Branding is a buzz word these days as more and more people jump into the freelance and small business world.
And in turn the importance of branding photography is growing.
Everyone is realizing they need to be creating a personal brand. But how do you do that?
One of the fastest ways to convey your personal brand is investing in a branding photography session.
Branding photography creates intentional images to showcase your brand as you want it, even if your brand is only you.
You no longer piecemeal together how people see your company, and you can control the story they see and hear.
While you can not control how people think about your brand, you can control how they see it, and this helps guide their perceptions of your quality and what you stand for.
If that aligns with their values, they will look further into working with you.
To create a personal brand, you need to create the narrative that people see. The fastest way to do that is by imagery.
Here are 6 ways branding photography will help grow your business.
1- Branding photography creates compelling and engaging imagery on your website
You have only 3 seconds to get viewers attention when they land on your website.
Compelling, on brand images are what will slow the viewers scroll and get them interested.
It is no longer enough to have a website, now we need to show people why it’s important to stay and look around.
While copy is a super important aspect of your website, think of your imagery as the initial hook.
Imagery is the hook that gets them to stick around to read that copy you’ve crafted. Once people are convinced that your business speaks to them and their values, they are more likely to work with you.
Snapshots and stock imagery don’t convey values, they merely work as placeholders.
If a potential client sees generic stock images, they will infer that your business is generic as well.
If they see snapshots, that lowers the perception of the quality and professionalism of your business.
But if they see, professional and purposeful images that speak them and their values, they will be much more likely to click over to the contact tab.
A good branding photographer does not treat your photos as normal photo shoot that shoots whatever looks pretty. We go into your shoot with a strategy of making sure we create the types of images that will entice your viewers.
We go through your site and create images for the right cropping and dimensions for your website. There is no attempting to fit things in a spot because you don’t have other options.
Think about the story the image is telling and how that works with what that specific webpage.
It’s about crafting the narrative, not just putting images in to fill a space.
2- Content for your social media feeds
Most small businesses willy-nilly their social media feeds because it’s too overwhelming to think about what to post.
Most don’t have the content or the quality of images to pull from.
A branding photo shoot changes that. You go from not having a clue, to having 100s of images to choose from.
This creates a consistent narrative for your brand through all your social media channels.
Plus your stress goes down because it’s no longer a question of “what can I post?” to what story do I want to tell today?
The great thing is that since social media posts go from the feed so quickly, you can easily use the same imagery repeatedly.
It’s actually better from a branding perspective to do so!
It takes people 7-10 times seeing something to start paying attention to it.
If they’ve only seen an image once, they may pass the content right by. By the time they’ve seen it 6, 7, or 8 times they are going to stop and take a look.
3- Content for ads, flyers, promotions, newsletters and more.
Not only will your website and social media be cohesive, but your ads and flyers will too. Need to print anything for the business? You’ll have the imagery that will keep it on brand and recognizable to your clientele.
The example to the left is an ad I created to promote my free Facebook group for people to learn how to take better photos for their biz (when they can’t yet work with a branding photographer. Click on the photo if you want to visit it).
4- Bios + guest posts imagery
Need a bio for a talk you are giving? You no longer have to scour Facebook for a decent image from the past couple of years. No longer do you try and artfully crop someone out of the image to have one that you like of yourself. When you invest in branding photography, you’ll have beautiful images that are on brand and with you looking your best. So when a potential client reads that bio or guest post, they will see a professional and not a snapshot. The first impression you give off will immediately impress.
5- Add an image to your email signature
This is a popular option that lets people feel like they know you when you hop into their inbox.
I’ve had clients who I’ve never met before picking me out of a crowd because
I put my image out there everywhere. I want people to know who I am so that by the time we meet for the first time, it feels like we’ve known each other for a long time.
Added bonus: It’s amazing how much more civil people are in an email when they have a face to connect to the person they are writing to. Having your face in your email signature helps in so many ways.
6- Press release
Press releases are a classic way of getting media attention for a new product or release.
For small businesses, press releases are largely overlooked.
By adding your own brand image to the press release, you’ve given more content for media to use. You also know that if they run a story, you have more control of the content they use because you provided it.
Hiring a personal branding photographer gives you quality imagery that you need to show people what your values are.
On brand images help convey how you will treat them as a client.
If you show up with professionalism and consistency, you can raise your prices because you’ve raised your client’s perceptions of your own value.
At the end of the day, there really are no downsides to investing in the image of your business.
Creating your brand should be a priority of your business, and a main component is your personal branding photography.
How do you find a personal brand photographer?
First and foremost I want to convey how a branding photographer thinks is different from say a portrait photographer, so do some research to find a quality branding photographer in your area.
Make sure they understand what you need to use the images for and come up with a strategy to make sure the shoot is as productive as it can be.
Creating a beautiful portrait is different than creating an image that helps convey the story of your brand.
I am a personal brand photographer based in the greater Seattle area and will also travel you if you’d like to bring me to you.
See more branding photographer I’ve done here. Then inquire to start the conversation!
If you are not in the PNW, you can search for “branding photographer [city]” or “personal branding photographer” to find a photographer near you!
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