10 Tips for Using Mobile Phone Photography in Corporate Social Media

Many of my clients are using their mobile phones to share their corporate narrative on social media. Successful mobile phone photography is essential for any corporate social media marketing plan. I partnered up with a strategic marketer to create Visual Thrive and streamline the storytelling for companies social media use. We have the “eye” for the details, lighting and angles; but with a few tips you can level up your social media photography and draw more engagement from your followers.

WITH MOBILE PHONE PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEO?

Yes! The new generation of mobile phones offer sophisticated technology, mobile apps with filters to process images and video that rival content captured with professional photo and video cameras. Phone photography allows you to create images much easier than a more sophisticated camera and definitely share online with ease.

10 TIPS TO BETTER YOUR IPHONE PHOTOGRAPHY SKILLS FOR INCREASED SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT

1) Shoot wide, medium and close - A general rule for photojournalists is to take a wide photograph of the entire scene, then a medium one, and end it with a close detail photograph. This makes your story more interesting and brings your eyes to various locations within the same scene. This tactic will cover your visual narrative needs and after you take photos using these three angles, you can have some fun experimenting with different perspectives or color schemes to see what you create. You can use many photographs from the same scene, mixed in with your experimental angles for lots of interesting visual images for your social media feed. If you only need one photograph to use for your story on a particular day, then photograph all three angles anyway, it will allow you to choose your best in the editing room or save others for another post on another day.

2) Show the entire scene (wide) - Remember your narrative, and at times the whole environment is exactly what your story is about.

3) Photograph medium perspective - this is an excellent opportunity to show close up activities, smaller groups of people, and minimize the surrounding distractions.

4) Get in close - Many times people take a full body photograph of someone doing their activity when the story they want to tell is actually about their hands and face. Zooming in close and tight to your subject makes it more exciting. This works for people, a house or an object. Show only what is necessary to get the point across. A simple detail cell phone photograph can tell a story and increase interest in your narrative. For example, the action of hand writing notes can be more interesting than a table full of people taking notes.

5) Photograph lots of images - For a Visual Thrive assignment, I typically photograph 300 images with the goal of creating 30 excellent photos for a social media campaign. It’s always better to have too many pictures than realizing you didn’t photograph enough, or had an excellent photograph but your subject’s eyes are closed.

6) Watch for items in the background - Images with poles, branches and other background distractions coming out of the subject’s head or ear is not visually pleasing. A simple shift of the angle will clean up the background and make a good photograph even better. The below examples were all photographed by me. This happens often, and the reason why taking multiple images of each scene will help you fine tune the image as you take more.

7) Creative Angles - Be creative with your angles. Take you phone low and shoot up, or hold your phone high and shoot down, or use foreground elements to draw the viewer into the subject matter. Cover your basics and then enjoy being even more creative.

8) Shooting in front of a window - Sometimes a window view looks great when you are in the room looking out. Keep in mind that a phone may not be able to balance the brightness of the outside with the indoors. Also, if a window has bars going through it, it may fall under the realm of Tip #5. A window with a view may not be the best selection. Sometimes having a person in front of the window and photographing them with your phone from an angle will be more pleasing depending on the background.

9) Have fun with phone photography - Have fun, take lots of photographs and the more you tell your corporate social media narrative visually, the better you will get.

10) Enjoy using your filters - Instagram and many other photo apps and platforms offer filters. Have fun with these filters. Filters allow you to get creative and add a level of interest to your photos that you won’t get from a non-filtered image.

Social Media Marketing Using Phone Photography
Branding and personalizing your company through social media marketing can be fun and practical with a few mobile phone photography tips to keep in mind and practice. Remember the more phone photography you create, the better you will get. When you are busy, do not hesitate to partner up with a co-working that understands your company’s brand and story, or hire someone like Visual Thrive to take that task off your plate.