How To Take Pictures of Your Work Without Losing Your Mind

If you’ve read any of my arti­cles or talked to me in per­son, you know how pas­sion­ate I am about con­trac­tors tak­ing qual­i­ty video and pho­tos of their work. 

There are many rea­sons why every con­trac­tor should be doing this, and it’s not always just about get­ting the phone to ring. In fact, as I write this post, my cus­tomers are swamped with leads. When that’s the case, the temp­ta­tion is to stop tak­ing pic­tures and pull way back on marketing. 

The fact is, pho­tos… are… every­thing… Espe­cial­ly today when so many of YOUR cur­rent and poten­tial clients are spend­ing time on social media, they want to actu­al­ly see you, your skills, and your company. 

They don’t just digest ads anymore. 

Remem­ber the ​“yel­low pages” days? Sim­i­lar to that old method of flip­ping through ser­vice providers and pick­ing a pro, today’s home­own­ers ​“flip through” social media to see who catch­es their eye, who makes them feel most com­fort­able, and who seems like a good fit for their needs. 

Let’s Get Prac­ti­cal: How Do You Take and Cap­ture Images?

Let’s say you’re already tak­ing pic­tures (kudos to you!), but you’re just not real­ly sure which app to use, or how to orga­nize, save, down­load, upload, share, etc… It’s all a lit­tle over­whelm­ing, right?

Back in 2017, I wrote about a nifty pho­to-tak­ing app called Com­pa­ny­Cam, and I eval­u­at­ed some of the pros and cons of that tool. In this post, I won’t go into the details about all it can do. I cov­ered it in the blog post I wrote in 2017. Just review that and know that it is even bet­ter 2 years later. 

Fast for­ward to 2019 and Com­pa­ny­Cam is now my #1 rec­om­mend­ed pic­ture and video tak­ing app for contractors. 

If you’re not using it, you are miss­ing out. 

Any hes­i­ta­tions I had in my 2017 arti­cle have been addressed and improved by Com­pa­ny­Cam, so it now has my 100% stamp of approval. 

Test It Out!

Com­pa­ny­Cam has also offered my cus­tomers and read­ers a 30-day risk-free tri­al instead of the stan­dard 14-day tri­al. Just click on this link to learn more and sign up for a tri­al for your team. It’s $12 bucks a month per user — can’t beat that price for what it can do to save you time and money!

A Word About Com­pa­ny Cul­ture: Focus On More Than Just Project Photos

If you are busy and don’t need as many leads right now, I would still rec­om­mend tak­ing pho­tos and videos of your work for sev­er­al reasons:

1. It should be part of your sys­tem — don’t devi­ate (make it part of your stan­dard oper­at­ing procedures).
2. It helps your operating/​production team to review project pho­tos and notes before work starts. Then sales and oper­a­tions can bet­ter communicate!
3. You’ll have mar­ket­ing pho­tos now or in the future when you need them. You nev­er know when you’ll need those images to help sell a project. 
4. It might save your hide! If you care­ful­ly doc­u­ment your work using an app like Com­pa­ny­Cam, it just might save your busi­ness from legal trou­ble, or maybe even defuse an upset cus­tomer blam­ing you for some­thing your team did not do! What if you could doc­u­ment that the scratch­es on the floor were already there? What if the cus­tomer did select ​“Uni­corn Swirl” for their coun­ter­tops when they remem­ber specif­i­cal­ly it was Ari­zona Beige? Take a pho­to of the col­or selec­tion (Com­pa­ny­Cam time­stamps it). 
5. Com­pa­ny Cul­ture: your field employ­ees take pride in their work, or at least they should! When you take pho­tos of the work and post them on social media, it is not always about lead gen­er­a­tion. You are build­ing a com­pa­ny cul­ture. This is the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to brag about your amaz­ing team. Call out your team mem­bers by name and start brag­ging about all the cool things they accom­plished on that job! It does not always need to be post­ed on social media, either. You can use those images for com­pa­ny meet­ings too. 

If you are strug­gling to find and uti­lize that per­fect pho­to-tak­ing tool, give Com­pa­ny­Cam a seri­ous, deep-dive tri­al. It also inte­grates with a num­ber of pop­u­lar CRM appli­ca­tions on the mar­ket today as well. This sin­gle tool could be one of the best deci­sions you make for your busi­ness in 2019.