I just opened enrollment for the next round of Market Your Selfie. (If you know you’re interested, you can check that out here.) But that got me thinking about a conversation I had back in the spring with a friend of mine.
At the height of my frustration with Instagram, I told a friend that I was going to write a post called “Have we all been duped by Instagram?” (Which I did, and you can read here.)
“I don’t know,” she replied. “Don’t you teach a class on Instagram?”
“What class?” I asked, confused.
“Market Your Selfie.”
Now, I get why she, and you, might think that, but I want to set the record straight. Market Your Selfie is NOT an Instagram class.
It’s a photography class that includes a healthy dose of self-confidence and a solid foundation of content marketing.
Yes, you learn to take pictures of yourself or photograph your products on yourself, but those pictures have a much bigger place than your Instagram. In fact, as I like to say, if the only place you’re putting an image is on Instagram, you’re wasting that image.
Plus, pictures of yourself are so powerfully persuasive that you should absolutely be using them across your marketing. While you can actually find lots of uses for pictures of yourself (and I go over them all in Market Your Selfie), here are three of my favorites:
1. Your Product Pages
If you make wearable products, you absolutely need to be showing those products on real humans. It’s the best way to not only show scale to potential customers, but to show them how your products fit into their lives. There’s no doubt that showing wearable products on real people increases conversion.
Of course, these pictures don’t necessarily have to be on you. But hiring models can get expensive and asking friends can be a pain. Which is precisely why I switched to using photos of myself wearing my jewelry on my product pages. There’s nothing quite like the ease of designing a new product, taking a few pics on yourself, and getting it up on your website as quickly as possible.
And even if you don’t make wearable products, you can still make an appearance on your product pages. Inserting your hand into an image can show scale or implied use, and showing your face from time to time can help increase trust and emotional connection.
2. Your Email Marketing
The number one mistake I see most artists and makers struggle with when it comes to their marketing is that they simply aren’t emailing their lists enough. If you aren’t emailing your list at least every other week, you’re leaving money on the table. But after “I don’t want to bother people,” the biggest excuse I hear about why people aren’t emailing their lists is that they aren’t sure what to send out.
And that’s where pictures of yourself (particularly yourself with your product) come into play. The email strategy I preach is simple: one great image with some brief text and a CTA (that’s Call to Action) that tells people where to buy the thing (or things) in the picture. That’s it. No newsletters. No discount codes. Just sharing.
This is the strategy I use all the time in my own email marketing, and almost all of those emails contain an image of me wearing my jewelry. Because just like with product pages, images of your wearable product being worn absolutely increase conversion. And if you’re email your list every week or every other, you’ll need a healthy rotation of images to use. Which is exactly what you’ll learn to create in Market Your Selfie. (Oh, and spoiler alert: I will reuse the images I create for my product pages in my email marketing. Two birds, one stone!)
3. Your Blog
Like I said at the start of this post, if the only place you’re sharing your images is Instagram, you’re wasting those images. Which is why I always advocate posting social media images to your blog as well. (Because you own the content that way.) So even if you’re sharing images of yourself on social media, you should absolutely be posting them to your blog as well.
But the added benefit of Market Your Selfie is that it teaches you to be a content machine! Once you learn not only the technical aspects of shooting yourself (or your products on yourself) but also become more confident in front of the camera, you’ll find yourself developing all kinds of ideas for photoshoots. And once you’ve filled your product pages, those images can turn into lots of lots of blog posts. (And bonus: you can then share them on Pinterest too!)
When it comes to your marketing, blogging really has two benefits. One, it helps you get found. (By improving your SEO and giving you more content to share on Pinterest.) And two, it helps create trust and connection with your audience. (By showing them you’re a human.) And when you share pictures of yourself on your blog, it does both, by giving you more content to share AND by deepening the connection with your potential customers.
Marketing your business is about so much more than sharing pictures on Instagram, which is why I’m such a big proponent of using your images, whether they’re pictures of you, your product, or your product on you, in as many places as possible! Plus by thinking beyond Instagram, you’ll ensure that the images you’ve worked so hard to create work just as hard for you.
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Whether it’s your product pages, your email marketing, or your blog, if you’re struggling with any of these areas of your business, Market Your Selfie can help! Not only do I break down the technical aspects of photographing your products on yourself, I help you gain confidence on camera AND develop a content strategy that works for marketing your business. Click here for all the details and to claim your spot!