Ep 3 - Planning Your Perfect Photoshoot

Marketing is and specifically social media marketing is the main way for most of us to enrol more students into our program.  Great photos are a key part of that. 

So today's episode is all about how to optimise and maximise your photoshoot to get photos not only to help you attract more students into your program through social media but also to use on your website, on ads and brochures for the year to come.

In this episode, you will learn: 

• The benefits of high quality, branded photos of YOUR students
• How to organise your photoshoot day to get these images
• The KEY types of images you should be taking
• How to use those pics to Enroll More Students!How to use those pics to Enroll More Students!
  
   

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Show Transcription: 

Hello, friends, and welcome, thank you so much for joining me today on this episode. Today we're talking about how to get the most out of your next photo shoot. I love this chat and you know, I hope that you get some actionable tips that you can take forward as you plan your next photo shoot for your business.

So we all know that marketing and specifically social media marketing is the main way that most of us use to enroll more students into our program. Brand photos are a huge, huge part of that. It's how you connect with your prospective clients.

They want to imagine exactly how it is going to look and how it will feel to be part of your program in your school. The imagery you use and how consistent it is with your brand makes that so much easier to communicate to that ideal future client.

And so, you know, it is so much easier if you have high quality, great brand photos and heaps of them that you can use on tap whenever you want. I always talk to people and they'll go, You know, your studio photos look great. How on earth do you do that? So today's episode is all about how to optimize and maximize your next photo shoot to get photos that will not only help you attract more students into your program through social media, but also for you to use on your website on ads and brochures for the year to come.

So let's get stuck in. You know, I think it's so important that your photos accurately represent the culture in your business. And when I say that, I mean very accurately represent, you know, it shouldn't be this amazing pose to photos of these perfect children if that's not how your students normally look in a day to day setting in your business. Obviously, with brand photos, you always want to put your best foot forward, but you do want it to represent exactly what it is like in a day in the life of your business. That's why it's so important that you are always, always using photos inside your building of your students in your uniform.

If you have a uniform and not just stock photos that you've gotten from ice stock image or whatever that is. So, you know, I think it's so, so great to have a huge bank of images. And, you know, like we're talking 1000 images and you can use them on socials every single day if you want on your website, on your ads, on your brochures. And I think it's really important to have these done regularly. You know, I like to have them done every one to two years because it's so important to always have up to date photos, new stuff to be posting on socials.

My gosh, it's so, you know, it's a matter of always finding content for our socials. It can be hard sometimes, but if you have a bank of 1000 images that you can just go through and post, you know, one a day, how amazing and how much easier is that to be putting out that social media content that's always looking on point and, you know, is consistent with your brand identity. So I think every one to two years is awesome. And also, make sure that you're not using photos of the building, how it used to look or your old uniform or perhaps students that have grown up and are embarrassed about how they looked as a child or perhaps students that have moved on and you no longer want them in your brand photos. So I think every one to two years is an absolute minimum, and it's a great thing to do. It's a great retention tool as well for your current students to be able to give them that excitement of a brand photoshoot that they can be involved in. 

For me personally, I like to pick usually about 40 kids to be involved in a brand photo shoot, and I like to have a wide range of children. I invite them to come along. I gift them all of the photos as a thank you for them coming. I don't pay them or anything like that, but I am very thankful for their time. And I think by just giving them some amazing images, I always try to make sure the photographer has time to take even just one photo of that child by themselves. Not so much because I will use it, but so that we can gift it to them. Because parents love having photos of their children, of course, are what family isn't going to want to help you out with that and also love seeing their child all over your social media.

So as we said, I think it's important that they accurately represent your studio. You want to not just have your top level kids performing their hardest skill, the hardest trick, because that can put off your preschool parents. You know you want a big, wide variety, so you want to show all levels.

And quite possibly, you might even want to show more photos, depending on. Type of business you have when I say wreck, I mean, recreational style photos that don't sort of show that higher level comp kid, you know, doing the back tuck or doing the huge leg mat or whatever that is, you want to show children of all ages. As I said, you want to show children of different ethnicities, different body shapes. You also want to show a variety of uniform options. Perhaps if you have, you know, in our last episode, we talked about a wide variety of uniforms.

