Why your own image database is the secret to your branding
As a dance music producer, your images are a key part of your branding as well as your online image in general. You could think about press photos for example or images that have been shot by a photographer at an event where you have performed, but there’s a lot more to it. If you don’t use an effective method to categorize these images, you’ll have an image library that’s a mess and that will be time-consuming when trying to find an image to use for your social media channels. Below you can find some ways to store your images and how to prevent losing everything if your laptop dies on you.
Create image folders per year and month
As you no doubt have seen on Martin Garrix’s social media, his team uses a #tbt (throwback Thursday) post every once in a while. Thanks to the fact that they have a big image-database they can easily pick a moment and know exactly where and when it took place.
Categorize your image folders per country
If you’re a touring artist and are returning to the USA soon, it makes a lot of sense to use an image of the last time you were there. Blasterjaxx often post an image of a previous festival edition rather than the standard format artist artwork that a festival creates. It’s simple human psychology; would you rather like a picture which only has an artist on it or a picture that shows a crowd of which makes you feel part of the family of fans united with an artist?
Social media planning
Did you ever do social-media planning or as it’s also called a content calendar? You simply fill in what you would like to post on which day and at which time. Using a content calendar is a brilliant way to think ahead and create storylines for yourself. A couple of examples of the storylines you should consider for building up your image database:
Your “hobby” storyline
It isn’t called social media for no reason. The social aspect is something that you can’t underestimate. Don’t be afraid to show the world what you love besides producing music and playing it for a crowd. Laidback Luke is – besides his DJ/producer skills – known for the fact that he loves Kung-Fu and is a dedicated dad. The fact that he shares his life makes him stand closer to his fans. Building up a relationship with your fans is key; no fans = no gigs.
Your artist storyline
This can be divided into 2 separate storylines, firstly the storyline which you create for gigs and secondly the storyline of when you’re in the studio, showing progress or if you’re doing a collab. Pro-tip: get a photographer to shoot a bunch of studio images and artist images and ideally also your press kit on the same day. Why? It’s cost-efficient and besides that, you can spread out the usage of these images for your social media content over a whole year.
Special events storyline
Your birthday or the birthday of an artist that you admire, Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s day and many more. All of these are dates that you can already put in your content calendar and you can prepare yourself whenever you have a great idea. If you want to post an image of you with a famous artist when it’s his/her birthday? Do it. Do you want customized Easter eggs with your logo to send out to a few lucky fans? Go for it. The whole point is that by categorizing your images you’re always prepared.
Bonus tip: Use an online storage space like Dropbox or Google Drive. Both offer a lot of storage space for your images and it’s easy to categorize there in different folders too. If you store your images there you can always reach them even without your laptop, not to mention if your laptop crashed and you’d be left without any of the images. Besides that, you should regularly (every 3 months approximately) do a back-up of your laptop to be extra safe.