Sandy Wardenburg Waggett shows how real photos of your team and customers beat stock images for engagement. If you use stock photos, pick ones with genuine micro-expressions, those split-second involuntary facial reactions that instantly convey emotion.
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Hey, friends, Sandy Weigt here with MSW Interactive Designs. And today I'm here with another marketing tip. So I want to give you a quick tip that will improve your social media posts. The interaction and engagement with those posts. You want to focus on using very authentic images. So the posts that tend to get the most engagement are the ones with the real great photos. And by real, I mean real, your real team, your real customers. But we can't always do that because there's not an endless supply and you don't want to keep repeating the same images. So as businesses, a lot of times we have to use stock imagery, which gets a bad rep for being cold and inauthentic. But it doesn't have to be that way. You just have to spend a little more time looking for the right images. Now, the key to finding the right images is to focus on images that have great micro expressions. Now micro expressions are those split, split second facial expressions and reactions that appear on our faces involuntarily as a result of something we see, feel, touch, experience. And the reason that they're so powerful is because they instantaneously evoke an emotion and the person that is seeing them. And it clearly communicates what the person is experiencing and what they're feeling in a genuine, authentic way. So you want to get away from the posed images and try to find the ones with the very authentic micro expressions in them. So, so I am going to show you a few examples. I'm going to share my screen here really quick. So give me one second and I'm just going to take you through some images where I can point out the difference. So here we go. All right, so I want to show sadness. So this is, you know, somebody might use this image in a post and it's, it conveys sadness. But this one's better. This child looks sad, but it still looks pose to me. Now when the next one comes up, look how authentic that is. The micro emotion is just hard to ignore. Now here, if I want to convey questioning or uncertainty, this might be an image that someone chooses in a post. This one's better. It's a person. They can see the emotion on their face. But the next one is even better. So I love, even though it has a white background, you can tell it's staged. But the capture of the micro emotion there is perfect. This one looks staged, you know, between this couple who looks at each other like that, it's just weird. But this one is way more authentic. Love this one. You can really feel what they're feeling. And I love this one too. With this gal, it's just a side glimpse. We've all done it. You can feel what's going on, kids. They can't fake it. That's a great picture for social media, would garner attention. And oh my gosh, animals can't fake it either. How cute is this great micro expression? And of course a basset hound. I got to throw one in there because they know how to use their eyes in an amazing way. But you get the idea. These are much more real micro expressions in these pictures. So really quick, I'm going to stop my share and we'll go. Just go back real quick here. So you get the idea. The posts that get the most engagement tend to be the ones with the best authentic images. And if they're stock images, they're the ones that have the greatest micro expressions because you need fewer words to convey the emotion that you're trying to get across in the image. So that is my marketing tip for today. Look for great images with fantastic micro expressions and your posts will get more engagement instantly. Sandy Wyatt with MSW Interactive Design signing off. Have a great day everyone.
