Toronto corporate photographer

Corporate photographers use many types of photography: editorial, portrait, photojournalism, event, commercial and even architectural.

While each of these require different photography skills, they all have one common goal – to enhance the perceived value of your company. This means the photography must communicate with, and then earn trust from, your potential customers.

Trust builds credibility. Credibility grows customers.

The most common type of corporate photography is the business portrait or business headshot. These pictures can be used on your "About Us" page, business cards, social networking profile pictures, with press releases, in appointment notices, in conference programs and to fulfill media requests.

In today's world, business headshots are pretty much mandatory for all key employees.

Annual reports, internal publications and marketing collateral all use corporate photography.

Executive portraits and pictures of offices and manufacturing processes are common requests for annual reports. But smart companies also use editorial photography to show their products in use, tell stories about satisfied customers, show employees at work, and showcase employees engaging in community activities.

It's no longer good enough to show only what your company does. It's now important to show how and even why. Note the word "show." It's always more effective to show rather than just tell.

Editorial photography is effective because it's a source of information not a sales pitch. As such, people trust editorial photography the most. Newspapers prove this every day.

Using editorial photography is the best way to earn customer attention and help them understand your message.

Good editorial work is about creating human interest which is also called "storytelling." Get this right and your company can turn customers into fans.

Repeat after me: journalism is not just for newspapers.

Another common use of corporate photography is producing pictures for media handouts and press releases. These can be sent to newspapers, magazines, TV networks, radio stations (they have web sites, too), trade publications and others.

The secret for success is that every press release and media handout must include photography.

Having worked for newspapers, I've learned that a press release with a photo has significantly more chance of being used than one without. Of course, the better the photography, the better the chance of being published and being published big.

Many newspapers, magazines and web sites use "content marketing" (also called "native advertising"). This is where a company pays to have its editorial content published verbatim. This content is often made to look like any other page in the publication.

The only requirement with content marketing is that the supplied editorial content must be just that, editorial. To be truly effective, high quality, editorial photography must be used.

Every company should have a photo library with pictures of its key employees, products, offices, manufacturing plants and perhaps even its products being used.

Why?

When a media request comes in asking for a specific picture, a company can't say, "we don't have one" or "wait a week and we'll get one."

If a picture is not available, it can mean: (i) the media opportunity is lost or diminished; (ii) the company loses its ability to influence the story; (iii) in times of crisis management, the company loses control as the news media will find its own version of the requested image.