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Lesson Info

Building Your Brand with Images

if you're with us before the break, you probably heard me say the assignment was to change something on your about page. Maybe you updated the photo that's been there forever. Maybe you added some press that you've received over the course of your career. Maybe you decided to change the language in the messaging instead of just doing that formal bio that Adam was talking about. Maybe you talked more about what you're actually how you're serving your audience and the unique offerings that you have. So I want you to type in the chat room and let me know what you changed. If it was one thing, a couple of things I would love to hear. Our in studio audience, unfortunately, didn't have time to do it yet. So it's up to all of you at home that are on your computers right now and go ahead and type in and let Khalili and kind of know what you change on your about. Page. I do have some tweets already from folks who tweeted out a link to their new about page with the hash tag. Melanie live for us ...

to check out way too. We've got Diana brand Meyer did that. We have Diane Williams did that and Patricia Night, so we'll check him out. So anything in the in the actual online chat rooms that anyone tell us anything they changed? Or is everyone still kind of working on? I know it's a pretty steep assignment for 15 minutes, but sometimes we work well. No good trainer Jay Noir says. I added an intro and testimonials. Perfect job. Jane, scrapped with Chris, said Yes. I changed my about me and made it more about what I could do for my customers. Love it. And Tina Harris, Photo said. I didn't change my about about page because I didn't have one. So I'm adding one even better and again. Photo fabulous. I change how the client will feel before, during and after the portrait that creating that story, the experience, the transformation and victory Girl says. I put it into first person and changed the content quite a bit good. I love when there's actually stuff we can do during the workshop that if people are seeing results in changes and that about page is such a great place, toe really start and dig in, so we're going to start talking about images. Surprise. Three days on Pinterest How could we not talk more about images but specifically how to build your brand with images and just to kind of bring you back to some of the things we talked about on Day one? I know it feels like years ago for a lot of us, but back on day when I shared with you that 90% of information that's transmitted to the brain is visual 90% and that visuals or processed 60,000 times faster in the brain and then text. So now that we're consuming more and more information than ever, now that there's more stuff out there to read toe, look at to engage with images seem to be the best opportunity to capture our audiences attention and get them toe, learn and connect with us further. So what I want to do with all of you in studio and also all of you on the World wide audience is identify and work together to find some additional opportunities for you to be using images in your marketing because you might be nodding along with me and saying, OK, yes, I understand I'm supposed to be using images, but what does that mean, like for my product photos? What if I I sell services? How am I supposed to use images for that? So how convenient. We have six ways to use images in your marketing. The first, of course, is pretty obvious is in social Media, and I'm not gonna talk specifically about Pinterest's. I think we've covered those bases pretty well in terms of images. But let's pop over and talk about Facebook for a second and talk about your cover photo and I want to know in the audience and also the worldwide audience how many of you currently are strategically leveraging your cover photo on Facebook? Show hands an audience? Nobody. How about worldwide audience mixed? Maybe a few people are doing it, But just from my own experience of browsing online, I don't tend to see very many people using their cover photo and any really strategic way. Maybe you found an image you liked online. You kind of just blew it up. And that's your cover photo. Maybe you were one step better, and you have some pictures of yourself or your products of your business and that's your cover. Photo is our only audiences. It pretty mixed is that actually, we actually have quite a few people saying Yes, they're raising their hand saying me ideo Nadal Hickson says. I have in the past during promotions very cool. So yeah, cover pose could be a great place for running a sale or promotion. Or there's some sort of irrelevant theme going on to use that we talked about luxury monograms when I ran the Pinterest contest that we actually used our cover photo on Facebook to promote the Pinterest contest just to get that social media integration that boost. So I'd love to know worldwide audience. Since you guys are doing this, which I'm so proud of you for doing, go ahead and type in the chat room and let me know. How are you using it? So we heard from Natalie that you're actually using it for promotions. Are there other ways you're using it because I want to show you my favorite way to use my Facebook cover photo and that is, or lead generation? You heard me say it before, but actually having a specific called action and what happens is when you click a cover photo on a Facebook page, and a lot of you probably know this when you click it, it will then expand. It'll pop open and you'll be able to see the description area where you can put a link somewhere. So what we do is we offer a free guy where they can click, sends them to a link to an opt in page, and they can sign up. But you could use this in a lot of different ways. Maybe you want to send people to a special event page you're running. Maybe there's a featured product. I've seen some product sellers that will have a product of the week. It could be a discount. It could just be a feature, so they're not discounting the actual price, but they're just showcasing that particular product from their line. Could be the same for one of your services, but are we getting any good ideas or any fun or useful? I like to hear from all of you because there's so many amazing, inspiring creative people out there, and I love