Building your Image Library

Sign Promoter images offer an easy and worry-free way to share capabilities and ideas with customers without the effort of gathering photos yourself and worrying about the quality and obtaining permissions. However, if you want to build a photo library of projects you've produced you need to overcome these challenges, so here are some tips.

Getting good photos in your shop is easier than getting them "in the wild" (aka displayed at an event, show, store, business, etc.) Taking photos at your facility works best if you have a neutral backdrop rather than shooting a photo in front of your warehouse racking or on the production floor. An easy solution is to mount a rod on a wall or warehouse rack and hang a curtain that can be pulled across temporarily as a backdrop. This can be neutral or branded, and when not in use, the curtain can be pulled over and tied back out of the way. You can also produce a fabric backdrop, or if space allows, create a designated area to take photos.

If you decide to take photos in your shop, consider the lighting and test your equipment so you obtain good quality photos without shadows. These days a photo from your phone can be almost as good as a digital camera image, and there are inexpensive lighting accessories and tripods/phone holders available online.

Remember to always obtain permission to share the photo if you are want to use it for social media or marketing purposes, and ask the customer if they would like to receive attribution - which means identifying the company and possibly tagging them in social media. Some companies, especially larger corporations, have strict rules about how images with their logo can be shared.

Photos may be more impressive if they are taken "in the wild", as mentioned above. This requires that you either have someone who can go to the place where the signs and graphics are in use, or you rely on customers to send you photos. Both can be challenging, but one idea that might help persuade your customers to send photos is to provide an incentive or recognition:

Here are some ideas to recognize and reward customers who share photos and permission to use them:  

• Commit to sharing their photo in an upcoming proactive email engagement (Remember that Sign Promoter can customize your PDF's with photos you provide!)

• Print the submitted photos and create a feature gallery at your facility which you change out on a regular basis

• Share the photos on social media and tag the customer (with their permission)

• Provide a discount on their next order to customers who share photos with you

• Thank them with merchandise branded with your logo

• Offer a free product branded with their logo (something simple that you can print in-house and give them when they place their next order)
  

Now that you're building an image library, you must catalog it. There are many options for saving and organizing photos, and some of these are free or may already be part of the operating suite you use - Microsoft OneDrive, Google Photos, Adobe, and more offer photo storage. Flickr and Smug Mug are popular self-standing photo storage solutions. Whatever you choose, be sure to be diligent about loading and tagging your photos. The time it takes to add a title and keywords will be well worth it in the future when you can quickly search and locate photos to share with customers as examples of your work. I suggest including the Customer name, project type (retail, event, trade show, etc.) and the main product type (retractor, backdrop, wall wrap, etc.) in the title. Then use additional keywords to indicate other information that you can use to search and easily locate photos.

Once you've built a library of images, you will be glad you did! Sharing these images with customers legitimizes your business and gives them confidence, and sharing them with your employees makes them proud of the work they've done.