Instantly Connect with Your Audience

Pittsburgh Personal Branding Headshot Photographer-4

How do you do that? By making sure, no matter what product or service you're selling, that you let people actually see you. I recently had a woman say that her name made it difficult to personally brand herself because it is a very common name. My instant response to her was that she needed to visually set herself apart so that no one could confuse her with any other woman with that name. How? She asked. My response was that she needed to flood her social media with creative, striking, unique and beautiful imagery of herself. That way, when her name gets Googled, it's her own image that comes up the most. Not a product, service or other woman with that name.

Go ahead, now ask me why she wouldn't want a photo of the one thing she is selling to come up before a photo of herself? I'm so glad you asked!

Because my guess is there are countless other people selling either that exact, same service or product or something very similar. Why would you want your photo of your thingamajig to come up in a sea of everyone else's thingamajigs and how do you expect anyone to differentiate your thingamajig from anyone else's? If a sea of them come up, what is to stop your potential customer from picking someone else for the job?
Since there are a sea of others out there doing the same thing, you have to do everything you can to get your potential customers to connect with you in an instant. The number one way to get someone initially interested enough to keep clicking to find out more about you is a photograph of you. And a good one. A damn good one. The second way to get them to stay interested is to provide storytelling and visuals that are aesthetically pleasing, consistent and especially represent your product or service in a unique and interesting way.

Go ahead, ask me how you achieve this amongst the 373,982,972 other things you have to do that also cost money to run your business? By realizing that you absolutely have to invest in your imagery and it will be worth it. Listen, there is a reason that everyone you talk to is telling you that 75% of the new business they get (or higher!) is from Instagram. We live in an "instant" society and Instagram is Insta-instant (get it??). You are immediately awash with image after image after image, and you scroll and scroll and it is only an image that will intrigue you enough to get you click your way into seeing more. An image. A photograph. A picture.

And listen, it doesn't have to be me, but if you're not planning on getting into photography, then you need to do your research and invest in a photographer that "gets you". Quit putting hours into whether or not your business card should have a green star or a gold star and if you should spend the extra moolah to get the extra thick paper. Quit doggedly worrying about if your website should have a black background or a white one. Should the color of your sign be pink or blush? Or blushy pink? Logo font a 16 or 26? You get it. None of this matters and all that money is waisted if you can't get people to look further into whatever it is your selling.

Understanding that you need good photographs before anything else will get you kickstarted wayyyyyyyy ahead of anyone else in the same game. How do I know this? Look at who you follow and figure out why you started following them.