to know what you're doing because it inspires me to try new things as well we do have, we have vitality. Who says we use our logo and a professional head shop? But we did it after we started to follow you. Melanie Wondering Putting it into action, Adrian Far says, I use my fashion work to showcase my work before people even go to my page. Beautiful. We have a pomegranate who says I've made a collage to highlight products Very neat. So what I encourage you to do is add some sort of a called action. So even if it's a collage of your products, you could have a shop here button or click here to shock now something that actually gets them to take action instead of passively looking. It's a very important optimization strategy. And recently, more recently, I think, within the last few months Facebook does now allow us to have a call to action in the cover photo, and that's something that changed for a while. They said, No go. Cannon knows this. Well, I do know that, but also that's what people are saying in here as well last year, Monta says. Last year, Facebook didn't allow that. If this has changed, I need to update my proper pick. So it has changed. It has either. Yeah, it's changing knowledge. People know about it, which is why I think a lot of people haven't done this yet. Updated it something else to be aware of. And I've heard this has been recalled as well. But sometimes Facebook swings back and forth is a lot of times they don't like your images to be more than 20% text and Miss Porterfield, who will be here this weekend to teach you about Facebook on the Have your website work for you workshop. We'll tell you more about this because she told me that you can now have more than 20% text, but I tend to not do more than 20 per 10 20% anyways. On that's a rule that normally is also for your images and posts. So when you do photo updates, if you choose to promote them, you know how you can actually pay to promote your post. We're not going to go down that rabbit hole here about what the next workshop is for, but if you have more than 20% text a lot of times year, it won't be approved to promote so just something to keep in mind As you're doing images on Facebook. There are more regulations about how much text versus the overall size of the image ratio. But every time almost every time you see me two updates on my Facebook page, it is with a photo. And we talked about this yesterday when you were doing integration on social media. I said, You can actually put a link to one of your particular pins are linked to one of your particular boards as a status update on your Facebook page. I said that I normally still take a screenshot or save the image, and I load that instead of just using the auto generated because the auto generate is normal, like this big, and you can see when I do an image. It's this big, so it gets more attention in the news feed. It looks I think it looks better on the page. I, of course, do have my favorite my images. This is something I recommend when you are using Facebook to focus on primarily using image updates, and there's tons of research that backs that up. That Facebook post with images are the ones that have the highest engagement, the most comments, the most shares. So images or something that are not limited to Pinterest that really can be used across. Ah, lot of social media like instagram course we to talk about Instagram. We can't not talk about Instagram. So this is something I recommend using if you have a visual type of business, if you have a visual type of business, Instagram is a great way to connect with an audience to showcase what you're doing. And it also tends to have a very informal tone. And if you're looking for me right now and you don't see entrepreneurs on Instagram, I actually changed it right before this workshop to Melanie Duncan, 77 just because it was a little bit difficult to find a spell. So if you want to buy my Instagram and it's Melanie Duncan, 77 it's not entrepreneurs, and he worked. I want you guys to be confused, but the way that I use Instagram, first of all, we talked about for content creation. I will actually take photos on Instagram because of all the cool filters in the different frames, and I will use those for content for my behind the scenes board on Pinterest. But I also use Instagram as a very different way to interact with my audience and maybe some of you that uses can attest to this. But it seems to be a much more intimate and personalized experience. Even as a brand on Instagram and I was reading some fascinating article on Instagram, their day that was talking about there is one of the highest engaged social media platforms like it has the most amount of for the amount of followers. Like people like photos more than they do necessarily on Facebook, they tend to spend more time on instagram. People seem to be very interactive and very invested if they use this platform. So as much as I'm gonna encourage you to use Pinterest, I think using Instagram as well a lot of the stuff can cross over. Now I am an advocate for Pinterest over Instagram. If we're going to go there on Lee for the reason from a marketing perspective, if you can't post length actually below the images and your photos don't link anywhere so you can have that one link unless I'm missing something you could have that one link, actually in your profile. But for me, for optimization, for traffic, having images link is really where it's at. And that's why I spend most of my focus and why I mostly teach focusing on Pinterest versus Instagram because that's always the battle of social media, right? We're always talking which platforms right for me. How much I abusing this and that. And you always want to look at what their overall goals in which platform is going to serve out the best. And if what you're looking for is traffic being able to increase sales, that sort of thing. Pinterest is great for it, but for creating visual content and really building some or intimate relationships for the visual content. Instagram is awesome for that too. Any questions so far? Okay, we're good. Have been following. All right, We're not going to spend too long here because we did talk about that's already. But email marketing is another great place to actually use image images. Most of my emails actually have an image in them, so most