The Visual Internet

If you define yourself as a small business owner, you are pretty much too busy to read this.  How many tabs do you have open right now on your internet browser? Yep, I thought so!

A business owner has to mind the shop and get widgets shipped on time. That’s not nearly the only thing on the to-do list! You keep the books, you hire employees because you are the HR department, you are also your company’s supplies purchaser, salesperson, and cleaning crew after closing time. All the roles that a small business owner takes on to further the business interests of the company are super important, vital and interconnected to help achieve the goal of profitability. No job is too small or beneath a small business owner if the work duty just has to get done. In fact, its good business—and the mark of a great leader—never to ask an employee to do a task the owner wouldn’t do herself/himself, if she or he had the time to do it. Teamwork makes the dreamwork!

One more role—the small business owner holds the press pass for the company, too! In 2018 that job description is going to look more like a photographer rather than a reporter, because of the visual internet. Online visuals are pictures, videos, illustrations, and masked/filtered/animated—and that’s just the cat pics! The internet is worth a trillion (!!) pictures, so smile! Get represented out there in the new visual reality.

That’s right, businesses, and especially small businesses, need to acknowledge at least a two-track image promo plan. The first track answers the question, Who are you as owner? The second track answers the question, What widget are you marketing?

Who are you as owner? Be the great person you already are, and take a great picture (or live video) of yourself for your company website, your LinkedIn profile, and anywhere you represent either yourself personally or your company. You’re your company’s in-house celebrity! Your team, hard at work at the office, are awesome celebrities, too. Approach them respectfully, appreciatively, and open-mindedly as you seek their buy-in and permission to include them as you promote your small business.

What widget are you marketing? Likeable images of your product or services are images of real people using your product or enjoying your services, not generic stock photos of people posing with your widget in a studio.

Best practices for a great visual future for your small business must include both these tracks for using images online—promote yourself as a person, and consider including your team, plus market your widget/service with pictures people like. There are more best practices to achieve all this spectacularly in the infographic The Visual Internet.

Please include attribution to FramesDirect.com with this graphic.

Author: NowSourcing is an award-winning nationally recognized infographic design agency. Founded in 2005, NowSourcing has strong roots in the human and technical nuances of the web.