Don't let a bad image be your image
As businesses and marketing professionals continue to accept the power of social media and networking, the importance of quality photography should not be overlooked.
A professional-looking photograph should be easily available and uploaded as soon as a presence is established on a social media site such as a blog, Facebook, linkedin or Twitter.
Your image — whether an illustrative avatar, symbol, logo or photograph — represents you and your company. There is nothing worse than a question mark or generic avatar located in the space where your image should be. A missing image creates the impression of a lack of commitment toward your customers, networking friends and associates.
If you don’t have a good photograph, have one taken. Show yourself at your best, in a positive light, or in a way that represents you or your company’s personality. Photographs taken with a digital camera, against a wall with an on-camera flash usually look like a mug shot and leave a bad impression. An image taken at a casual event and cropped usually doesn’t represent the subject very well and is not recommended.
The same rules apply to your products and examples of your services. Poor images represent your company poorly. In the digital age, you only have seconds to make a good impression before the back button is pressed.
Keep quality photographs in an easily located folder, permanently. You don’t want to find it necessary to skip the photo uploa step in a directory, forum or social registration because you don’t want to take the time to search. Chances are, for many of the sites, you will never go back and add an image.
Being prepared makes image submission an easy step in the registration process of the ever-expanding world of social networking opportunities, and allows a long tail of smiling faces to represent you well throughout the net.
Rosh
This post is part of a best practices in social media marketing project hosted by Mitch Joel