of my emails will say, have a little intro high So and so you know this is bubble blah. Here's why I'm emailing you. And then they has an image with a strong called action I use called actions in my pins. I use them all over my website. It's called Actions are very, very important and optimizing and helping people understand what you want them to dio. So in all of my emails, I have an image almost every single one of my emails. I have an image and I actually have a called action because if you look at a normal image of an email, it probably looks something like this, right at the prettiest thing in the world, unless you have some really cool templates, will notice a bunch of text and some lengths versus having an image. This is essentially a very similar email. This is part of our follow up, but kind of talking about the same thing. But look at the different visual experience, having an image in an email versus having just all text in links. And like I said, I am a strong advocate for having everything link, just like it's important to have all of your pins have links, so people know that when they click on them, they're actually going to go somewhere. It's going to do something. I make sure every image in my email takes them somewhere. So here it's gonna take them to registration page when I mail a new video or a new BLAWG post to my Melanie Duncan V. I. P List. I have a snapshot of the video with the play button. Kind of like I showed you a loaded on that Pinterest board for our increasing traffic strategies. I'll actually have an image of myself. It's usually some super flattering freeze frame, right? Can anyone else get a good freeze frame on YouTube? Oh my gosh, I'm sure a lot of you watching this live are having a great time watching my different faces. I watch the rebroadcast, and I had a little bit of slow Internet in the hotel, and I was just cracking up at the different faces freezes you out while it's loading. So anyways, I try to find the best the best screenshot possible When I paused my YouTube video, and I will take a picture of that or have an image if there's going to be a video play, buttons tend to work really, really well in emails. If you want to get click through whenever you're using email, you've got a couple of hurdles to overcome. You gotta have a good subject line that actually get them to open the email. And then once they're looking at the email, not on Lee. Do you want them just to read it? But there should be some overall goal, whether it's just to get them to your website, to read your block post or to look at your video, whether it's just shop something that you sell. But there's always should be a goal and a strong action that can be amplified with an image in your emails. That makes sense, everyone. So play buttons are also cool if you're gonna send them to a recording or a video somewhere on that block post, I recommend having some sort of sort of a play increases click through. But just to really get into the gritty here on you, you never wanted to obscure your face if possible. So it's a video of yourself instead of having the play button right here, if possible. If you take a screen shot and don't have the play button open, you can get like a transparent play button. Just go to Google type images like transparent play button, and you couldn't drag it into the lower third or something like that. So they still connect and see your face. Any questions about this? So far? I went back to email. You guys too much. I love it, But we have a few questions, Um, and one that I saw. Let's see. Yes, LTP Tips on avoiding the spam folder when using images and email. Yes, great. Great question. Ah, lot of things you can go with that the best way. I guess that used to answer that question is, you want tohave A good text to image ratio. If you don't have any tax in years, have an image. It tends to get marked as spam. Um, e mails that have mostly text tend to not get marked a span. So what you want to do in including images like this is a longer email. I try to have at least 50 50 when possible, I will have loomed. Usually I'll have a little bit smaller email like it's a video. It's not gonna be quite this tall oven image, but I'll still have a good few paragraphs in the beginning and a few paragraphs of text at the end for spam and also just for general content marketing to have some text in there. But you do want above the fold is important emails as well. So you want to make sure that people are seen at least part of that image. You don't wanna have, you know, 18 paragraphs of text cause they probably won't even see in their in box. And there's image in that email. Serena is in a related sort of question, is asking about email lists and the new Gmail features on how emails are sent to the promotion. Have ideas about that that day for me? Yes, so to clarify, Gmail recently did something without permission of its users. They, I think, don't get me started. I think they were trying to do. It was a way to serve their users. And so they started classifying emails they thought might be promotional or from businesses into a promotions folder which most people weren't aware of, didn't know to look for. So they missed a lot of emails from someone like me. Like most likely because of the lists the size of list I have. I send you a special offer, an email of free training. You were missing it unless you go in manually, select Oh no, she's I promotion. She's someone I want to hear from. Eso was the question like How to avoid that are just to hear me whine about it the way you know there's no way to avoid it. The best thing to do is to let your audience no. When that happened, a lot of people that were in similar industries me we posted on our Facebook page and said, Hey, here's what's going on and then took screenshots. Here's exactly how to add me to group that area, and that's kind of the best thing. You can dio and contact your local congressman and tell them to stop doing this because it's mean. I think they got a lot of backlash from it. So maybe it'll change but just kind of informing and educating your audience and melon and just had a quick question that several people juicing with Julie, you and Michelle in R V. A. Had back to the Facebook cover photo. They were so a little bit confused about how that call to action button can actually