Matt Fulcher Speaks On The Importance of Effective Photography and Video for Website, Social and Digital Marketing

Hey, everyone. My name is Matt Fulcher. I'm privileged to be here with you all. This is my first time at the Vero Beach business Christian Association luncheon. I'm sorry.

Can you hear me now?

So I've been in business for going on, let's say five years now, to do production photography, I want to give you guys a little idea of how I started. So five years ago, I was sitting in a wine at Sam's Club on Black Friday. And I was standing in line because I was waiting for it.

And I worked at Brookstone, I sold drones in the past and I took a leap of faith and bought this $500 mechanical RC toys that I eventually started to fly around Vero Beach. Seven days after I posted my first video on Facebook with the drone, I had over 100,000 views. And at that time, drone technology was relatively new. Social media was also very different five years ago, a lot of people were using Facebook, a lot like how to use Twitter today, they were using just captions that wasn't as photo and video based. And at that time, I was just posting from videos and drunk photos. And I was taking all the things that I was posting, I was posting dolphins, sea turtles, the barber bridge, the beach, the things that we all love here in Vero Beach. And at that time, nobody else had a drone. So I just started accumulating imagery. And then from there, the business grew into a full scale video production company.

The reason why I got started doing video production was because a lot of businesses that I had seen were struggling with maintaining a strong digital presence, they didn't really know how to know a lot of business owners in this room may struggle with social media, some of us even younger folks struggle, maintaining strong social media presence. And part of that problem is knowing what to post and how to post. If you're an art photographer, or a videographer,

you may not know necessarily how to go about posting on Facebook, or Instagram, which a lot of these social media sites nowadays are very visually based. We're very visual people. And if you go on Facebook today,

you're gonna get caught in a scroll, you're looking at videos and photos and reels and stories. And, you know, five years ago, I'm sure our engagement on social media was very different than it was today, I feel like we've spent more and more time in front of our phones. And it's because the way that we receive information has is ever changing.

I'm sure all of you guys have Amazon, I use Amazon a lot. I like shopping local, but sometimes I need something in a pinch. And Amazon is the best place for me to get it. When we're on Amazon, we are doing three things. The first thing is we're looking for the product that we're shopping for, and hopefully not going through the best sellers of the day and wasting our money, we're actually looking for the item we're shopping for. Secondly, we're looking at reviews, we're trying to figure out if the product that we are looking to buy is going to work for us we're looking at, you know, reviews that are hopefully you know, 4.9 and up or 4.7. And up, you see a product that has less than four stars, what do you do

to pass it? The third thing is we look at imagery. If you see an Amazon post for an item, and there's no imagery. Have you ever seen an Amazon post with no imagery? No. So imagery is our first impression. And

without the imagery, we don't really know, if that product is going to work for us, we may not trust the company. And to kind of go off of what imagery is and how important it is for us.

It's really our first impression. Had I come up here with boxer briefs on you guys would have had a completely different first impression. But coming up here well dressed, you guys are going to have a completely different first impression on previous. And so when you're marketing your company online, a lot of times these businesses are advertising on Google or advertising on Facebook. And let's say you're looking for a pressure washer or pressure cleaner on on Google looking for local pressure cleaners and Vero Beach you see the first three options. You might want to see who has imagery, you want to look at their services, you want to look at their website. And your website imagery is your first impression. Your social presence is your first impression for a lot of the customers that you serve, because you may not necessarily get to meet them hand to hand you may not necessarily get to have a conversation with them. Marketing has changed a lot through the years used to be a handshake and a conversation and now it's social media. It's your website presence is your internet presence. And it's really important that you have a strong digital presence because that's how your customers will find you.

So why is video and

Photography important and how can it be used. So video and photography is really important. I do video production, a lot of branding, photography, real estate photography, just kind of going off the real estate photography, I'm photographing three, five houses today. And without photos, people don't really know what they're looking at in terms of house, they would have the amount of bedrooms, the bathrooms, the square footage, a really awesome MLS caption, but they wouldn't necessarily know if that house is for them. And so it's the same thing. When you own a business and have photos. It's really your first impression of your business and your services.

If you're a business owner, and I'm sure there's plenty of business owners in this room, you probably have Google and your business is super important. You want to have not not just a location shots that people can find where you're located. If you want to have pictures that kind of demonstrate your services, show who you are, it's really important that you have imagery that helps tell people who you are and what you offer.

