One of the best tools for the budget-conscious jeweler is social media. With very little investment, social platforms are commonly the best way to reach your customer right in the palm of their hand. Eye-catching imagery and content is at the heart of being successful on social.
There is still time to up your social game for the holidays! Here to help you out are Stuller’s social media specialist Hannah Blaine and a Stuller photographer LeeAnn Stephan with social media and photography tips for the holidays.
Stuller’s Stellar Social
Like many of you, we take the holidays very seriously and try to get ahead on our planning and promotions for the holiday season. You can find holiday promotions on our social media accounts as early as October. We rely heavily on the content we create to engage you, our customers, and that can only happen with attention-grabbing photography.
Stuller has a talented team of photographers dedicated to taking photos of jewelry, gemstones, diamonds, and more of our products. They work year-round to make sure our visual content is up-to-date, trendy, and appealing. But these images are not just for us. We encourage you to use them for your own marketing purposes as well!
Interested in taking your own photos of your products? Check out our Stuller Connect live stream from this summer with photographer Daniel Maldonado on the Basics of Photography.
Whether you use our pictures or create your own, we are going to help you break down some social trends and demonstrate how to best use these images to be more profitable for your business.
A Look at Stuller Photography
As we have mentioned, our photography department ever stops working on the next big thing. From catalogs and brochures to web shots and social campaign images, our team is constantly working to stay ahead of the curve. In our studio, we have collected props, papers, and other items of various colors and textures to enhance the products we shoot.
Collecting items like these and using simple lighting setups can really take your product photography to the next level. Our GemLightBox is the perfect investment for taking well-lit, professional photos of your products even with your phone.
But how do we know what images to shoot? We plan our campaigns months in advance, but all you need is a strategy for the upcoming months to know what you need to have prepared. Let’s dive into what you need to be thinking about when creating this strategy.
Creating a Social Strategy for Holiday Success
If you have watched our previous livestream on social media tips, you’ll know that the first thing we recommend to anyone putting together a comprehensive social strategy is to look at your insights. Understanding what posts your audience engages in and when they are online is the foundation to knowing where to start with your plan.
Once you know a little about your customer and how they interact online, plan what you need to promote and when. For example, it would be better for you to specifically push custom jewelry right now while there is still time before the holidays and wait until a few days before Christmas to push the last-minute items you already have in stock. Make sure you have appropriate images to go with your captions that look appealing and make someone want to see more.
Finally, you put that plan into action by scheduling your content ahead of time so that you have less to stress about during the intense selling season. Using free scheduling tools, such as Facebook Creator Studio and Later, will save you a lot of time during a period when time is of the essence.
Giving Attention to Your Visual Brand
Have you given much thought to the visual consistency of the images you are posting? What does your Instagram grid look like? Is there a cohesiveness to your grid that draws people to your brand?
These are questions you should be asking yourself when putting together the images you want to use in your social strategy. A cohesive grid will not only give your customers a feel for your brand, but it will draw in newcomers as new followers and potential new customers. Your grid tells your brand’s story. Customers are drawn to a well-planned and well-executed visual aesthetic.
On Stuller’s Instagram, you will notice a consistent visual look on our grid that follows the stories we push as the seasons and holidays change. But even as small visual nuances in the photos change to fit the season, there is an overall connectivity to our pictures that identify the imagery as Stuller’s brand.
Putting together a consistent and comprehensive social media strategy can be daunting and we are always here to be a resource for you. If you have any questions about social media and photography tips, contact our social media team at Hannah_Blaine@stuller.com.
Join us next week for the final installment of our Holiday Live Learning Series as we talk about gifting diamonds and gemstones.
For more social media and photography tips, check out these related blog posts by our social media team!
Social Media Strategy: Holiday #JollyJewelryDays Posts
Social Media Strategy Overhaul Before the Holidays
