The world of business is always changing and throwing up new trends. The increasingly digital nature of business in recent years has certainly shown this to be true. If you run your own business or work in someone else’s, then you cannot escape the way that business has moved online more and more.
Why is this? The simple reason is that this is how consumers like to interact with many businesses now. If someone wants a new top, then they are likely to log onto a company’s website to buy it. Similarly, if you want a book or new tablet, then you would probably head over to a site such as Amazon to purchase it. The net result for any business is that having an online presence is a must now to survive.
Within this, image sharing platforms are a very important tool to have in your business’s locker.
What are image sharing sites?
While this is a digital channel, it is not hard to understand or overly techy. In simple terms, these are online sites that allow your business to create an account and post images on it for everyone to see. Two of the most popular are Instagram and Tumblr. Instagram alone is reported to have around 500 million users each day! They are best used as part of a wider digital marketing strategy with other social media platforms, PPC campaigns and SEO efforts.
Image sharing sites also support networking through hashtags which help people find your images based on search terms. You’ll want to use the most popular hashtags for your images to be the most successful. Knowing which ones are the most popular can be difficult and they often change as new things start trending. You can use a website to generate a hashtag for instagram for you, so you’ll always be using the most popular and relevant ones.
Why use image sharing sites?
To put it bluntly, they are great for your business! Here are some of the specific reasons why this is true:
Increased brand engagement – we all know that humans are visual animals and that we use our sight a lot in decision-making. Image sharing sites make the most of this by using the images that you post on them to attract people’s attention. This in turn helps you to convert them into customers and increase your overall brand awareness. Compared to other social media sites such as Facebook, they offer a distinct alternative. You can use images to help with your facebook ad design.
Tommie Copper is a great illustration of this concept – the Tommie Copper brand is very prominent on popular image sharing sites, and customers can find out about the company and how it can help them.
- Their sheer popularity – as a business, you need to be where your customers are, and where your potential customers are. With the millions using image sharing sites each day, this means that you cannot afford to give them a miss. With the right strategy in place, they can really boost your bottom line.
- You remain competitive – when it comes to business, you need to be competitive and ensure that you are not handing your rivals any advantages. If you do not use image sharing sites, then this is just what you will be doing! By not having a presence there, you are leaving the market wide open for them to exploit at your expense. They also give you a very easy way to keep up to date with what other people in your sector are doing.
- Direct sales – image sharing sites such as Instagram have evolved over the years to the point that you can now make sales directly through them. Instagram, for example, allows you to add tags to the images that you post now with links to buy them. This is great for capturing more sales as the 72% of Instagram users who admit to buying direct from the site show.
- It shows your business’s personality – so much of business now is about connecting with people and showing them what your business is about. Image sharing sites offer a very powerful way to do this in the most creative way that you can come up with. You can use these sites to not only tell your business’s story but also build a real trust with consumers along with giving them more information about your products.
- They are free and simple to use – one great reason to use many of the image sharing sites around is that they are free and easy to use. As far as marketing goes, it doesn’t get much better than that! For such amazing potential returns, it really is a no-brainer.
Image sharing is ideal for business
Being able to market your business effectively and connect with the public on a personal level is vital for any business now. This is why image sharing sites are so fabulous! They give all businesses the chance to reach out to their customers and start a conversation with them. Images are a very powerful way to catch people’s attention, and it is the image that will help you reap the many benefits that these platforms offer.
