Category: Blog

Take an Instagram-worthy Photo

Clairemont InternBlog, Public Relations, Social Media + Influencer Engagement, , , ,

“No one’s life is as perfect as his or her Instagram feed.”

Have you ever scrolled past a photo of food or clothing on Instagram and instantly been awed? Without even realizing it, more than just the item on display caught your eye. The photo you loved was staged, filtered and carefully planned by its publisher. You might be surprised to learn just how much planning goes into an Instagram photo! (Those who rock their Instagram feeds can even make a career out of it!)

Here are our tips to becoming a rockstar at Instagram-worthy photos:


Use the best camera that you know how to use. Not all of the best photos Instagram has to offer are taken with a professional HDR camera. An iPhone equips you to take a clear and precise image. Focus on the object by tapping on your screen; turn off HDR to promote clarity. If you do know how to use a more professional camera, absolutely use it, as it offers a variety of manual settings and functionalities.

Leverage natural lighting. Lighting plays a vital role in the quality of the image. Using natural outdoor lighting, whether outside or through a window, will produce life-like images. Be sure not to take photos in direct sunlight, as it will overexpose the image. Aim to photograph in a setting with shade, overcast light and at sunrise or sunset to produce the best quality.

Stage it. First, select a background that expertly showcases your subject. For example, a white backdrop will showcase a complex item or product. A background with a pattern or specific colors will complement your product or person while adding interest and dimension. Keep in mind that photo size restrictions might apply. For example, shooting a photo in square mo
de via your iPhone is always a safe move to match Instagram’s feed. According to Colorlib, the maximum upload for a vertical image without cropping is 1080px in width by 1350px in height and 1080px in width by 566px in height for horizontal images. Finally, employ the rule of thirds, mentally dividing your image with two horizontal and two vertical lines. Note where the horizontal and vertical lines meet, like demonstrated in the graphic, and position the most important elements at the points of intersection. Using the rule of thirds is easy by turning on your iPhone’s grid feature.

Angle it. Explore changing the angles of your photo for widely varied outcomes. For example, stand high above to shoot directly over your product or get on ground level with the object to capture a profile view.

Edit it. Few Instagram-worthy photos are uploaded without a filter or two. To create a coherent feed, apply the same filters to your photos. Of course, you might need to lighten an image more so than another, but if you’re sharpening images to add clarity, sharpen them all. If you’re removing the highlights, remove them all. The app VSCO provides multiple tools to achieve the perfect edit. You can add or remove exposure, contrast, saturation and skin tone — just to name a few. The app Color Story supplies hundreds of additional filters. Need to smooth a specific part of a photo or swap two different pieces of the photo altogether? Check out Facetune.

Follow these steps, and you’re ready to post. We bet it’s your best Instagram photo yet! In the meantime, check out how to use “Instagram ‘Highlights’ for Business” to continue to grow your company’s Insta presence.

Written by Clairemont intern, Kennedy Norton, a junior at North Carolina State University.

Read More

Who Wore It Best?

Cherith AndesBlog, Raleigh PR Agency, The Clairemont Team, , , , ,

We’re not shy. As a team that transforms PR campaigns from “blah to voila,” we love things with pizzazz.

… including cooky, crazy costumes.

For Clairemont’s 8th anniversary extravaganza, we invited our friends from the Lil Photo Bus to capture the hoopla in their photo booth (which, incidentally, is housed in a vintage VW bus). From boas and top hats to flashy flamingo frames, partygoers had their pick of props from a decked-out costume closet.

The best part? We have these festooned festivities on file.

Check out the snapshots from our 8th anniversary, and tell us: who wore it best?

Read More

Clairemont CEO Named PRSA’s Counselors Academy Chair

Tracy LathanBlog, Counselors Academy, Raleigh PR Agency, , , ,

Dana Phelps Hughens Named Chair of PRSA’s Counselors Academy

Fanelli, Finley and McCormick named as new members on 2018 executive committee

NEW YORK  — The members of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Counselors Academy have elected Dana Phelps Hughens, CEO of Clairemont Communications in Raleigh, N.C., as its 2018 chair. In addition, Filomena Fanelli of Impact PR & Communications and Kate Finley of Belle Communications have joined the Counselors Academy executive committee for three-year terms, and Gary McCormick of GMc Communications as an ex-officio member for a one-year term.

Counselors Academy is the national professional interest section of PRSA that focuses on the business of agency PR. Its entrepreneurial members are owners or senior managers of leading independent firms in the U.S. and Canada. Counselors Academy’s programs foster networking, mentoring and learning, and the executive committee consists of 15 senior-level public relations professionals from across the country.

