Category Marketing

Master your Content Calendar in 5 Steps

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Welder outdoors
©Brian Fitzgerald

Ready to level up your content game?  Craft a killer content calendar to keep your audience hooked.  Streamline content creation, ensure a steady flow of engaging material, and support your brand’s marketing objectives with these five steps.

  1. Set Goals, Win Big: Nail down your content goals from the get-go. Targeting brand awareness, social media engagement, or website traffic? Your objectives guide your content, and professional photography and videos will make it pop.
  2. Themes and Topics, Front and Center: Jot down themes and topics that resonate with your audience. Align them with your brand, industry, and target interests (yes, we can help with that!). A bit of preparation guarantees a stream of impactful photo and video projects.
  3. Variety is Key.  Mix it up:  Combine evergreen, timely, and promotional content. Showcase your brand’s different facets and keep your audience coming back for more.
  4. Schedule Like a Pro: Map out your content release schedule. Consider the best days, times, and platforms for each post.  Advance planning means you have time for targeted photography and video shoots, ensuring high-quality visual assets to accompany your content. Three planning tools we’ve used here at Fitzgerald Photo—good for individuals and for teams—include Trello, Asana and Google Workspace (formerly G Suite).
  5. Adapt and Thrive: There’s no ‘set it and forget it’.  Review and update your editorial calendar regularly.  Analyze past content, tweak your approach, and plan for new projects. A dynamic calendar helps you stay aligned with your marketing goals while generating demand for the things you do and the ‘stuff’ you sell.

Follow these five steps to create an unbeatable content calendar. Your audience will be captivated, and your well-crafted and thought-out visuals will get the attention your brand deserves.

 

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Show off your brand personality

0 Comments read Blog, Client Work, Marketing, Showcase

 

Port Property
How can brands show off their unique personalities?  One way is by showcasing the people who together make the company special. Over the past few years, I’ve been working with Port Property and the creative team at Longfellow Communications to capture personality portraits of their employees.

As an operator of rental and commercial properties in Maine and North Carolina, Port Property’s staff interacts with their clients on a daily basis. They are, essentially, the company brand. When Port Property decided to rebrand a few years ago, they opted for two styles of staff portraits: one, a more traditional headshot portrait and the other that aimed to capture the personality of each person in a unique way. They asked each person to bring some physical item signifiying their answer to the question, “Home is…..”.  Everyone on the team—accountants, property managers and the maintenance crew—took part.

The result is far from the typical corporate portrait. Instead, it reveals real people, with real lives, and gives the company a dynamic and fun vibe.

I had a lot of fun doing this ongoing project and think it’s a simple but impactful way to impart a human touch to a company brand.

Port Property
© Brian Fitzgerald

 

© Brian Fitzgerald

 

© Brian Fitzgerald

 

Visual trends of 2023: Reality and virtual reality

0 Comments read Blog, Education, Marketing
Linda Holtslander
©Brian Fitzgerald

It seems like 2023 has just started, and already visual arts world is evolving at a blistering pace. Whether through impactful imagery or storytelling video, content marketers have to work hard to stay ahead of the curve.

At a time of low institutional trust and with the rise of ai tools, authenticity is critical when it comes to visual content. According to a report from Adweek, audiences now crave genuine and relatable imagery that reflects real-life experiences rather than highly curated and polished content.  Photographer Annie Leibovitz famously said, “A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.” This quote epitomizes the importance of capturing raw emotions and connections in today’s visual content.  

Another significant trend is the growing demand for immersive experiences. In a recent article from Forbes, virtual and augmented reality technologies are increasingly being used to create visually engaging content. Content marketers should focus on incorporating these cutting-edge technologies into their visual strategy to stay ahead of the curve and provide memorable and immersive experiences for their audiences.

Sustainability is also trending with the visual arts, with both photographers and videographers incorporating eco-friendly practices into their work. This trend reflects a growing global awareness of environmental issues and the desire to create visual content that respects the planet. Content marketers can leverage this trend by showcasing brands’ sustainable efforts through visually compelling narratives and engaging storytelling techniques.