So you know, they might be the crop top, the long top, the T-shirt. You want to show all of those off as well. And you also, as I said, want that to accurately represent. So you don't want the children all in perfect buns, for example, with their hair, if that's not how they normally come to class.

If you make your children all wear buns perfect, do that in the photos. But if your children will just come in whatever hairstyle they've got, then you know that's a better way to give parents insight into what it's going to be like inside your business.

So as I said, even though you want to put your best foot forward, you do want it to accurately represent what it's like in your business. 

Awesome. So we need to make sure we're picking the right photographer. So, so important.

There's nothing worse than planning a huge big photo shoot for a day. And the photographer not being able to work well with children. You know, you want someone who understands what it's like to work with children who's experienced with working with children and can get the children to feel comfortable so that they can have fun and be themselves. You want the whole environment to be super, super fun. So as well as having a great photographer, you know, having your most energetic teachers, they're on board to inspire the kids, get the kids laughing and having a great time.

You want to crank that music. You want to bribe the kids with lollies, if that's what you need to do. But making sure that everyone's feeling relaxed and having a great time is so, so important. You want to make sure with your photographer that you know they have the right look and feel for your brand.

For me, I like bright photos with pops of color, but find whatever works for you and your brand. Perhaps you like black and white. More sleek imagery. Right? Make sure you find a photographer that is experienced in that style.

Perhaps you like moody kind of images. Well, if that's the case, awesome. You might have a contemporary program and want to have really moody images. Make sure you have a good look through the photographer's portfolio and say that they've kind of experienced in that kind of style of imagery.

You also want a photographer that gives you all the images, you know, and make sure you're having a good look at their packages. You want to be able to get all of them, and maybe it's just that they edit a handful of those from your website to a higher level.

But you do want a photographer that gives you all of the images. So as we said that perhaps you get a bank of 1000 images to use ongoing on your socials? I think that's really, really important. If you need a photographer.

Hit me up on my Instagram DM’s it's @rasiethebarr, and I'll let you know if you're in New South Wales, Australia. My photographer is amazing. I'll put you in contact with her as well.

Awesome, so once you've got the right photographer, you've got the children on board for the day. Make sure you're only having them come for short periods of time. For me, for example, my last photo shoot. We had a full day planned.

But the preschoolers came from 9 till 1030, for example. You know, we then had the kids that were going to be in the recreational style section come from 1030 till, you know, midday. We then had an acrobatic section.

We then had a more elite style photoshoot. So we had like lots of different photoshoots, all planned throughout the day. Because you don't want kids sitting around for too longer periods of time, they get tired. We know that children get tired and they get over it.

So really, make sure you've planned your day and planned which children you have at the right time so that you can get the most out of those kids for the period of time that they're there. Awesome. So as I said, we really want to make sure our classes are sorry about what what we're showing in our photos is emulated through what our classes are actually going to be like. Oh, it's tripped over all my words there, but hopefully you know what I mean. So we want to give a behind the scenes look. We know that so many parents are scrolling Instagram and they're like, Hmm, maybe I want to send my child there, but they want to know a little bit more. They want to say what it's like in your classes. So rather than just that perfect posed photo of the child doing the perfect trick, or perhaps the perfect, you know, the child stating they're perfectly in first position, whatever that is, you want to give them what the class actually looks like.

So some ideas I think that you need to include in those photos is the child walking into the classroom, for example, and having the teacher in these photos as well. I think that's gold. You know, having a teacher because it really makes the kids feel more comfortable and it's more like taking photos of what a class is actually like. So you want the children to all sit down and mock the role if that's what you do normally in a class, you want a photo of that, you want classes. So photos of the students warming up, doing their stretches, doing their drills, doing across the floor work and the teacher correcting children throughout that, you know perhaps it's the teacher walking over and point, you know, helping the child stretch their foot or point their toe. More so than congratulating the student then standing there. While the children are waiting for their turn across the floor.

You don't make it very lifelike, you know, cannot conduct an actual class with the students and have the photographer photograph that you know, other things you might do in the class, you know, getting a sticker at the end of the class.

If it's a younger class, of course, you know the students laughing while the teacher's talking. You know the props that you may use in class. You want to make sure that all of these are captured in the photos.

So, so important. Awesome. And then I wanted to give you some other tips of photos to include. And if you want to see examples of these photos, I'd love for you to jump on to the show notes for this episode.