work on that Facebook cover. How do you actually get it? Teoh have a clickable link, so it's actually just an image. It's not a clickable link. All it does is expand, just like how, If you click on any image on Facebook, expands image, then brings up the description box. Same thing for your cover photo. So that was just a It's just a graphic. If there's not any coding and that actually links wasn't right, right, we ask you, I don't know how to code that I just made the button and showcasing your products with images so so important you want to go beyond basic product shots and display your products in context of how they're used in real life. And I am bringing this up because even though it seems common knowledge, it's not common practice. And any time there's something that's common knowledge and not common practice, you're going to see me kind of getting your face and harp on it, cause it needs There. Needs to be Change is gonna need a nudge in the right direction, something we did really smart from the beginning with my home decor brand luxury monograms is we never just did basic product shots, but we actually would show them in the context that they're used and in a context that was in line with our brand. So not just demonstrating. I could have put this on, you know, a couch somewhere and snapped a product shot. But if it wasn't a couch that looked like it was part of a room that are ideal customer would want to have in their home, we're still not going to make that connection. So it's very, very important to have your products used in a way that evokes the experience. I no, I'm saying that word a lot, but it's a huge part of marketing the experience or customers have and the experience that they want to create with your products or services. So any time you're selling products, you want to feature them in a context. You know, any time you sell a necklace, of course, you're gonna have probably your standard product shot. Where there, you know, it's just on a white backdrop or something like that. But you also want to show it show it on, you know, a girl or a woman or whoever would wear it so people can see the scale. That's one of my biggest pet peeves. When I go to buy jewelry or earrings or something, and they just have them on a white backdrop and I'm going, well, how big is that in relation to the ear necklaces? Anyone ever try to buy a necklace online? And there's just a picture of your going Is it down to my belly button? Or, you know, like, how do you really gauge and, ah, lot of people will put length. Some people don't, which I don't understand, but it helps best just to see it. You know, we're talking about how visuals are the most effective I personally look at. Oh, this is three and 1/4 inches long, and I'm going first. My tape measure like how long, you know, I just want to see what it looks like on a normal person but also displaying the aspirational aspects of your brands, not just showing. Here's how to use it but, you know, show how that ideal customer of yours would wear. What else would she wear with that necklace is your ideal customer. You saw the luxury monograms. Messaging was very young, flirty, playful, fun. You know, do you? Are you selling to women that are more mature and sophisticated because in the fashion they parent, that should illustrate that, Or are you going to show it on someone young? Is it for kids? For someone who has edgier, more conservative style, you want to illustrate that you understand the way your products are being used and spotlight your customers. I told you that a lot of stuff would come full circle. Today. We're gonna talk about testimonials for just a moment because as great as it is to have text testimonials, having images of your customers alongside the testimonials is so much more powerful. And I have a debate with some some of my peers about video testimonials. I know that's probably a question will get. What about video testimonials? Video testimonies can be wonderful because they're very transparent and very authentic. You know, you can't really. It's hard to fabricate a video testimonial, but that being said, sometimes our customers will film a video testimonial and the audio's bad or it's a dark room or it just doesn't have the quality that maybe we want with our brand. So I tend to do mostly image testimonials. If I could have every one of my clients come into the creative live studios and film and do audio and lighting, I absolutely would. But you have to see if the video testimony was gonna be high enough quality. And you know, we're not all made to be on camera, either, So sometimes people are not going toe. Want to give you a video testimonial? It's a lot harder to get them to do one, then, simply to say Great, we just send me an image and your testimonial and you want to make it. It's easy for them to be able to help you out and endorse you. But images are so important alongside of testimonials, whether using testimonials on your about page, pin them on your Pinterest boards, using them anywhere on your sales pages or products sites. Having the customers photo is vital and also using images to show how your customers use your products. I think this is so cute. One of my favorite boards on our luxury monograms Pinterest page is actually our customers and we we have our customers submit images of the way that they use our products. So, darling little girl, our customer ordered a pillow for her daughter's nursery. Someone else you know, used this pillow for their bed. We talked about the Chobani exercise. I think, on the first day about how they have a Pinterest board that actually shows the way that their customers used the yogurt and different recipes and things like that. It's very cool. Teoh. Spotlight your customers and let them be stars on and, you know, give them attention. We all love recognition attention. And, you know, people who have this experience in our in our in our company culture tend to be the most active, engaged as well, because they like that. We're reaching out to them. They, you know, they will show their friends. Oh, my God, Did you see, like ourselves on the luxury monograms Pinterest page and even just reaching out again, letting your audience know that you want to hear from them, letting them know that you care about them? You want a spotlight them, you