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Standing Out on Facebook Using Great Imagery + Videos
Utilizing Facebook to connect with your patients is very important. In a time when in-person communication has been limited, fostering communities online has become an essential part of maintaining relationships.
Posting photos and sharing content from your practice goes a long way towards letting your patients (and prospective patients) get a feel for what it will be like during their next visit. That can be comforting in times of change. Connecting with patients online using your social media platforms will help you convey your business as a distinct and well-defined brand and a trusted resource for your community.
In this post I’ll cover tips for creating great images and videos that will help make your content stand out on Facebook.
Staging
When it comes to photos, the goal is for your content to be thoughtful, high quality, engaging, and consistent with your brand. This is certainly easier said than done! To start out, we recommend you try to take clean and simple photos. Content that is bright, well-focused, and has a simple, uncluttered background, performs best on social media. When taking a photo for Facebook, think about the staging for a moment. Even if the photo is of a donut or something simple, the details in the staging can make all the difference.
Lighting
Understanding how lighting can enhance your photos is also necessary for creating quality content for social media. If there’s too much light your subject may become washed out. With too little lighting the result might be a dark, unflattering photo. Seeking out a space in your office with good natural light can elevate your photos and videos to the next level. Oftentimes office lights can be harsh so don’t be afraid to play around with lighting to find the best lit angles.
Action
Motion tends to captivate audiences on social media. Playing around with short video or “live” photos can result in very engaging content. Don’t be afraid to take many shots when trying to take a great action photo. Sometimes you just have to keep shooting to find that perfect one. Most phones these days have “burst” shots which will take many photos at once which you can later sort through!
Utilizing Blank Space
A photo or video with the subject taking up the whole frame can be overwhelming. When staging a photo, you want to utilize blank space in the frame. One of the most popular ways to compose photographs is to use the Rule of Thirds, “The Rule of Thirds is a type of off-center composition where important elements of a photograph are placed along a 3×3 grid, which equally divides the image into nine parts.” … “With the rule of thirds, photographers envision four lines across their photographs, which also creates four intersecting points. The important elements within a frame should be placed at the intersection points of these lines.”1 This basically means that having the subject of the photo off center, with a little bit of blank space will be more captivating to your audience.
Find Your Angle
Sometimes straight-on shots aren’t the most interesting for viewers. Utilizing different angles can give you a different perspective and can help you create more eye-catching content. Switch it up! Try multiple different angles (side, over-head, straight-on) and see what looks the best with your lighting. This applies to photos and videos with objects as well as photos of your smiling patients. Find their best, most flattering angles. They’ll surely appreciate the effort!
Photography and social media are all about getting creative so have fun with it! Feel free to take risks and try new things. Taking photos and videos does not have to feel like a chore. Utilizing these tips can result in the creation of beautiful content that will help you stay connected to your patients!
1 – https://photographylife.com/the-rule-of-thirds
—Tyler Harris, Lead Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications