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<\/a>possible to quickly and easily include pictures, videos, and other types of content other than simple text. This will enrich your content and give your customers even more to talk about.<\/p>\nIn the most general terms, your images will be of people, places and things. All three categories can have a place in your social media usage.<\/p>\n
The \u2018people\u2019 category is a rich category, as you can consider posting pictures of your self, your staff, and your customers.\u00a0 At Sweet Flour bakery in Toronto, owners Rich and Kim Gans take a photograph of the\u00a0 \u201cCustomer of the Day\u201d that they feature on their website and in their social media. Recently, the customers included a two-year old boy named Lucas enjoying a cookie filled with candy.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s very likely, then, that Lucas\u2019 family will email that link out to their friends and family.\u00a0 Another blog post featured a customer named Nick, who was referred to as one of the bakery\u2019s \u201ctop Twitter fans\u201d. This alerts customers that Sweet Flour has a twitter presence, but does so in a somewhat unobtrusive way. Both of these blogs posts have potential customers to the site, and eventually, to the store.<\/p>\n
It is important that you have your customers\u2019 permission to use their pictures, and it never hurts to get them to sign a simple photograph release: a single piece of paper that says \u201cI give permission to <store name> to use my image in their online communications. I also allow them to use images of the minors listed below.\u201d Then have a space for them to sign and to list the names of any children under the age of 18.<\/p>\n
Photographs of places: your store, the environment around your store, and even the city where your store is, can be very evocative. Somer Deck is the marketing manager at the Fifth Street Public Market, a small shopping center featuring locally owned, non-chain stores. Somer identified key benefits of using images in her social media messages:<\/p>\n
\u201cAnytime I try and do any sort of campaign, it\u2019s always more important for me to implement pictures than it is necessarily text, because customers identify with that.\u00a0 They identify with our logo, with the fountain (that is at the center of the market). That\u2019s just such an important part of who we are, is showing that it is a lifestyle; it\u2019s not just a place where you come and buy jeans or kitchenware.\u00a0 You can do all of those things, for sure, but you can also bring your kids down here and play with the ducks in the fountain.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Fifth Street Public Market also does a great job of taking pictures of the changing seasons, which also serves to remind customers that as the seasons change, they need new merchandise for the new season<\/p>\n
In my next post, we\u2019ll talk about the final category, \u2018things\u2019, as well as consider the pros and cons of consumer generated media.<\/p>\n
– Kim<\/em><\/p>\n