Picture this: you’ve poured heart & soul into the wardrobe, concept, and poses for your latest shoot. Your photographer’s gone the extra-mile with lighting, make-up, and editing. Together you've invested so much into the photoset, wanting with every fiber of your being to share your beauty with the world (and be loved for it!)
You post the set, and it gets almost zero traction.
Ouch.
I feel your pain.
You deserve better, and it's fairly easy, and today we’ll talk about things that help.
In my last post (“Love Your Fans”) we talked about inspiring fans to act through the use of 'landing pages.'
SuicideGirl @pixel shared her desire to know how the landing-page advice I gave earlier is applied.
I listened :)
So here’s a couple looks at how it might unfold in a model’s life.
We’ll use Toronto-based alt. fashion/magazine model, Hannah Bloodbunny, as a case-study.
As far as I know, Hannah does NOT use landing pages, or use copy/design to emotionally engage her fans, and that’s okay -- together we’ll explore some ways she might, and you can decide for yourself if they’d be worth launching.
***
First I’ll say: I love many, many things about Hannah Bloodbunny.
1. She reps my hometown.
2. She’s vibrant and playful and alternative and it shines through in her work.
3. She experiments with offers like high-res Etsy Batman photosets, auctioned Polaroids, full-body-painting and more.
Still, I noticed some… “rough edges” in her offerings… so I mocked-up a few landing-page engagements to jumpstart her viewers to action.
LET`S DIVE IN.
Hannah’s building her fanbase, which is awesome. They seem to be scattered across her personal facebook & her facebook fanpage, with no central place to gather.
So, anytime she publishes a new pic, is featured, or makes an appearance somewhere, she has to blast it on all her social media channels -- though I believe her tumblr & twitter don’t get much love. J
That part is not-so-awesome :)
ROUGH EDGE #1 – SCATTERED & MISSED UPDATES
Although I follow Hannah on Facebook, there's a problem.
I get hundreds-to-thousands of facebook updates in my stream per day, so sometimes I miss hers in the chaos.
Other times facebook magically decides not to ‘show’ them to me.
And when I want to check-in/check-up on Hannah, I’m not sure exactly where to look.
If this is my experience, it’s almost certainly happening to many other fans.
Fans are suffering from confusion, disconnection, and barriers-to-entry. Fans are having trouble engaging and participating with Hannah’s growth & offerings. We don’t want that.
We want them to easily know where to go, be aware of Hannah’s offerings, and reliably connect.
There are many solutions, but one major one, is landing-page engagement.
Any time you want people to perform a certain action, it`s on you to create a clear, emotional, invitation for them to do so.
If you want people to eat your meal, it`s on you to plate it, and make it beautiful and presentable.
If you want people to sing-along with your music, it`s on you to make it catchy.
If you want your fans to connect and gather, it`s on you to give them a place to do it.
Let`s smooth-out this rough edge for Hannah.
SMOOTH & SOOTHE #1 – SIGN-UP LANDING PAGE
Hannah could solve the scattered updates dilemma by having a landing page on her website, so she could direct people to… lets say… bloodbunny.com, and they’d be greeted with an inviting, fun, clear landing page where they could enter their email, receive a free bonus picture, and get updates to their inbox.
A clear direction.
It may look something like this:
Or maybe she wants to keep everyone on facebook as her primary channel, and if so this could easily be altered to be an engaging “facebook cover photo” or “facebook welcome tab.”
ROUGH EDGE #2 – CONFUSING, UNINVITING ACTIONS
Here’s the situation:
Sometimes Hannah wants me to ‘buy’ her polaroids, or wants me to, ‘donate’ to her charity, or wants me to ‘vote’ for her on an external site.
So she posts a simple sentence on facebook.
This is what most artist’s do with their material, but what if there was a better way?
Even if she doesn’t want to create a whole separate landing page for each of these actions, even a better-designed facebook post will help.
For example, let’s say she wants me to bid on her polaroid photos.
Instead of just a screenshot of her polaroids... she could create a facebook post that helps the viewer live the fantasy of owning her photos.
SMOOTH & SOOTHE #2 – FACEBOOK-POST MINI-LANDING
Inject some emotion!
Try a diptych image: panel one is an excited guy, gleefully holding up his Hannah-polaroid.
Panel two: show a photo of a creative desk, cubicle, or diary with Hannah-polaroids decorating them.
Help people imagine. Help ‘em live it.
Caption the photo loud and proud with a punchy headline that matters: “BID ON YOUR Hannah Polaroid & LIVE BEAUTIFUL!”, make sure to put a url or place for people to go.
I believe this emotional, fantasy-focused diptych-- with a clear call-to-action -- helps people easily follow along and take the positive steps Hannah wants.
It’s refreshingly different from most model’s posts.
It`s an easy, inviting experience for her fans.
It commands attention & action.
Use something like it, and I bet she sells more polaroids.
Annnnd read on for a bonus example…
ROUGH EDGE #3 – NEED VOTES FOR PINK
Let’s say a model wanted to get loves/comments for her recent photoset. What would most models do?
Answer: They’d shoot the best set the could (hopefully emotional), with the best photog they could (hopefully a virtuoso), and then maybe send some people to it.
But what if they made a mini-website that explained their story, reasons, ups-and-downs, and then sent people to vote, thanked them for voting, and while they were engaged… asked them to SHARE it with others?
Too much work?
OK, fine…what if the model made a simple SG-blog, but with landing-page ideas applied?
SMOOTH & SOOTHE #3 – SG BLOG-POST INVITE
Here’s an example I was inspired to make for suicide girl @usagimomo , who thanked me & said it was nice, but didn’t end up using it for anything, as far as I know.
It`s meant to plant seeds and inspire action.
It gives a memorable experience.
It’s inviting, fun and engaging for fans to help Momo ‘go pink’ on her set “Playing Red”.
Made using a free online editing program (ie: pixlr.com) to add a headline, call-to-action, and arrow visual.
If used, I bet it’d increase loves/comments on her set.
WRAP-UP
So there you have it, some common landing page practices and techniques that are used by charities, events, and even yoga blogs like DoYouYoga - outlined and applied to modeling.
Maybe the exact examples in here don’t apply to you, but the higher-level stuff I talked about in my last post apply to every project… including photogs/lingerie/models, etc.
1. Be clear – clear, clear, clear with what you want, make it easy and uncluttered and beautiful.
2. Give people feelings & emotions, use images, language, video, etc.
3. Deliver a memorable, inviting experience before, during & after -- NOT ‘just your art’.
#TogetherWeRyze!
I’m Jason "J-Ryze" Fonceca, and I offer Empire Design For Ambitious Creatives. Today we talked about a shunned topic in the beauty industry: emotional landing pages. Get more fresh views on taboos & empire wisdom at ryzeonline.com/blog.