And you can find some examples of the photos that I'm talking about, and maybe that might inspire you for how they can work for your business as well. So a couple of photos, I think it's really important to include, you know, I talked about the in-class photos, a very real representation of exactly what it's like inside your classroom. But also with that, what else can you include? Is it before class pictures of them sitting in the waiting room? Is it, you know, pictures of the parent handing them off at the door? Perhaps if you own a dance program or something similar where the parent isn't allowed inside the classroom, you might get lots of questions on that. So think about how you could advertise the benefits of that and use an image that might represent it. So perhaps there's a photo of the little girl kissing mom goodbye at the door to the classroom and the teacher taking her, you know, getting ready to take her hand.

You can then use the caption like as students learn independence from their parents in our classes. So really, think about how you're going to use this as an advertising moment, I guess, in the class. So as we said before, class pictures, pitches with a parent or if the parents sit in the room and that's what you want to advertise, you know, have the parents sitting in the room. So the people that are looking at these photos on social media, on your website, wherever they happen to be looking at it, they can see a real insight into what it's like in your business.

Some other great photos, I think, are awesome to be able to include. And as I said, think about what you might use these for. And, you know, even so much as what will the caption be under this photo?

You know, I love celebrating photos, you know? And it could be something like we've got a surprise might be the caption or today we're celebrating or there's a special offer for enrollment. So photos of kids jumping, perhaps and, you know, jumping up in the air, celebrating with their hands going, I'm doing it and you obviously can't see me. I feel like I feel silly doing this right now, forgetting I'm not on video. Perhaps it's confetti cannons. We did this with our last one and they look great having two people off camera, launching confetti cannons at the kids and the kids looking up in the air and checking out the confetti falling all over them.

They're great photos to use and in promos for events that you've got coming up. Perhaps, as we said, special offers or anything like that. Holiday photos are a great thing to do, and it's so important to go, Okay, let's plan these for the whole year, and then we don't have to worry about them come Christmas time.

So, you know, photos with Santa hats on. Put the Christmas tree up and have the photo of the child in your uniform with their Santa hat and the Christmas tree. Easter photos with them with the Easter Bunny ears on Halloween photos.

Any sort of holidays that you celebrate in your studio or your business, making sure you have the photos ready for that because then they're all ready to go with a Merry Christmas caption as you're coming up to Christmas.

Or perhaps it's promoting a Christmas special. All of those photo banks are there, and you come to those times of the year and you don't have to worry about it. I think that's absolutely key. It makes it so much easier.

You know, what else do you do throughout the year that you'd love to promote and show off to your prospective clients? For us, we do graduations for our preschoolers. We put them in the little cap and gowns. We present them with, you know, their graduation certificate.

So, you know, we had photos taken of the graduation. We didn't obviously fake a mock up of what the graduation looks like, but we put the children in the cap and the gowns, and they got ready to have those photos.

They threw the caps up and we're talking four year olds, of course, that are, you know, graduating preschool and moving on to big people classes. So we mocked all of those photos up, so they were ready to show come graduation time, but also to show at other times so that they they were promoting all those events that we do and the extras that we offer inside our business that are more than just classes. If you do award certificates, the exact same thing, the children getting their awards, perhaps if you do levels, children getting each level certificate that they need to get.

If you do sticker charts or anything like that, having photos of all of those all prepared to go, that gives parents an insight into what the student will feel, what they will achieve and what they can expect from their classes to walk away from.

I think they're all amazing photos to have a signed board. I absolutely love photos with sign boards and. It sounds silly, and I did it for the first time, excuse me, years and years ago, and it works so, so well.

So just getting a blank white piece of cardboard, for example, and having the students hold it or point to it or jump up in the air with it or all of the above. Then you can use in super simple editing app like Canva to edit a caption on there like great sale today or enrollment starts today.

Or, you know, today we're celebrating and using those over and over is an awesome way to do it. You can also do it with a a signed board, like a letter signed board. You know, those cool ones that you put the letters in that in Australia, we get from Kmart, like really easily.

But you can also mock that up in Canva as well. So having a few different options, we had a whole heap of different science so that they were had different colors and that we had options to use different things for different events that we were promoting.

So I think that's a really, really great thing. If you don't quite understand what I mean, jump onto our show notes so you can have a look at those as well. Keeping with that kind of theme, we do similar photos that are pointing to a blight, a blank space.

