Never commission a photograph of your product.

It may shock you to hear these words from a commercial photographer, it certainly took me by surprise as one of the guiding principles handed down when I started to serve my time in Advertising Photography in 1986, but it was great advice and remains just as relevant today.

So what to do instead? Next time you commission a photograph or video, whether you sell a product or a service, bear these time-honoured principles in mind:

1. Don't commission a photograph of your product when you could commission a photograph that sells your product. People buy products and the action of purchasing is triggered by collaboration between the head and the heart. The exact proportions of these influences depends as much upon the type of product as it does on which school of advertising you subscribe to, but both organs are involved, that's for sure.

2. Speak to your audience. This has two important messages. "Speak to" means address directly and this involves engagement with the potential buyer, no engagement means it missed the point. "Your audience" means the target demographic for your product because there's very little point trying to sell nursing home places to school children, they're just the wrong group for the proposition. In summary, what sells more cold drinks, a picture of a glass of liquid or a picture of a group of friends (representative of the target demographic) having fun sharing a drink?

3.Give your product a first class ticket for its journey. Way back in the 1950's, when the idea of brand image was starting to shape advertisements, David Ogilvy (the original Mad Man) was saying, "Every advertisement must contribute to the complex symbol that is the brand image". The idea that every appearance of your product must add to its image is pivotal and widely accepted The image of the brand, which is the company who produces the product, should also be served by each appearance.

4. Only employ hard working photographs. A hard working photograph sells product by engaging the viewer but way beyond that it makes the product desirable, the company recognisable and the brand memorable.

I have never forgotten being told - it is the advertising photographer's job to mix science with art in order to give an advertiser access to their clients' hearts and minds - it was good advice in 1986 and continues to translate well 25 years on.

Story Appeal, something old or something new?

David Ogilvy's "man in the Hathaway shirt" campaign in 1951 produced sales that outpaced factory production capacity. The reader was intrigued by the mysterious portraits of Baron Wrangell wearing an eye patch photographed in a variety of interesting settings and so they read the copy to find out more, this copy sold shirts, lots of shirts. Ogilvy summed it up - The kind of photographs which work hardest are those which arouse the reader's curiosity. He glances at the photograph and says to himself, 'What goes on here?' Then he reads your copy to find out. 'Story Appeal,' the more of it you inject into your photographs, the more people look at your advertisements.

So in 2011, with fewer clients taking full-page adverts in the New Yorker than Ogilvy had in 1951, I hear you say; "how does this relate to what we do today?" My answer is "social media".

Few now fail to grasp the value of weaving social media into a marketing strategy because its success stories are all around us. The value of showing your personality and becoming more of a known quantity or real person to your otherwise impersonal online connections is an important part of this, just like the appeal of a mass audience reached with a very modest cost of communication.

What I propose for Story Appeal in 2011 is that it be used as a page turning stopper, an attention grabber but better - a hard working photograph which includes a call to action - click-through action. Placed in social media posts with pictures which leave the viewer wanting to know more, intrigued, hungry and most of all wanting to click-through for the answer.

Having started with Ogilvy I will finish the same way. As early as 1955 he was saying "Every advertisement must contribute to the complex symbol that is the brand image", although this is an accepted concept today it was pioneering stuff in the 1950's. The other secret ingredient in the Hathaway shirt campaign was that the model, his surroundings and everything about the images said the right things about the Hathaway Shirt Company. Even before Ogilvy had started to talk about brand image he was ensuring that his clients products were portrayed consistently in a high quality. This will also be a core principal of the Story Appeal campaign we will shoot in 2011.

The complete picture for websites including Alt tags for SEO.

Many of the images I am commissioned to provide are destined for web use, to get the best from these images I wanted to share a technical tip with you. Obviously the first step is to ensure that your product or service is displayed online with a high quality image which reflects the values that help make your prospects into clients. However there is another way your images can help to secure revenue for your company - by making your website more visible to search engines. Yes, we are entering the world of search engine optimisation (SEO) here. When an image is added to your site the code for the page will have an entry something like this:

< img src="phone.jpg" width="1024" height="512" alt="phone by Stephen Potts " />

The image in this example is called {phone.jpeg} and by adding the text {alt="phone by Stephen Potts "} we have given it an Alt tag. You will need access to the code of your site to do this (maybe with a simple program like Cute FTP, which is the one I use) or else you can have your web designer do this for you.

Doing this gives you 2 benefits, the search engines who crawl all websites to check for content will recognise the words and list you accordingly in search results and visitors with visual disabilities will be able to get some info on the image through audio software. To get the best from the search result improvement you will need to include some keywords in the Alt tag, these are words which you think your potential customers may use to search for a service or product which you provide - help with choosing these is available from Google and the best part is that it is free!

