A Personal Brand is just that, its personal which means YOU have to show up in your images! I cannot stress how much value unique authentic images of you are for your business. They tell your story and show your clients exactly who you are, what you do, who you work with and WHY, it creates a personal connection, makes you look more credible and is by far the best way to build trust with your ideal client, who are then more likely to invest in you and in turn invest in your business.
But I get it, we don’t like to boast about who we are and what we do, so how can we share photos in an authentic way without going over the top? I get it, it’s been a learning curve for me too. A photographer generally likes to stay behind the camera but that just isn’t going to cut it in this social media crazy world and I have too much information to help with you to hide away.
Having your own bespoke imagery is such an incredible asset to have in the bank; whether it’s having pictures ready for your next facebook campaign, or to reach out more personally to people on your email list, there are so many ways you can utilise your photographs. I wanted to share just a few methods with you to help you make sure you’re really making the most of your investment and your images.
Load your website with beautiful images
If you are following any brand experts or business coaches, they will talk about the KNOW, LIKE and TRUST factor, and our buying decisions are based on this. A scary statistic about how it only takes 1.5 seconds to judge a website means your ideal client is making a snap decision about you and your business before they have even spoken to you.
The brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than it does text, so if your website is personalised with pictures of you or your employees, you have a way better chance of making people interact with you as the real people you are and not just a bunch of code which is what a website actually is.
By having a cohesive set of images that belong together, you’re creating a vibe which is all part of your brand. Whether it’s through, colour, style, emotion, or something else altogether, images tell stories when placed in certain contexts. What stories do you want to tell your ideal client?
Post with Pictures
Make sure to post images with all content Facebook, linkedin and twitter as engagement increases by 150% on average compared to posts without pictures. Lets face it posts on these platforms are short lived and you need to be able to get people to stop scrolling, coupled with an image the information you are sharing has a much bigger retention rate.
Stand out Mailers
Recent studies have shown that the average attention span has fallen to eight seconds, down from 12 in the year 2000. It’s official people, we now have a shorter attention span than a goldfish (9 seconds) which can explain a lot about my previous work nickname of Dory! That’s story is for another day.
So how can you keep the attention and engagement of your client before they move onto the next email?
Break up the monotony of paragraphs of text in your monthly mail-shots with relevant photographs to make your content more readable, enjoyable and ultimately keep users engaged with your business for longer, making them more likely to reach the end of your article and maybe even invest with you.
There are so many ways to send mailers now and they all come with templates to help you so take advantage of those and save time, once you have your bank of images you can half the time it takes to create a mailer from what you just used before as stock images.
Say HELLO to more sales.
Buying is often more of an emotional decision than a practical one. Images cannot help but create an emotional response within people. Your imagery is all about influencing the way your ideal client thinks about you and your business, product or service.
Use photographs on your sales and landing pages, engage with the consumer and create the desired emotional response. You can also use images to help guide your ideal client’s eyes to what you’d really like them to see, leading them to the key wording, the link to click or the box to tick.
Don’t forget the ‘about’
Pop a photo of yourself onto your ‘about me’ page and into your email signature and even on the back of your business cards (Moo are so good for this as you can then have multiple images on the pack, so less stress about which one image to choose and s much variety to choose from).
Think of all those networking events that pass by in a blur where you end up with a stack of cards with no idea of who was who, but if you have engaged with the person and then they have your image on the business card how easy is that follow up email going to be.
There you are, when put like that it doesn’t sound too bad at all does it, you just need a bank of on brand bespoke imagery especially for you and your business. It makes everything else much easier for you as people feel like they already know you and that brings sales.
Id love to know whats holding you back from doing a brand shoot? But also if you do use images successfully Id love to know how it makes a difference to your business?
If you’d like to talk more about how you can improve your imagery and take your brand to the next level to be ahead of your competitors, do not hesitate to drop me a message.