Now that you know what story you’re trying to tell (from part 1) and what type of photo will tell this story effectively (from part 2) you need to get over the most important hurdle: will anyone even care about your story?
3. The story your photo tells should be something your audience wants to hear
Good content is at least one of these things:
Cool
Interesting
Useful
Importantly, good content isn’t something that you find cool, interesting, or useful — it’s something your audience finds cool, interesting or useful.
At work if a photo (or any piece of content, really) isn’t one of these three things, we don’t post it.
Posting bad content is worse than posting no content. So we try to make sure that the content we do post is actually something our audience (or at least a part of it) wants to see.
Some of my own examples
Let’s end with some examples of good event photos that I’ve taken over the years.
I have taken lots of bad ones, by the way. These are just a handful of the better ones :)
Behind the scenes
Here’s one from 2017 when I was working at Jetstar. The story I wanted to tell was: it took a whole production team to run this hugely successful event.
Photo of a large conference venue taken from behind a control room that’s been set up to the side. The speaker is standing on a stage in front of the far wall. A projected screen behind her says ‘Jetstar Live’. In the middle ground are attendees all facing the speaker. In the foreground several people are hunched over open laptops and computer screens.
This is somewhere between a wide shot (showing the scope and scale) and a medium shot (showing something specific).
This photo is from the first time we’d done a ‘Jetstar Live’ event in which our Group CEO talked about how the business was doing after our latest full year financial results. We had people from seventeen countries watch this webcast live and all our individual airline CEOs participated via video conference. Pretty much all employees thought this behind-the-scenes production photo was cool.
People you want to know
This is a photo from the 2020 Melbourne Business School alumni reunion. The story I wanted to tell was: our Dean welcomed us and introduced us to our newly-hired deputy Dean a few weeks before she took up her role (that’s her in the background).
Photo of a man in business attire standing in the middle of a U-shaped classroom. Behind him are projector screens that say ‘Alumni Reunion 2020’. A woman in a business attire is sitting in the front row of the classroom, just behind the speaker.
This is a medium shot that focuses on something or someone. (In this case two someones.)
Alumni who were interested in what was happening at business school but couldn’t attend the alumni reunion found this photo interesting.
How things work
This photo is from the Measure Camp Melbourne unconference in 2018. The story I wanted to tell was: this is the board through which we are collectively organising this event and scheduling the day’s talks.
Several people are standing in a semicircle around a wall with columns of index cards stuck on a wall. This is the schedule of events. Along the top of the wall are logos of several businesses, including Google Analytics 360 Suite, Snowflake, and Datalicious.
This is a medium shot that focuses on a specific part of the event.
Folks who and wanted to see how things were being organised would’ve found this useful, regardless of whether they were attending the actual event or not.
What’s happening
This is a photo from the 2017 Melbourne Business Analytics Conference. The story I wanted to tell was: this conference, which is jam-packed with excellent sessions and speakers, is about to kick-off.
Close up photo of a conference agenda with multiple speaker tracks and multiple talks in each track. The title across the top of the printed agenda says ‘Melbourne Business Analytics Conference’.
This is a narrow shot that focuses on something very specific.
This photo worked because I tweeted it before any of the talks started. It gave an insight into what was going to happen at the event: people could see the titles of the talks, the names of the speakers, and the wide range of businesses represented. I don’t think anyone found it genuinely useful, but I think many did find it interesting.
Focus on the personal
Let me leave you with one bonus tip: find something personal from the event you’re attending and express that through your photo. This could be something that resonates with you (in which case it’ll likely resonate with your followers) or a feeling that you can try to capture through your photo (excitement, energy, awe, surprise, etc). The more personal your story/photo is, the more your audience will enjoy seeing it. There is a reason you’re the one they’re following, after all.
If not something personal to you — if you’re posting something on a corporate channel and not a personal one, for example — then try to find something oddly specific to tell a story about. Humans are curious creatures and if you show us something unusual or oddly specific we enjoy seeing it.
Putting it all together
To sum up:
Figure out what story you’re trying to tell (covered in part 1)
Figure out which type of photo will tell that story best (covered in part 2)
Make sure your story is cool, interesting, or useful to your audience
If you can do these three things then there’s a good chance your audience will like your story and they’ll keep following you and wanting to hear what you have to say.