want them involved. All of these are very, very favorable things for the overall optimization of your customer experience. So let's do a little interaction worldwide audience. Go ahead and type in the chat room right now and let me know what is one way you could have your customers showcase your products or services. Let's hear about this. If you have a service, what are some way that you could use images to showcase the way those sources air used? So type in the chat room in studio audience. Are you getting any? Ah ha's. So far, you know, we've talked about testimonials. We've talked about showcasing products. What's one new way that you think you might start using images inside of your brand? Um, I personally I mean, I'm having a huge ah ha moment, obviously as a wardrobe stylist in that aspect of my business. And, you know, these customers feel great after I work with them and style their wardrobe, and they have this great ah ha moment where they're like, I feel amazing and take it a step further and say, Great, send me a photo when you're getting ready for work or a photo of you with your family or your husband and your out on that great date night that we got you ready for? Yes. So I can highlight you visually, like you said with a testimonial. And they would love that because they not only feel great about it, but they want everyone to know how good they feel about it. Yes, before and after, you know, kind of before they were really sure what to put together, they didn't really like the way they looked or felt in their clothes. And then after I think you can always tell on people's faces to when they feel really good and really happy, that's a great example. Rachel, did you happen to um yeah, I have an example. But I since I sell kind of bigger packages, Yeah, I using testimonials after they go through the process that our paragraphs makes sense to me. But I hadn't thought before of trying to bring in their kind of not personalized. That could be a step too far. But those candid pictures really kind of getting to know your client as a human and showing that to address the world right and you'll notice that the shots that we selected weren't necessarily the standard headshot those air good, But sometimes if we have customers that have photos of them like she's a jewelry designer. So photos with her with her jewelry she has on online shop. So it's kind of a fun, playful photo of her and said, You know, head shots are great, but if you can, like you said you a little bit more personal, customized feel from the visual that's even a step beyond. All right, So what did we hear online? Well, we have a ton coming in, Um, one that I really liked was sweet by design has a blogger recipe Blawg called diva recipes dot com, And I could have people submit pictures after they make my recipes. And it also, I think, as a business owner, I find this really, really valuable to get to see, you know, products that I've designed or products that we've made. I show this to We have an amazing manufacturing team in California on I love showing our production team like you are making this pill. Lukoki looks on her bed and they like it too. There was this fast and you could tell you read a lot. There was this great article that this about this restaurant that started putting cameras at the table and also in the kitchen of a restaurant, and they found that people reported the food tasting better and actually enjoyed it more when they watched it being prepared. But also, and Derek probably told about this, too, if he's watching, because he always tells on these good research studies. But they also reported the kitchen staff actually had higher job satisfaction and enjoyment because they saw the people enjoy the food that they prepared. And I think that, you know, somehow you can see how that loosely relates to this, like as a designer, as a service provider, as a product creator, it's cool to see people appreciating what you dio and likewise, people like to know that you appreciate you value what they're doing with your products or services. I have an interesting when French and says she helps couples with fertility issues and could ask her clients to send photos of their baby. Oh my gosh, how powerful that It wasn't all more powerful than that, right? Seriously. And Kelly Jane Creative says, my customers send me the your L to their website, or blawg to show me how they've used the graphics they purchased from me. And then I spot light them on my blawg. And now I will add a Pinterest board to spotlight them as well. Yes, I love that. Okay, I'm about to show you something that's super embarrassing, but it's to illustrate a really, really cool point. And this actually parleys perfectly into what we talked about within about Page. And now we're gonna talk about how to use visuals in a very powerful way on an about page. So if you haven't noticed, I tend to project a very person, a very professional styled. You know, there's a certain look and feel to my brand, and that's intentional. Now, however, I started, my first was with my husband and we did everything. We were working in a manufacturing facility in Santa Ana, California, a warehouse essentially doing customer service, making all the products I would. This is for the Greek business. I would actually physically cut every letter by hand that our machines would stitch onto the sweatshirts because for a long time we couldn't. We were trying to use a machine, but it wasn't cutting the fabric correctly. So what we decided is okay. We would just we had, like, a stencil and we would spray the stencil and I would work all day. We'd be pulling orders doing customer service. I know your faith is really holy crap on. This is why it's important to tell your story. So every day at the end of the day, I would take home a stack of fabric with the letters that I had to cut. Things were the fricking scissors I had to use to like these tiny little because they had to go around every curve. And I don't know. I need to talk to the Greek community about this. Your letters are hard to cut, you know. It's not just like in a, but it's like swirly and has, you know, it's just difficult stuff. Anyways, images can be incredibly powerful to show the contrast we talked about before and afters. But how about yourself personally showing before and afters of