Lastly, the trend of minimalism and simplicity, also referred to as ‘antibranding‘ is growing.   As consumers are bombarded with content daily, the power of striking, minimalistic visuals has become even more apparent. By focusing on clear, concise messaging with strong visuals, content marketers can make a lasting impression on their target audience.

Content marketers should keep a close eye on these visual trends of 2023 to ensure their photography and video content remains relevant and appealing. By embracing authenticity, leveraging immersive technologies, promoting sustainability, and capitalizing on minimalism, they will be better positioned to capture their audience’s attention and drive meaningful engagement.

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Get Real: It’s about people, not brands

0 Comments read Blog, Industrial, Mainers at Work, Marketing

Industrial Recycling Worker

The biggest trend in 2022 seems to be the embrace of artificial intelligence (A.I.) tools like ChatGPT, Jasper and MidJourney by content marketers. In an age of deepfake videos and faked resumes, trust is the only thing in short supply.

That’s why authenticity matters more than ever when it comes to social media and content marketing. Winning brands take a people-first approach and who create meaningful connections with their customers and audiences.

What does authenticity mean? It means creating content that reflects your values and tells a story about your brand that resonates, cultivates relationships and fosters loyalty. It means creating visual content that features your real customers, team or audience, rather than opting for stock imagery. After all, people follow people, not brands. Authenticity entails communicating your brand values and cultivating your brand’s unique voice.  It also may include user-generated content and collaboration with influencers who can help you tell your story in authentic ways. Here are a few ways brands might choose to be more authentic and transparent:

  • Lift the curtain: Show what it looks like behind the brand: your process, your culture, your successes and, sometimes, your misses.
  • Tell stories about real people and the impact they and you have had on the world.
  • Use short-form video to cut through the noise and provide answers to customer questions, provide useful information or to educate and inform.
  • Leverage user generated content (but only if allowed, and always give credit).

In a time when people are extremely wary of marketing that is ‘business as usual’, the trend is towards authenticity, engagement and connection. If you want to create impactful, authentic content that will connect with your clients, we’d love to help.

Image libraries keep social media content flowing

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Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.  © Brian Fitzgerald

If you’re a marketer and have responsibility for your brand’s image, having enough good content can be an issue.

It’s not just the amount of content, but the variety:  blogs, articles, white papers, graphics, images, video.   Coming up with consistent, on-point social content is a huge lift and often a thankless task.

You might put out slick, professionally-produced content.  Or, you might be utilizing smartphone images and video produced on the fly by your team and/or your clients and users.    

Both types of custom content can have a place in your social media strategy.  

I’m often asked to create image and video libraries for companies who need a large amount of content with a consistent look and message.   Supplemented often by content produced by their own marketing team, the result is an ongoing stream of sharable content.  Voila—Instant Content Superheroes.   

With a little planning,  these targeted shoots can be efficient, cost-effective and done in a very strategic way to capitalize on different seasons of the year or business cycle.  

Having a balance of polished, high-value content as well as social media-focused content will keep your audience engaged and will help you be successful at actually maininting the consistency needed to grow your audience.

Have questions about how to make this happen for you and your business? We build custom plans for our client partners and would be glad to discuss whether we’d be a good fit for yours.

 

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center

 

Let your backgrounds tell the story

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Portland, Maine Bartender
Andrew Volk, co-owner of Portland, Maine’s Hunt & Alpine Club © Brian Fitzgerald

 

When it comes to portraits: choosing the proper background environment is as important (and sometimes, more so) than the subject themselves.

Your backgrounds give clues, both subtle and overt, and add contextual information that gives portraits mood and depth. They help to tell a more complete story about your subject. In short, a well-executed background can do some heavy lifting when it comes to conveying information and emotion.

Think about your background environments as deeply as you do your primary subjects. Give that background your attention—with purposeful lighting, frame composition and styling—and let it do the hard work of storytelling for you.

Taking it to the next level with commercial drones

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Commercial Drone View
Kennebec Valley Community College

Fitzgerald Photo is an FAA-certified commercial drone operator

According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), there are almost 900,000 unmanned aerial vehicles, drones, registered in the United States. For reference, in 2018—just four years ago—there were 110,000 drones registered domestically. Globally the total drone market is expected to grow from $8.15 billion to $47.38 billion by 2029, as reported by Fortune Business Insights.

Businesses small and large are taking increasing advantage of drones, for real estate, construction, inspection and other purposes.

Starting in 2021, Fitzgerald Photo added full aerial capability for both stills and video coverage. We’re FAA-licensedand fully insured for any commercial projects. The ability to have mobile, aerial cameras has been a game-changer for many of our clients, who can now get professional-level imagery of their locations and operations from a unique perspective. Having views that show scale and context easily also makes it easier to tell the stories we create with stills and motion.

Drones can operate year-round, though their use is affected by weather conditions. In New England spring and summer is a great time of year to create timeless, evergreen aerial imagery for your company or brand.

Contact us for more information about how commercial drones can benefit your brand.

 

© Brian Fitzgerald

Don’t Hire Me

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Firefighter mowing
© Brian Fitzgerald

 

This is strange advice, especially coming from a photographer.

It may indeed make sense to hire a professional photographer for your brand.  It just might be that the timing is premature.

Signs that you might be pushing too hard to hire away your problems instead of thinking them through first:

  • False Urgency:  An arbitrary deadline is put in place to pressure you to make a decision before you’re ready to do so.  This may be dictated by the photographer or marketing agency, or other party.
  • Bandwagon Thinking:  Pressure to hire a photographer because it’s  ‘what everyone else is doing’.
  • Inner Voice:  A nagging, growing sense that you’ll have to blow your budget because the shoot wasn’t planned for.
  • Lack of Clarity:  You can’t describe succinctly (in a sentence or two) the types of images you need. Even if you don’t know what specific images you might need, you should have a specific use for the images in mind.
  • Unclear Goals: Are you trying to build brand awareness? Or to sell a service or product? The former has no measurable ROI, the latter does. Each requires a different visual approach and different strategies.

Marketing plans, including hiring a photographer can have a certain momentum that’s hard to stop once begun. Make sure you’re considering the downside as well as the upside associated with hiring a professional photographer. These obviously include the expense of doing so but crucially include the time it takes to plan and execute shoot(s) properly to ensure you get what you pay for.

The magic of creative constraints

0 Comments read Blog, Editorial, Marketing, Portraits, Recent Work, Shop Talk, Storytelling
portrait
Parivash Rohani, @Brian Fitzgerald

 

One of the best ways to engage one’s creativity is to first strip away options.   Constraint, not necessity, is the mother of creativity.   

For portrait photographers, the focus of the image is the subject.  Yet background elements and interesting locations help to tell a story and can result in a more compelling portrait.   They can also be a crutch.   One piece of advice I give to aspiring portrait photographers:  learn to shoot portraits with no background. 

The artist Platon is famous for his high-key white seamless black and white portraits.  They are so simple—just the subject, often shot with a very simple lighting setup—but each one tells a story and compels the viewer to linger over every portion of the frame.   

When you strip away all of the choices, you focus on the essential.  When you strip away the excess background elements,  the focus is solely on the subject.  

The photographer is forced to focus on connecting with the person being photographed and helping them to carry the weight of the image through expression and mood, captured in fleeting moments. 

New England Hyperbaric Oxygen

0 Comments read Assignments, Blog, Client Work, Marketing

We recently completed video production for New England Hyperbaric Oxygen.  Hyperbaric Oxygen therapy (HBOT) involves the use of a special pressurized chamber to heal the body. It’s often used for wound healing, but also to treat traumatic brain injuries like concussion from sports or accidents.

We produced a series of videos showing the process at work as well as hearing from patients who continue to use the treatment to great success. In addition, we produced an instructional video for use with patients who use portrable chambers at home. Lastly, we created several short video stories for Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter so that New England Hyperbaric Oxygen could release those as part of their reveal campaign.

Although the long-form videos will be released later this year, I’m able to share an example of the short, 30-second social media video used for Instagram now.