You will need to create a Google account, this is done by following the "sign in" link on the top right of the Google search page and following the steps to "create an account". Once you have done this there are lots of handy tools to add to your free account but the one for keywords is called "AdWords". When you have followed the steps to set this up select the "Opportunities" tab and then (down on the left hand menu) "Keyword Tools". Here you can test how many people look for specific phrases and get excellent intelligence to help you choose the right keywords for your own site. It is useful to put a tick in the box for "Only show ideas closely related to my search terms" at least to start with but you will soon be experimenting with the settings and options in here to help you get the search results your business needs.

What does the image on your corporate literature or website say about you?

If a picture speaks a thousand words what does the corporate photography on your literature or website say about you? Great character portraits are produced with insight and attention to detail - they should squeeze every available ounce of the subject's essence into the picture because your key personnel are among your major assets - the way they are portrayed to potential and existing customers is of the utmost importance.

Have a look around some websites and see how many leaders of industry, politicians and entrepreneurs - movers and shakers - have let a just about average (or even really poor) image of themselves be used alongside great copy which attempts to explain how they are the backbone of the organisation, the leaders in their field, at the top of their profession and the best at whatever they are offering to do for you. The variation in standards surprises me - some make great use of strong images to reinforce their worth but many miss out on the opportunity to use high quality commercial photography to strengthen their message. With the all important first impression of your brand on the line it is worth remembering that for prospective customers looking at your website it is often their first contact with your company, forming early opinions and most importantly deciding whether they will contact you with a view to doing business. There is very little point in getting everything right with respect to your customer experience if new customers are not sufficiently impressed by your company's appearance to make a first enquiry.

Many web design companies shy away from bespoke photography because they do not fully understand the commissioning process and mistakenly think it will be prohibitively expensive. They often default to library pictures and image content generated in house which is frequently of a poor standard. As commercial photographers it is our responsibility to spread the news of the advantages of bespoke commissioned photography to web design companies so that their clients can benefit from the first class image that their first class product or service deserves - good working relationships in this area will benefit all parties.

Anyone using social media like Facebook fan pages, Twitter and Linkedin as part of their online marketing strategy also has a great opportunity to use an image enhancing picture, so why do so many people with otherwise great online content use such a terrible profile picture? Of course some people get this right and the secret here is to use an image with the right undercurrents without being too formal, as befits the social media environment. You can have some fun and get your message through, after all it's up to you what you want to say...

The Trouble With Stock Images

The increasing number of images required for use on the web has fuelled the expansion of online stock image libraries and while these images are often cheap and certainly convenient for web developers they are not always the best solution from the website owners' perspective. It is important that any business owner considers all the implications of this important decision which can affect their sales potential and reflect upon their brand image, however it seems that many web development companies use library images by default - perhaps because they are familiar with it and are put off commissioning because they do not understand the process.

First there is the risk of deja vu, like the insurance company who launched a hugely expensive new website only to discover that the homepage image of the receptionist was the same as their biggest competitor's website. Or how about expending the time and effort required to write a novel only to find your publisher had used a royalty free image for your cover, meaning that another author (or even several others) can use it as well. Given the nature of publishing budgets this seems like a false economy and a well conceived brief for some bespoke photography need not be as expensive as an author might fear.

Secondly the nasty generic look which is becoming the scourge of websites, you know the type of thing, like the happy folk wearing immaculate navy blue suits in the mystical white boardroom, which is rife on the home page banners of so many financial services and business coaching websites. This is available in web sized files for as little as 15 pence and, while the price may seem tempting, the question of best value rather than best price has to be considered - a well conceived and beautifully executed image that speaks directly to your market and says the right things about your business is a far better investment.

Third is the damage this can do to sales - the increasing volume of media we all consume daily has made viewers more sophisticated and far more able to detect this difference, albeit often subconsciously, and the effect of trying to promote your company while using an obviously imaginary illustration seriously undermines trust and the likelihood of converting a website visit to an enquiry or a sale. Next time you look at a website with employee images ask yourself - "do I believe that one of the people in this image might answer the phone if I called the company?"

Finally the missed opportunity because images also provide unique opportunities to weave strong messages of regional relevance into your content whereas the use of a library stock shot taken in Iowa will be unlikely to do this if you trade in Belfast. commercial photography that you commission specifically for your business pays for itself in better sales performance by selling your product to your market. Failure to get this right means you are missing an important opportunity.