So talk to your photographer about how you want these framed and regardless if you have a colored wall behind you or just a plain white wall. But don't forget, you can also use Canva to remove the background and put perhaps a colored background behind.

But you know the student or students post pointing to something in the air on the right of them up high on the right of them, or doing a shocked face and pointing to that and having the room next to them.

So for that same thing that you can write something up there on a graphic design software that is promoting an event or a offer that you have coming up. So, so great to have those and just to have them, you know, in a bank that you can use whenever you want.

So, so valuable. Awesome, so we've talked about a couple of different things, you know, smiley kids hugging nothing goes past some happy smiley kids hugging, looking at the photographer. I think that that is a really great banker, photos to have and so many of them, alas, photoshoot.

You know, we put the kids in groups of three lots of different combinations from all little kids together and all like, you know, every age group together to some little kids with the older kids all looking up to them and, you know, lots of different collections of kids.

So we could use them ongoing with kids hugging and smiling and looking at the cameras because parents want to see that fun and that joy that you have in your program expressed in the imagery that you're using. So they are great ones.

And I think also that same thing, you know, the is being cheeky. I think that there are some great photos and we had a photo shoot a couple of years ago that we had a little boy come along too.

And the little boy, he was just that kind of little boy. It wasn't even planned. He was swinging upside down on the ballet bar, hanging upside down like a monkey. Those photos worked so well for us, like because they were super cute.

The same thing that the parents, you know, want to look at the photo and get. Yeah, that would be my child up in the corner being that naughty one or that cheeky one. And that's okay. You know that it isn't this super strict place where every, you know, three year old stands in line perfect because we know that parents have insecurities about their child not fitting in. And so you want to show that that's okay. Sometimes in that same photoshoot, the same little boy we were had photos of the preschoolers sitting in a circle doing a point and flex exercise, and most of the students were doing the point in Flex, and he was rolling on his back, you know, legs over his head, bomb over his head. And that photo was super cute. All the other kids were laughing. The teacher was laughing. And I think those images work really, really well as well.

So, you know, it's fine for it not to be perfect all the time, and it's fine for the kids to have a bit of fun and be a bit cheeky with it, I guess. I love the telling a secret photo as well for that same reason that we were talking about the pointing photos.

Think of how the caption might play out. You know, the caption to that photo might be, We have a secret this offers coming soon. All classes are this amount for the next month. So for the same reason, you can use them ongoing for promos that you've got going.

So yeah, the the students telling each other a secret or laughing, putting their hands over their face to have a giggle. I think that's some great photos, as well as all those in class photos. And as we talked about, the ones with the teachers, I think, are so, so valuable.

And you can also use those photos to demonstrate your values in your business. So, you know, probably all of you have the value that your teachers produce quality work and they care for their children. And so using the photos of them correcting a child of them, you know, giving a high five to a child can all be used to demonstrate that value and to use and to actually write that in the captions. I think that can be so, so valuable. So make sure while the photographers there, though, that you also get some photos of you, the director can be so, so wonderful to have.

And I know that usually you don't want to jump in the photos. I'm the same. I get it. But having some amazing photos of the director, you know, being hugged by some of the kids sitting on the stairs with some of the children surrounding them, you know, they can be really great photos to use and their memories to keep whether you use them or not. I regret not being in more of our photos because even though you don't want to do it at the time, 20 years later, you totally want to look back at that and have those memories of that time in your business.

So make sure you get some photos of you at the same time. So hopefully that helped today for you to plan your next photo shoot. You know, you really want to optimize your time, so make sure you plan your schedule, make sure you get a great Pinterest board going, or just a collection of photos that inspire you and you actually plan them all out. As I've said multiple times, make sure you plan out the types of captions you want to use on your social media, for example, or the types of promos that you have in your business and how that story can tell that, sorry, how that picture can tell that story, I guess.

So really, make sure you're organized and have it set up so that it can. Be an amazing day, and you can use those photos for years and years to come. As I said, have a look at the show notes for this on the rise the power website for examples of some of our photos that might inspire you

from our studio. And I hope he so enjoy this episode and got something out of it. Hit me up. If you'd like our photographer's details, I'd love to share those with you. If you are in New South Wales, Australia and I can't wait to have you on the next episode, thank you so much again for joining me today.