So different types of video and photography that's really important for businesses, testimonials. So testimonials are like Amazon reviews. So you want to see what other people's experience are, before they buy a service or spend money with your company. They want to see if that services work for other people. That's the same thing like Amazon reviews.

promo videos would be another one. Educational Videos, people love to be educated, you go on Facebook, there's a ton of educational videos, there's a ton of entertainment videos, promo videos, lifestyle, these are all different examples of videos that you can use to promote your business.

So going off of having a strong social media presence. A lot of people in this room, I don't know if you guys are staying consistent for consistency is key. For me, I like using Instagram Stories, you don't have to be a professional photographer, you don't have to be a professional videographer, you have the whole yes computer that's in your hand. And a lot of times it has a really great camera. And so if you're a small business owner, you're trying to figure out how to gain trust with more people in your community build a reputation in your community. Facebook and Instagram are the two best I think, for most businesses locally. Facebook is more of like a water audience of all ages, Instagram is more the younger audience, I would say 3818 38 is definitely a good business audience for that. Instagram is very imagery based. So if you have a business type, and you don't take a lot of pictures, Instagram is going to be a little difficult for you to use. Facebook, you can post you can take pictures, you can take videos, it's really important that you stay consistent with your social media, because people are keeping up to date with what your business is doing. keeping up to date with what you're doing. The way I market my business is a little different than some of the other people that are in town that market their businesses, but I found great success doing this. Facebook business pages, they don't optimize as well as a personal personal Facebook page. So if you post on Facebook on on a business page, and you have maybe 1000 People that follow this business page, maybe 40 to 60 people will see your Facebook business post and you have 1000 people that follow your page. If you post on your personal Facebook page that optimizes better, people will see that they'll see they'll see it easier. And so the way that I advertise my video production business is actually just pushing my own name across across the horizon with my with my brand. So people don't think of video production and sunrise multimedia as being just one entity they can do video production, my name the person that I am that culture and sunrise multimedia companies in this town. Your name could go a long way. It's not just your business name, but who you are as the person your reputation. And so for my success on social media, I've I've really noticed that if you offer real estate services as the real McEvoy agent somewhere

if you push your real estate services as your personal identity, Hi, my name is Carolyn. Hi, my name is Carol methyl. I'm a I'm a realtor here. And you put that on your personal Facebook page a lot more people are going to connect to that versus putting it on your business page because of the way that it optimizes.

Let's see here.

So where do you start your business? You're not really sure I work with a lot of businesses that have like no money in their marketing budget, and I'm trying to solve their problems through video and photography. So when I started my business five years ago, I was 21 years old. I didn't really know necessarily how I wanted to go about marketing myself because I didn't have the money to have money for Google ads. I didn't have money for YouTube ads. I didn't have money for newspaper marketing, but I had a video camera and a photography camera and I had a drone. And so I was always looking at the different way

So like to market my company in the cheapest, most cost effective way, if any of you has ever heard of Canva,

if you haven't heard of Canva, you need to hear about Canva, go to canva.com download on your computer, it is the greatest thing ever, to give you a lot of ideas for different templates that you can use a lot of different ideas that are already generated, you can just replace the information with your information, and then use that as a social media post. You can even take photos and videos on your phone and throw them into the template so that it's a little bit more easy on the eyes, I would highly recommend that you guys use Canva post regularly, for me actually have a couple statistics. So the advantages of social media marketing, so video photography kind of coincide with social media, because a lot of times when you post on social media, it's probably somebody. So the advantages are increased exposure, increased traffic, you get loyal fans, you can generate leads, improve sales. And these are all different things that have happened when you actually market your company, especially when you use video and photo. And I'm really big on Instagram Stories. Has anybody ever watched Facebook stories or Instagram stories? It's a very underutilized tool. I feel like a lot of people are not using Facebook and Instagram stories the way that they should. And because of that, whenever I post an Instagram story or a Facebook story, I'm the first option on everyone's feed. So I get a lot of people that are watching my stories. And it's because a lot of people are not using Facebook and Instagram stories. And it can be very easy to market yourself with video and photography do not need to hire me, I would like you to hire me. But you don't have to hire me, you have a phone. Hey guys, I'm at Southern Social, I'm filming a little video to promote the area, something like that 15 seconds, 30 seconds, put your face in front of the camera. Because we live in a small town and brand awareness is everything. If people recognize your face, they're going to be the first person they think of when we think of Real Estate Services, or when they think of photography, or when they think of pressure washing want people to start recognizing your face. So another really important strategy that I do also on Facebook, and Instagram is always posting things that are relative to the work that I'm doing. It's very easy to get caught and scroll and want to share videos and photos that are really funny little things here and there that you see a little news things. But if you stay consistent, and you post things that are relative to the work that you do, it's easy for me because I have camera stuff and I'm always up and about. But you don't have to be a photographer videographer, you have a computer that has a really great camera in your pocket. I hope all of you guys know this, I'm sure.