As CEO of Clairemont Communications, Hughens leads the agency to devise public relations and marketing strategies that have been recognized with 175 industry awards since opening in 2010. She is a Silver Anvil award winner and has been honored by the Triangle Business Journal with Women in Business and Forty Under Forty awards. Previously, Hughens was Senior Vice President and Global Consumer Practice Group Co-Chair of Fleishman-Hillard.

“As the owner of an independent agency, one of my first decisions was to join PRSA Counselors Academy,” said Hughens. “It is an essential resource in building and managing a business and has allowed me to build close relationships with other public relations professionals who I know I can trust.”

Hughens added, “As a long-term member of Counselors Academy, I’m really passionate about being this year’s chair. We’re focused on growing and engaging our membership while we continue to make our annual conference the premier professional development event for public relations agency owners and senior leaders.”

The section’s marquee event is the PRSA Counselors Academy 2018 Spring Conference, which will be held May 6-8, 2018, in Toronto. Known for its robust networking and learning opportunities, the Spring Conference enables collaborative peer relationships in which meaningful business counsel, operational best practices and industry trends are shared and gained.

Continue reading “Clairemont CEO Named PRSA’s Counselors Academy Chair”

Read More

Clairemont Foodie Takes Charleston

Cherith AndesBlog, Restaurant PR + Hospitality PR, Travel, , , , ,

The landing page of the 2018 Charleston Wine and Food Festival captures it all.

Fueled by a contagious passion for the people and places that make Charleston worth celebrating, the annual festival infuses homegrown flavor with top chefs, winemakers, authors, storytellers, artisans, and food enthusiasts from around the globe for a five-day event that spans the first full weekend each March. 

That’s it exactly. The love of food, the talent and passion behind it is contagious … which is one of the reasons we love working the restaurant and hospitality industry.

This year, Clairemont CEO Dana Phelps Hughens will be one of our local ambassadors to the Charleston Wine and Food Festival (CWFF) on February 28 – March 4, 2018! She’ll be sampling flavors and fare, and meeting new friends and old at the festival’s five-day packed schedule. In addition to our favorite Charleston buddies like the Cocktail Bandits, we’re excited to support the stunning Triangle talent featured this year!

We’ll share all the behind-the-scenes goodies we can find! Check them out on our Facebook page!  

 

 

Read More

What Does a PR Agency Do? Hoedown Showdown

Clairemont InternAwards, Blog, Case Studies, , , ,

Newland Communities, the country’s most prominent privately held residential developer, turned to Clairemont Communications to increase awareness of Wendell Falls, a new-home community situated in a relatively undeveloped section of Wake County. As part of a comprehensive communications strategy, Clairemont worked with Wendell Falls to plan a celebration with a barn-raising theme to commemorate the community’s first anniversary and bring prospective buyers on-site.

Strategy

Clairemont was tasked with securing local media and influencer attendance to help combat the perception that Wendell Falls is in a remote location far from downtown Raleigh. Our one main objective was to get key contacts to attend the Wendell Falls Barn Raising 2016 in order to introduce them to the location and atmosphere of the community, and serve as a building block for future stories.

Execution

In order to attract media and influencers to the location, Clairemont conceptualized the Wendell Falls Hoedown Showdown. We invited TV, print and online personalities to bow to their partners, allemande left and do-si-do for a little dough to donate. This celebrity square-dancing competition was part of the Wendell Falls Barn Raising and offered the winner $1,000 to donate to a charity of his or her choice.

Clairemont ditched standard pitch for a more playful angle that would snag the busy reporter’s attention and put them in a dancing mood. Media received invitations that included a “wanted” poster and a cowboy hat, which one TV reporter even sported on her station’s morning show! The event was planned to be similar to the popular show “Dancing with the Stars;” it was active and engaging yet required minimal time from the participants outside of the actual event day. The influencers who danced at the event didn’t have to practice; rather, they learned via a fun crash course on the morning of the Hoedown.

Results

Clairemont designed and implemented this creative tactic to engage the participating media person and his/her audiences, draw media on-site and engage the nonprofit for which he/she was dancing. This allowed us to exceed our stated objective with the following results:

  1. We recruited media and influencers to participate as either Hoedown Showdown dancers or judges, securing prominent media stories and/or mentions.
  2. Influencers shared the Barn Raising to approximately 52,000 followers on Twitter alone, helping to draw more than 1,000 attendees to this afternoon bash. Additionally, we used the (then) new Facebook Live feature for the first time for the community to broadcast the Hoedown Showdown to 503 viewers.

The work Clairemont Communications conducted in partnership with Wendell Falls earned Best in Show for Creative Tactics and Best in Category for Creative Tactics from the North Carolina Public Relations Society of America. It also received a Silver Award in Media Events from the Raleigh Public Relations Society. We are proud that this campaign represents two of the 175 awards we’ve received since starting Clairemont in 2010.

To read more about the work we do with clients, please visit the case study section of our blog.

Read More