Do Not Spend Money on Photography Equipment! Do This Instead
As the owner of a marketing agency in Minnesota that specializes in creating content (photography and videography) and managing social media accounts, I can definitely attest to the never-ending search for new camera equipment many brands face. Nothing ever seems to be good enough, and there is always a new product or upgrade coming out. It can feel difficult to know what is right for your own brand and how much money is worth spending on equipment. Thankfully, if you are a small business, I have the answer: don’t buy any of it.
Now, that may sound hypocritical coming from someone who has purchased thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars worth of equipment and always uses the latest technology. However, you should take it as a great piece of advice because even though I use the latest and greatest items, I’m still telling you NOT to buy this stuff. Plus, I operate an agency that can handle all of your content creation needs for you. Long story short: stop worrying so much about how you are shooting your content and start focusing on just posting content! I have spent my whole career studying social media, running digital marketing campaigns for clients, managing budgets of various sizes, and working with both local and major brands around the country and the world. I promise you, buying the newest camera or lens is not what is going to make your brand successful, especially if you don’t know how to use it.
Side note: if your brand has the budget for equipment and you have trained professionals on staff or are outsourcing to an agency that knows how to operate the technology, then by all means do this. In fact, our agency offers an incredibly reasonable price to fulfill all of your digital marketing needs, including content strategy, content creation, and content distribution, which you can read about on our website https://www.thevividagency.com/about-us.
This article pertains to the businesses who are not posting consistently or utilizing social media because “they don’t have the right equipment.” Stop worrying about equipment and start engaging your loyal audience! If you are looking for a cost-effective way to capture social media content without outsourcing or purchasing equipment, we have a few tips to help you do so.
First, use your iPhone. If you don’t have one, go buy a new iPhone and use it. Seriously...you will not regret this decision. (If you can’t tell, we are Apple lovers.)
Second, find proper lighting. View this video we found that will help show you how to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb1EOA9DrzQ. This is specifically meant to show you how to adjust lighting when taking photos on your phone!
After that, watch this video to learn how to frame your photography to create a cohesive grid.
Next, download the Lightroom mobile app on your (possibly brand new) iPhone. This video gives you a short tutorial on how to run the app: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW8G7eeE14g
Finally, since we here at Vivid are all about making that Instagram grid look amazing, find some presets you like on YouTube. A preset is a sort of filter that adds a certain personality or vibe to your images. It is a great idea to find a preset that will work for all of your photos so that, with just a push of a button, each photo will blend and mesh nicely together. These are really easy to find across the web. If you are, let’s say, a restaurant that will be posting mainly photos of food, search for food presets. This video illustrates just a couple examples of presets.
There you go, you have now taken a mini course on how to be your own photographer. These are truly the only steps you need to take in order to capture beautiful and engaging social media content for your small business. If you have any additional questions or are looking for a long-term, more professional solution for your content creation, contact us via https://www.thevividagency.com/contact-us.