things? You know, I've seen fitness coaches that are open enough to show what they looked like before, and you know, some of the results they've achieved after that that resonates. And for me and my audience not just having them see this or see the high production professional edited videos, but including the bloopers. That's where the connection is made. And so I don't show this picture very often, but sometimes, and particularly the visual effect this. I think that I'm in a red kind of a red dress in both images, you know, But you see the before you see the after. You know, I have a lot of customers and clients that are here right now, and as much as this is inspiring to them and as much as they'd like to get their, they don't necessarily want to learn from this person because she might have always had that. She doesn't understand where I started or where I want to go. But they if they see that I was her and I became her, then they're convinced and connected and they understand. And they believe if I just say I worked really hard to, I know you're frustrated. I know the pain points when you're doing everything in your business and you have no time to enjoy your life. It's one thing to say it is there to show it. So think about using visuals to tell your story service providers. This is very impactful for you. I did a little shut up to the product people earlier with showcasing your products in context. But when you're selling a service, think about how you can use visuals. And, you know, this might be pictures of you working with your clients. You know, I think Denise brought that great example up earlier. Doesn't have to be. So here's where I was there. Here I am now that's different pain on what you're coaching or what your services. But maybe you have amazing photos of you working with your clients, and you can see on your face that you love it and you're in. It is your passion. You can see the joy, the relief, the happiness of the people you're working with, using images to tell. A story is just so powerful, and I don't think we do them enough, saying it's very helpful for me to see Melanie's before exactly for the reason she just shared Yeah, yeah, I posted. I think the first time ever posted this picture. I do know my Facebook page like, Oh, this is kind of stupid, but This is funny, cause I had just come across this photo and the reaction waas insane. I mean, it was so crazy with people just going I can't tell you I followed you for, you know, months and I love what you do. But like this is just it's like a different perception now, completely different. And so as we are working under this umbrella of optimization for our websites, these are critical, subtle but critical ways to optimize the website. You know, coming from a business coach, if you just come to my about page. And all you see is this which is what's currently on it. Right now you have a particular you know, experience of me and my brand. But think about if you showed something like this on about page, what would be the impact and what would be the experience for that person? So Mel wants to know how Melanie got so polished. Any tips for people experience just doing it? It was so funny. Someone catch me yesterday and they're like, Oh, my gosh, you're so great on camera. Like I could never be good on camera like you've never seen my early stuff have you? I hide it. You know, I think that the way you get better at public speaking, of course. Of course. You know, going toe workshops, doing training, doing things like you're doing right now. And I really want to validate this yesterday and said thank you to everyone, but just the fact that you're here, you're learning you're trying to improve upon yourself. That's what I've always done. I've always just been a voracious learner. I've always put myself out there. Been okay with sucking, but trying to get better. You know, just the more you speak, the more you do video. I mean, I could go in a lot of different directions with this, but just to give you the overall take away, it did not start out like you do it a lot and you become more comfortable. You become better. You can work with coaches you can work with. You can watch videos. I purchased so many courses online, literally. I travel out to workshops. But I purchased so many course online, and I just sit on my couch and I just learned I take notes and I test and I get feedback and I work with other people that I want to be more like. I think mentoring is so, so important. Eso I'm constantly striving to meet other people that can help me become better, that I want to be more like the super cheesy thing you become like the five people you spend the most time with its cheesy. But it's so true eso I think just getting yourself around the right types of people and identifying the areas you want to be better in and then just going after that. Awesome. Thank you behind the scenes again. Common. Full, full, full, full circle. But I want to give you an actual example of this thing. That's what's going to serve you the most. So a lot of the luxury monogram images air highly aspirational, right? You know, they're beautiful. We've got champagne. It's like this. The luxury monogram customer is supposed to be like this fabulous fun, you know, just flirtatious woman that has this is a lot of reefer life. But sometimes what we do is give them the nitty gritty behind the scenes because she don't tell this fabulous looks like it could be a picnic. How to know in the Mediterranean. I'm totally making this up. Actually was shot in midtown Manhattan in a photo studio that I had to lug all of our props in two suitcases. Try to get a cab from the Upper West Side. This was an exhausting day, and I am thrilled with the images we got at the end of it. But sometimes customers like to see the stuff behind the scenes, you know, particularly when you do have a brand that is so polished and you know they want to see kind of the making of Wasn't it with VH one or MTV that always had, like, the making of Siri's? And I was so captivating. We love people stories. We love the stories behind businesses or brands, and we talked on Pinterest specifically about having it behind the scenes board, but this could be used on Facebook. This could be used on Instagram. This could be on your website. I wouldn't really put this on