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13 Tips for Using Photos & Graphics in Your Publicity Campaign by Joan Stewart

If you’re pitching stories about your company, but photos are an afterthought, you could be missing fabulous opportunities for publicity.

A good-quality photo is often the first thing that attracts a reader’s attention. It serves as an anchor on the page. And often, a photo can tell its own story, without being accompanied by an article.

Journalists say a good photo can move your article from the back of a magazine to the front. Photos can be the deciding factor when you’re pitching a story idea. An editor who knows that you can provide photos, or that their own photographer can take photos of something interesting, might be encouraged to say “yes” to your story idea.

Here are 13 tips for using photos and graphics for publicity:

1. Make sure you have good-quality, above-the-shoulders photos of all your experts who are likely to be interviewed by the media.

2. Consider asking your photographer to shoot “environmental portraits” of your experts. An architect, for example, might be shown holding several rolled up architect’s renderings under her arm. A construction executive can be shown holding a hard hat or other tools of his trade. Weekly newspapers that don’t have big photo staffs would probably welcome these photos.

3. Have interior and exterior shots of your company available for the media. The interior shots can show people at work.

4. Submit photos with news releases about routine announcements such as new hires, promotions, retirements, awards, etc.

5. Pie charts, bar charts and other graphics can often help readers understand complicated issues such as budgets. Offer to supply information to media outlets so they can create their own graphics to accompany the article they’re writing about.

6. If you’re sponsoring an event that doesn’t necessarily warrant a story, call the photo desk at your local newspaper and let photographers know what’s happening.

7. If a photographer from a newspaper or magazine takes photos at your company, never demand to see the negatives, or dictate what photo they should use with the article, or ask for free copies of prints. The negatives are the property of the media outlet, and the media maintain full control over their use. If you want prints, expect to pay for them.

8. When sending prints to the media, be sure correct identification is on a sticker on the back of each photo. When sending several photos, slip a piece of paper between each one so the ink from the back of one photo doesn’t bleed onto the front of the photo behind it.

9. Avoid using big clunky photos at your website because they slow down the time it takes a page to load.

10. Never, ever ask a newspaper or magazine to take photos of a check-passing, ground-breaking or ribbon-cutting ceremony. The media hate these staged events. And please, don’t wimp out by uploading these cheesy-looking photos to your expensive website.

11. Offer an architect’s rendering instead of a ground-breaking shot. In place of a check-passing photo, take a photo that illustrates what the money will be used for. Instead of a ribbon-cutting photo, how about a photo of a business person with a customer on the first day of business?

12. Make sure you offer all your images as digital photos that the media can access at your website, perhaps in a password protected area that the public can’t access.

13. If you’re sponsoring an annual event, take lots of photos yourself and offer them to the media the following year to be used for pre-event publicity.

Are you starting to get the picture? Photos and graphics can be a powerful publicity tool—but only if you use them.

Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound, is author of the ebooks How to Use Photos & Graphics in Your Publicity Campaign and How to be a Kick-butt Publicity Hound

Reprinted with permission. Joan Stewart publishes "The Publicity Hound's Tips of the Week," a free ezine on how to generate thousands of dollars in free publicity. Subscribe at her website at http://www.PublicityHound.com and receive free the handy checklist "89 Reasons to Send a News Release." Visit her blog at http://publicityhound.net