context to the photos you’re posting.
By creating more of a story with your photos and caption, your audience (aka your customers) will spend a bit more time interacting with your post, ultimately generating more engagement. And, if you’re posting mini stories that align with your customers’ values, they will connect more with your brand, increasing the chances that they follow you and / or purchase from you.
To achieve this, your social media “mini story” captions don’t need to be novel length. Often, a short, well-crafted paragraph will suffice.
Blog Articles
Blog articles on your website essentially take the mini story concept one step further. However, there is one major benefit that blog articles have over social media posts: they’re housed on your website. Posting blog articles on your website is ideal because they can help build SEO and drive traffic directly to your site through search engines, limiting your business’s reliance on social media algorithms to attract new customers.
Blog articles are also one of the best ways to combine writing and photography to grow your business because the medium allows you to expand on the mini stories you’re telling on social media, giving your potential customers a chance to engage even further with your brand through more in-depth content.
The types of blog articles that work best for combining writing and photography to grow your business include behind the scenes stories of recent projects, company event recaps, and thought leadership articles. In particular, thought leadership articles work well on company blogs, as they not only position you as an industry leader, but also help solve your clients’ problems. It may seem counterintuitive to help solve your clients problems via a blog when you’re trying to sell them your service or product offering, but, if they start to see you as the go-to resource for fixing that problem, they will actually be more inclined to hire you in the future.
Case Studies
If you run a B2B business or service-based business, case studies are essential. Why? Because they’re proof that you can actually deliver the services you’re trying to sell!
Again, when crafting case studies for your business, focus on telling a story to keep your potential customers engaged, but structure it in a way that effectively showcases how you successfully solved a previous client’s problem with your services. The best way to do this is by first outlining the challenge your client faced. Next, dive into the solution, providing more details into the exact services you offered your client to solve their problem. Lastly, finish off your case study by highlighting the results of your work. This could be as simple as noting the key benefits your client received once the project was completed. If applicable, you could also provide some stats or analytics to showcase how much your services improved your client’s business, processes and / or marketing efforts.
When creating case studies, try to include a few photos of the project as well to provide more context and validation for your services. The photos could include some behind the scenes action shots of you or your team working, or they could showcase your completed work.
When creating case studies, try to interview your clients as well so that you can gain their perspective and feedback on your work. If applicable, ensure you also have the appropriate permissions from your client before publishing your case studies online.
Product Pages
The approach for writing strong product pages seems obvious: snap some high-quality product photos with a white background and write concise product descriptions to go along with them. The problem with this, however, is that basic product pages like this focus too much on what you’re selling, and not the reason why your clients should actually buy from you. Let me explain.
When a customer becomes loyal to a brand, it’s not necessarily because of the products they sell, but rather the vision, values and / or lifestyle the brand embodies. In essence, customers become loyal brand followers because of the why behind your business. When you portray your products on product pages with basic product photos and feature-heavy product descriptions, the why behind your products don’t shine through.
To help make your product pages more engaging for your customers, take a storytelling approach by featuring lifestyle photos that showcase your products in action. In the description, try to first align your product with your target customer’s values and ideals, and then dive into the features.
As an example, if you’re an outdoor brand selling winter jackets, you could start your product description by talking about how the coat was inspired by long winter treks through the mountains, and was crafted for those who love to explore. You could then include a few photos of people wearing your coat out in the snow and mountains to really convey that vibe on your product page.
Now, I’m not saying you should exclude basic product photos and feature lists; those still have a place on good product pages. But, again, try to incorporate writing and photography that helps better align your product with your customers, too.
Conclusion
Writing and photography are essential for all businesses, but not all businesses are using writing and photography to strategically connect with their target customers. The good news is that, if you want to elevate your brand’s marketing strategy, you can start combining writing and photography more effectively today on marketing channels you likely already operate.
To start, create mini stories in your social media posts, pushing beyond the quick, witty captions and telling the story behind your images. Next, write blog articles on your website, showcasing more of your expertise and the behind the scenes stories of your brand, while also driving organic traffic to your website. If you’re in a service-based business, develop strong case studies that highlight the challenges, solutions and results behind your projects, demonstrating to future clients that you are more than capable of completing their projects, too. Lastly, if you have a product-based business, push beyond basic product photos and feature lists, and use lifestyle photos and mini stories to ensure your products align with your customers’ values, beliefs and interests.
Toronto Commercial Photographer & Copywriter
Want to strategically combine writing and photography to better connect with your customers? I’m a Toronto-area commercial photographer and copywriter, servicing Toronto, Oakville, Burlington, Mississauga, Hamilton, Kitchener, Cambridge and beyond.