In Part I of our Resident Photos in Marketing series, we looked at the advantages and disadvantages of your senior living marketing images: stock photos and resident photos.
We also offered a solution that can give you the best of both worlds. By professionally shooting your own “stock photos” that feature your community’s residents, you get original, creative images that meet your needs for a variety of marketing scenarios. You’re also relieved of the worry that a royalty-free stock photo you’ve used prominently in your marketing will end up on a competitor’s website or in an undesirable ad.
You now know how to choose a skilled, compatible photographer and how to recruit your resident models. But it’s also important to consider how you can get great active shots, what scenes to shoot, how to safely back up your photos for future ease of access and how to update your shots in the future.
Amazing Active Shots
You know how dynamic your residents are and you’re well aware of the vast array of activities that occurs on a daily basis in your community. The challenge is conveying that spirit of joie de vivre in photos.
To determine the locations, activities and specific shots that will show your campus and your residents to best effect, consider doing a little sleuthing. Ask the professional photographer you’ve selected to visit the community on a couple different days. Together, take some time to walk around and peek in on different scenes and activities.
Be sure to include active areas, such as:
- The wellness center.
- The pool.
- The art studio, library and other areas where residents participate in hobbies.
- The various dining venues. You’ll want to find a time that’s not busy for shooting staged dining shots with your resident models.
- The community’s lobby or main gathering area.
- Small groups of residents chatting or playing games.
- Outdoor activity areas, such as tennis courts, walking trails and community gardens.
You’ll be attempting to capture the spirit of all these activities using your resident models. As you visit each area, make notes on the lighting, the scenery and the activities that occur there. Is the room well lit? Are there extra chairs or clutter that can be removed from shots?
After you’ve done your research, create a scene or “shot list” and schedule for the photographer. Get as specific as possible with the details, leaving little to chance. The more you can assist the photographer through great planning, the better the end results will be.
Store Your Photos Safely
Most everyone’s important files have moved to the cloud these days, but your new photos may require local storage. Your photographer should provide you with a hard drive (digital storage) that includes several versions and file sizes of your photos, including:
- Low-resolution, small files for on-screen uses like your website and social media.
- Medium-resolution, for displaying at very large sizes on-screen or for displaying in a small format in print.
- High-resolution, for uses like full-page print advertisements.
Your high-resolution files could be sized at multiple gigabytes each, making them difficult to store in the cloud. You’ll want to keep backups in several locations:
- Keep a copy of your photos on DVD in the marketing department and provide someone else in the organization — such as your CEO — with a copy as backup.
- Copy the files to your local computer and, if available, to a shared server.
- If possible, upload files to a secure cloud service, such as Dropbox, where they’re easy to share with your marketing agency.
In addition, find out your photographer’s policy on archiving jobs and how difficult it would be for you to get files in the future if needed.
Plan for Future Updates
You’ve carefully selected your resident models, chosen beautiful scenes throughout your senior living campus and taken great active shots. You have your photos available in a range of resolutions for any marketing need that arises, and you have backups in different locations in case of disaster.
But even with your careful planning, the time will come when you need new shots. Inevitably, some of your resident models will eventually move away from the community or pass away. Are you comfortable with continuing to use your photos in those cases?
You can approach the situation in several ways. One option is to simply continue using the shots. Alternatively, you can use the shots temporarily, or you can immediately have new shots made using different people in the same settings. If your photographer provided you with a variety of images that included a number of different people, you may be able to simply drop some photos from your rotation until you schedule another photo shoot in the future.
Whether they’re stock, candid or professional, photos will always have a limited shelf life and you’ll need to plan for periodic updates. In the meantime, your new library of custom photography featuring real residents enjoying life in their own community should serve your marketing program well.
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