For today’s marketers and entrepreneurs, social media is an important tool in getting the word out about their products and services. But as the old saying goes: A picture is worth a thousand words — especially with the rise to near-ubiquity of Instagram, and the dominance of photo based content on networks such as Facebook and Pinterest. These shifts are forcing brands large and small to adjust their content strategy to make sure they continue to tell their story in a way that is visible to their audience while being engaging and on-message.
Building a brand with the use of photo apps offers affordability, immediacy and countless creative options to get your brand out there. With these apps, brands have the ability to share quality photos and visual content without the continuous need for Photoshop.
Brands have also found photos as a great way to get their community involved in their online presence by crowdsourcing photos from their community members and sharing from their own accounts.
With all the features, filters and effects that Photo Apps offer, the creative possibilities for building your brand through images are seemingly endless. To get started, here are five photo apps and their features that you can use to further engage with your community and create a quality social presence.
The photo app that started it all, Instagram is the most popular of all the other photo apps out there and sets the standard for them as well. Instagram is still being figured out by brands, but has served as a great way for media outlets and brands to showcase their products, as well as get their community involved in their mobile presence. Visit Instagram here
Lightt
A new, unique take on taking photos, Lightt features the use of highlights: single 10-second grabs of pictures. Each highlight captures the motion of the moment, and when like together, a string of highlights reads like visual memories. It will be interesting to see how Lightt succeeds in the mobile market, but certainly seems worth checking out to create dynamic and creative content. Visit Lightt.
Mobli
While Instagram has quickly become THE storyteller for individuals, Mobli has created a product that could be the storyteller of choice for communities. With dedicated “channels” for events, locations, causes, etc. brands can get their communities involved by creating a channel that features the view points and images from all of their members under one roof. Visit Mobli..
Photo Mage
This is a simple photo editing app. Choose a photo, apply one of 15 filters, add a label using five built-in fonts and save it to your camera roll, even if you don’t have a network connection. This is a great way for brands to add context to some of their photos and further tell their story despite a picture already being worth a thousand words. Visit Photo Mage here
Cinemagram
Using a similar interface to Instagram, with profiles, popular pages, filter effects, etc. Cines or cinemagraphs are animated GIFs created by recording a two to three-second video that loops a small section within the shot, saving the rest as a still image. With the rising popularity of gifs on platforms such as Tumblr and Facebook, Cinemegram gives brands an easy way to capitalize on this trend and create content their community will enjoy. Check out Cinemagram here
Know your Guest Author:
Harrison Kratz.is the Community Manager at MBA@UNC, a new initiative which allows students to receive their MBA online from the University of North Carolina from anywhere around the world. He also sticks to his entrepreneurial roots as the founder of the global social good campaign, Tweet Drive. When he’s not working, Harrison switches his focus to great food, watching any sport that’s on TV, all things Disney, and traveling. You can find Harrison on Twitter @KratzPR.
This is an often missed SEO opportunity – makes sense to be aware of these new options to get your name… and your image/s out there. Another good example is Pinterest.
Thanks
Andy 🙂
Hey Andy,
Thanks for visiting the blog and commenting. Pinterest is amazing these days. I never guessed the kind of traffic I could generate from Pinterest.