a product page for optimization sake, but these air still always to really break down that barrier again. People buy from people even if you are a business. They are still on some level buying from a person and so finding ways to get them connected and feel closer to your business. This is another one. This is Devon, and I think I showed you this pin is we were shooting for Creative Live. But a lot of what I do for the Melanie Duncan brand is I show a lot of the behind the scenes when we're filming videos. If we're working on a photo shoot, even content creation, you know, like this is pretty fun and glamorous, right? Like on a rooftop in New York in our apartment. But sometimes, you know, I'll take a picture of my desk if I'm working on new course and there's just legal pads everywhere and pens and, you know, maybe a cappuccino. And I'm kind of like in my moment just working and creating. I'll take a picture of that and post it sometimes if I'm doing a webinar got my mic and my computer set up and my all do. But I'm working on a power point. Get people like Okay, here's where I was when I was working on creativelive. I posted on my Facebook page. I said, Okay, here's one of the slides for my creativelive portion. I'm up late on a Friday night actually working on this right now. But I want to hear all of your ideas because as much as I'm showing you for products and services, I know that I'm not the only expert on this. I know that a lot of you have really fantastic ideas, so worldwide audience type them in the chat box right now. What are some ideas outside of maybe just pigeonholed into Pinterest? But some ways on your website or some ways that you're going to use across your social strategies that you're going to start using images, maybe a new light. Maybe they're going to show mawr about you and your journey. Maybe you've never done product photos and context if you're going to start booking a shoot, and it doesn't have to be a big Vogue shoot to give you a little secret When actually started doing apparel stuff, I would go, I would go on Craigslist. We lived in a college town and I would go on Craigslist. I would reach out to like interns for intern credit and find people. We could use his models and use those for photo shoots, But we would just get a big drape cloth in the back. And I know photographers or so many of you out there and you say, But you said, investing your images and I I absolutely believe that as soon as you can. You should always go with professional photography. But sometimes there's a step in between that, and that's what I'm saying. Just don't let it hold you back because you're not quite there yet. But I want to hear what you're going to start doing this week. You know, maybe this month of you have to an already already gave you a seven day assignment. But what? You're going to start doing differently with your images, with your online marketing and in studio audience in the ah ha's? Anyways, you're going to use images, and Alicia was talking about kind of with testimonials and showing the before and afters. But anything you're going to start doing in a different way with images. Well, I think even though I'm a designer and I work on visuals all day, Yeah, uh, it's a little bit hard for a moment I don't have. I don't have very many visuals anywhere, which I guess is a little bit silly and odd and something I hadn't really, really. I've been focusing on writing and all these things when it makes so much more sense to document take a visual documentation style. I did the same thing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've been doing this stuff online for a long time, and particularly for service stuff, I always made it a priority for our product based businesses. And for a long time, I didn't do photos I didn't do video wasn't using image based social media platforms. And then, of course, like you said, I loved your facial expression. Ah ha. Like, why aren't I doing this? But there's so many things like that that until we're kind of confronted with them, we just don't realize. But that's very excited. I'm glad you're gonna do that. Anyone else in the ah ha's online audience? Denise, I've got a couple of really big ones, so I think as photographers, we spend a lot of our times shooting for our clients, and I'm not shooting behind. The scenes are products. Yeah, our studios are spaces, so that's a big one for me. I'm always shooting clients. And, um, I don't let anybody take my picture. Nobody. The fact that I'm here is quite amazing. It a great deal of love for Christine to give me in front of a camera. Um, and I need to let that go on and I need to connect with my audience, and that needs to be more about me. So I'm going to make a decision in a choice to do that. Very proud of you, Very proud of you. And I'm also I'm very appreciative that you shared that because I know just from knowing the creative audience and from speaking with our host that you probably resonated with so many people about that It's very powerful to see someone like yourself make those claims talk what you're going to dio and like, share sure, the emotional side behind something I'm not comfortable with. But it's something that needs to be done. I know it's something needs to be done. I'm going to bridge that gap, step outside my comfort zone and do this for myself in my business. So good for you. I know my team at home is very happy to hear this. Good, Good online. Anything? One share. We're happy to hear that, too. Congratulations. Thank awesome. Uh, we have so many things coming in. I'll start with Suze News. Who says I'm thinking behind the scenes images of some of our employees, which are also the police and fire department. Might be interesting to people, and she runs a cities Pinterest account. Wonderful. Yeah. I worked with the realtor who did a our team Pinterest board and had photos and head shots of all of the people that worked in their offices and little bias about them. So absolutely showing the people you work with could be a great way to use images. Adrian, for our says, Sketches and storyboards for fashion shoots that are being planned. I love that. So creative and connect David more about the journey of the product from where it wa. So where it is now and where it can take your business down the road. Beautiful. Beautiful. Very. So