Tips on content creation for your business

Kathy Hogeveen, president of Touch Marketing stopped by our Studio recently. Touch Marketing offers various services such as Training Courses, Website Design, Social Media Branding, Web Design, SEO Optimization and Content Provisioning.

Kathy specializes in offering web presence consulting to business owners and helps them create effective online marketing strategies. She teaches her clients how to use the latest software as well as social media and mobile marketing platforms in order to grow their business. I figured her visit to the studio would be a great time to ask her some questions and learn a few things from this 30 year veteran.

Advice

I started by asking Kathy what the best advice she’s ever received was. She said it was to make sure to take time off. It’s important to not be working 24/7.

As for the best piece of advice she’d give? Do what you love and I can tell by her smile that she loves what she does.

Social Media 2015

Since Kathy is a social media expert, I wanted her opinion on what in regards to online presence, companies should be focusing on in 2015. Kathy stressed the importance of focusing on a comprehensive strategy, really figuring out what you want to your company to achieve.

And what should we all stop doing? Adding to the noise on social media. It’s important to talk to your clients. Create conversations instead of just “shouting” in your posts. She used the example of being at a tradeshow. Would you walk into a tradeshow convention centre and just start yelling at everyone? Of course not! You would walk up to a booth and start a conversation.

Also make sure that in addition to great photography, you also have quality content. Many businesses make the mistake of having one but not the other. Your online content needs substance. Once your amazing image captures your target audience’s attention, you need to be ready with something relevant to tell them.

Content Provisioning

Kathy and I discussed her work. I wanted her to tell me a little more about the Content Provisioning service she offers and why it’s important. She went on to say that a lot of small business owners are wearing many hats and find it very difficult to have the time to focus on Marketing. Marketing tends to be the one thing that businesses lack and what keeps the sales funnel going. It’s a real catch 22 for a lot of business owners. They don’t have the time or lack the talent (you need both) to write content, blog, post/create photography or videos. Kathy and her team help these business owners with their content strategy and help to do whatever needs to be done.

Importance of Quality Images

I asked Kathy how important from a branding and marketing perspective it is to use quality images on these businesses’ web/social media sites. Her answer? Vital! I definitely agree with her. Your imagery is part of your first impression and you only get one of those. You need photographs that portray your business in a positive and professional manner.

Next I probed about her feelings on stock photography. Here’s a direct quote, “It’s very difficult to find a stock image to tell your story”. She went on to explain that businesses all have a unique story and that stock images just don’t cut it. It’s much more meaningful and effective to get custom photography done.

Custom vs Stock Photography

There’s a perception that custom photography is too expensive; however most of the time securing royalties of a stock image can cost the same. The main advantage of having custom photographs is of course that you can create an image portraying the exact message you want. You can also get more out of your custom images by re-using them in different ways. Click here to learn more about the benefits of Custom Photography.

Balancing Content

Kathy and I discussed how businesses should be balancing their photo and video content. She told me that it really depends on the industry. If it’s a visual business, for example a real estate company great photography is crucial. Same goes for video. A great photo, video or virtual tour of the interior of a house can almost sell itself.

If it’s more of a knowledge based business for example a doctor’s office, more text is advised as people are coming to the site expecting to read information.

Video

My last question for Kathy was how does video come into play in regards to creating content? She said that businesses need to truly embrace video, if they want to move forward online because it’s been proven that people make buying decisions based on their emotions rather than logic.

Video is the best and really the only medium to strike a chord emotionally, because you get audio and visual together. You can also incorporate text into the video, as it can really drive home your message and also make your video search engine optimization friendly. Check some past videos our studio produced here.

Interested in more of what Kathy has to say? You can connect with her via Linkedin.

If reading this blog has inspired you to revamp your online presence and you’d like to learn more about our photography and videography services click here.