So it's really important that you guys stay up to date, take pictures of what you're doing. Let people know what you're offering by, you know, if you're offering knitting services, take pictures of what you're knitting, posted on Facebook with a nice little caption, today's project is this, do that three times a week and then start to build a following. And I do a lot of this with Instagram stories every single day. I'm posting something relative to my day relevant because I'm always working. It's always relevant to what I'm offering. And I would highly recommend that you guys take advantage of video and photography, kind of going off of what Steve? Those those websites. As you guys all know,

it's really important as well that you have engaging photos and video on your website. And the reason is because people are finding you on Google. That's your first impression.

And if your first impression sucks, what happens.

Got.

And it's just really important that you guys have good photos and videos because without it, you want to capture people's interest when capturing people's attention. And if you don't have intentional multimedia intentional photos and video to help, you know engage them or to get an action out of them, they're going to move to your competitor. And so part of that is just staying consistent. Having updated photography and video, I know it's very easy to go on the internet and find stock photos that are relative to what you offer. Like if you actually have professional photos and videos explaining what you do to your customers, they will begin to trust you. And then eventually, they will begin to hire you and use you for your products. We work with a couple of clients that are scared of the internet. They don't want to use Facebook or social media. They don't want to use the internet. And if they don't use it, they don't want selves on social media. Someone else's wants to use the internet and someone else is going to use social media before they know it. They're going to be relying on just foot traffic or just a referral business and you don't want to be just just business that is based off of referral traffic and foot traffic. want people to be finding you on social media. You don't want people to see you as on the first page of Google which this guy can do. And it's just really important that you stay consistent. Stay updated. Don't be scared of the internet. It's not super hard. Hire a young person

Okay.

And do you have any questions? I'm gonna let I speak at the college and teach college class. I'm very like question based on that. I have a PowerPoint. Typically that kind of leads me through. But if you have any questions that I can help you with, you can ask them now or asking any questions. You have a small business.

So can you explain the difference? Stories versus reels?

Yeah, so there's the big difference. So Instagram posts, they stay on your timeline, like definitely, Instagram reel. So basically, like longer videos, they don't have to be always longer, but they're, they can be pretty much any length. And they're typically going to be

they're going to be like a funnel that a lot of people watch. They're really good for building traffic or building an audience. A lot of people are uncomfortable doing reels because they have to think intentionally to do a really good real and a lot of times you want to use music, or do you want to follow a trend that you know is actually going to work. Instagram stories are really good at building trust. And so the same people that are watching your Instagram Stories yesterday are the same people that are gonna watch your Instagram story tomorrow. Since Instagram stories and Facebook stories are really underutilized. Like I said, when I post, I'm typically the first option when they when they open up Instagram on the first option on the left, and they always see my name, and they can follow my daily adventures, they can see what I'm up to. And you don't want your business. I'm a small business owner. I'm always trying to encourage people to

you know, promote local businesses, I don't want to come off like a corporate name, I want people to know that I have personal touch up person, I'm a person in the community. And these are the things that I love. I love working with locals I love working in around this area. And so with Instagram Stories, we're really able to give somebody the behind the scenes look of how your businesses run if you want to. And you can really kind of talk to your audience and kind of sway them over a long period of time to develop trust with your brand. And I personally think Instagram stories are the best just talk in front of it or put your camera on the back and just walk around and you need to do more with our little while they're trying to say hey, I just had a great time that

I started before I walked in I was doing like you guys are gonna follow me on this. Any other questions?

All right.

Great.

Thank you very, very much. Great advice, great information. We appreciate that you're here.