do you want to do maybe two more and then we'll move on. Sam A says I do all the design and promoting for my roller derby league, and just recently we started showing behind the scenes photos from our photo shoots for posters and people left. Um, so cool. Nice and one more, John Murray says. I use Instagram to share the making process of a necklace. The beads, the starting to crush A with them. The final finished product sold a necklace from Ireland to Texas using this, and I sold it before I had even finished it. Brilliant press a perfect example to kind of end on for this particular portion of this because I want you to understand how this ties and optimization I want you to understand. The focus of this day is really to help you get more sales and more clients. We talked about laying the foundation. Creating the image is driving the traffic. And when we get kind of abstract about images, I still want you to see how it comes together. So let me frame it this way. Would you be more likely to buy from a company when you saw who worked there for hopefully positive where you saw the making of the products? If you knew the story behind the person that offered the service? Because for most of us, that's as the absolute yes, when we feel more connected when we feel mawr apart. When we understand where we know the person we know the company better, we sell more. And that's why businesses, for the most part, you social media. Of course, it's toe, you know, understand their audience and stick back and forth. But it's also because social media makes businesses and larger brands feel more attainable. There's more of a conversation, and that and goal is because it also makes it will buy more from brands that are attainable conversational that you feel like you're connected to and a part of one. Make sure it was really clear on what the overall goal here with optimization and why images play into that. So I do want to go ahead and give you some image creation. Resource is, and some of these we've already talked about, but I thought I'd be good to have them all in one place. If you're like me, just like to write down tools. So some of my favorite APS are, of course, Instagram. I'm also a big fan of picks, aromatic and also pick shin, So pixel aromatic is one that you can just add a lot of cool filters if you take photos of. I'm sure a lot of you photographers already know this stuff. But when I stumbled across some of these, I thought it was like Christmas, so I wanted to share it with you as well. They have lots of really cool such a girly girl. They have like the sparkle. You know, if you want to put a sparkle on an image, but they have lots of really great filters. Pick Shin is great because you can do is on your phone, and it adds text to it. And you heard me talking about how much I love pic monkey on, Of course, photo shop in Ulster and all of those but those air for on your computer. So what do you do if you take a snapshot and you want to add a call to action or a price banner or something like that? Pictured allows you to actually overlay text on an image and they have different fonts and different colors and transparency is you can adjust. So these are some of my favorite APS that I use that I'm kind of on the go creating image content. Another another app. I really like it. Dipped IQ and to take is what allows you to kind of do these photo montages, right? And I think these air really cool. Just if you take a bunch of pictures like me, I'm pretty snap happy. And you want to post something to your Facebook page or putting something in the email, You want a really quick way to throw a bunch of images on your phone together. I tend to use this to just kind of summarizes our recent trip to the Hamptons. My husband, Devin, and I just put up some of the favorite, you know, here he is like Children. The hammock. This is a great restaurant. We went Teoh, and that's actually the restaurant the food there is at. So I use it for photo montages, but more specifically for business. This is a great one to do before and afters because they will not just this grid, but they have tons of formations possible. So they have one that is just two images side by five like that that I think would be really good for before and afters for, like, fitness or fashion or something like that. Where you have two people side by side. Um, but I also love pic monkey, which you've seen me give this example a lot about doing. Adding text images, making coupons and info. Graham, when we talk about info Graham about infographics, so this is an actual example of one of the templates. It's available for free on their website that you can share interesting information and stats with your audience. So if you have information, but you don't a know how to design infographic on the limp are I don't hundreds infographic. You can hire a graphic designer, which is great, but if you're just throwing something together and you want to do it yourself, I love love, love in program for this. Like I said, you can actually you can edit the headlines you can edit. You can insert images used selecting different images. You can select whether you want charts. Text lying grass. It's really cool. It's a really free, good resource. So now I want to switch it back to you. I want you to write down one new way that you'll start using images in your marketing this week. So we heard some people share in studio audience was amazing helping us walk through this. But for those of you that maybe didn't type in the chat, maybe you're still kind of thinking about it. I want to make sure that before you leave today, before we break for lunch or anything that you do actually write it down. This is one of those small little tweaks, right that you actually write it down to hold yourself accountable, put it in your calendar may be having on your to do list something that you actually are going to dio and just put that into practice and also make a plan to apply in the next seven days. You're starting to see some of my fundamental teaching trainings here where everything should have a deadline. All of the things you want to get done should have an actual deadline or else they kind of just get pushed to the end of the page. So something that you really want to think about and really want to start implementing in terms of images