A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, But Which Words are You Saying?

Pictures (and multimedia) can be worth a thousand words.  Just make sure that the images used in your online marketing are the ones you want to say.

Years ago most images on a website (at least professional ones) were analyzed, if not labored over.  The reason was that every page counted and just the right image was necessary to make the most of the sites marketing potential.

With the explosion of social media and link farms there is a lot of new content hitting the web.  And as you’d expect when quantity spikes, quality often plummets.  Social media and content management tools have been great in opening the web up to anyone who can use the internet.  Unfortunately this lack of restraints can lead to too much content being produced in a low quality manner.

Of course for many applications a low quality doesn’t matter.  No one is going to criticize a poorly shot photograph from vacation that someone places on Facebook.  However, if you are representing a company or organization, that will reflect poorly.

For example, I get Tweets from a company that regularly posts poorly shot and often pointless photographs of events they hold.  The people in the photos are never identified and aren’t recognizable because these snapshots are usually taken too far away.  In short they are pointless.  The company would be better served in buying stock photos of groups of people looking at speakers.  At least the photos would be well composed.

Don’t get trapped in the quantity trap. Take the time to only create and release quality materials that are pertinent to your audience.  There is a lot of drive now to maximize the use of social media and build links.  Both of those are admirable goals but only if the content being created is up to par.  After all, dumping a lot of poor quality or pointless material onto the internet might generate a few clicks but your credibility will gradually erode.