What is personal branding photo shooting?
It’s what brings your business into focus, telling people what you do and why you do it so well. It’s what helps you make your customers fall in love with your brand and get noticed and chosen for just who you are.
If you are a professional or have a small business you need to present your best profile to your target audience, your customers. Because what you do is unique, like your story, and with the right images, you can give it the right value.
But what is really a Photo Shooting of PERSONAL BRANDING? And how many times have you heard about it, but without really knowing and understanding what it was about?
So let’s start with some simple concepts…
- A BRAND is a Trademark of a product/service, or a line of products/services Example IKEA, GUCCI, VERALAB, LIDL
- PERSONAL BRAND is the culmination of ideas, values, skills, personality and feelings associated with a person. Example: Manuela Vitulli, Steve Jobs, The Rock, Federica Micoli, Grace the amazing, La Spora…
- A PERSONAL BRANDING is the set of strategies put in place to promote one’s professional profile or small business (where you as the owner become the face of it), with one’s experiences, working or not, knowledge and skills, to communicate oneself.
The word ‘branding’ refers to the fact that a person’s professional profile is managed just like that of a brand, using all the typical strategies of a company to promote itself and to make people buy its unique products that only it sells.
Personal branding, to be clearer, represents everything that is said, perceived, and thought about a person (or small business), liked, appreciated and displayed in people’s minds in the best possible way.
To be perceived as a true brand you have to promote yourself in the right way, communicate but above all position yourself in the mind of the end customer, creating and influencing his perception, so as to become that authentic and authoritative professional in the reference sector in which you operate and with which you want to deal.
Unlike a Brand, as a person, you already exist and are already unique because of your story that sets you apart from others. This is why Personal Branding photography becomes personal and must tell your own story, or that of your small business of which you yourself become the face, the best part.
YOUR IMAGE IS THE ONLY BUSINESS CARD
A personal branding photo session is nothing more than a session planned in every detail with your photographer. On that day, at that time and in that/those location(s), to tell your personal brand or brand story, with photographs, leaving nothing to chance.
A Personal Branding shoot therefore allows you to:
- really show you for who you are, what you do, how, where and why you do it;
- let everyone know who you are without filters with the right images that will help you win over your business audience simply by telling your story;
- distinguish yourself from your competitors
- create trust and credibility
- have more interactions with your target audience
- gain the trust of your customers
- position yourself in people’s minds as an authority in the industry
RICORDA CHE QUELLO CHE FAI È SPECIALE, PERCHÉ LO FAI TU
A detail of your shop, a artisanal work with skill, the family atmosphere, your smile. Every detail counts when it comes to telling the story of the work you do.
But how can photographs help my business?
How many times have you heard the phrase ‘content is the king’? Surely many, and do you know why? Because we live in an age where social media is part of our everyday life and relies on visual content before any other genre. Many studies have shown that by adding a photo to a text, even written with the best COPY, or to an ADS, or on your site, clicks increase by 42%. In general, people tend to stay longer on a piece of content when it is accompanied by images.
So if you want to be seen, but above all noticed and then chosen, today more than ever, you need to use images everywhere, the right images.
So how does a personal branding shoot take place in detail?
It starts with a meeting, where it is necessary to get to know the person (or the face of the small business) in order to understand
- what the business does, its history, and its products or services offered
- how the work is done and where (is there a studio, at home, a workshop?)
- who is the target audience is, what language and tone of voice should the business use
- what is the business strategy, and what does he or she want to tell and show?
Then the visual identity of the personal brand is analysed, including the colour palette, which must become a laitmotif in our shoot.
And if you don’t have a colour palette for your personal brand yet? You create it. In fact, it is unthinkable that a personal brand today does not have one, considering that in order to have a website, a Facebook page, an Instagram page or a tiktok page, you need to use images with colours (which are not chosen at random), as well as graphics and fonts (visual identity). How? With websites such as coolors.com for example.
At this point we start planning the shoot, creating a mood-board, which includes all the references for our shoot, everything we want to get from our photographs as inspiration such as:
the location
the atmosphere
the type of photography style (portrait, half-length, full-length)
the important details we want to show
flatlays if we want to use them in our communication
the work in progress and behind the scenes if necessary
the props to be used during the shooting (including all the working tools, accessories used for the activity, such as mobile phone, pc, iPad, newspapers or books, brushes and canvases in the case of a painter, easel etc…)
the outfits (always better one dress, 2/3 shirts 1/2 shorts and 1/2 shoes)
make up & hair (which should never be taken for granted, and on the contrary, I always recommend to rely on professionals to get the best results)
and above all the poses from which to take inspiration during the shooting in order not to arrive unprepared (search for example “poses ideas” on pinterest
Nothing is and should be left to chance.
But how to create a mood-board? Thanks to Pinterest for example. We search for all the keywords we are interested in, as just listed above of how we imagine the shoot and create a new folder in which to save all the images that inspire us and to share with the client.
And remember that when you see personal branding images that strike you, and communicate a precise message, if they seem to have been made by chance, well I assure you that they are not! Everything has been studied and planned in detail beforehand.
Then, once the mood-board has been shown, discussed and approved by the client, a day is decided for the shoot and we finally move on to the photo shoot. Followed by post-production by the photographer, in a timeframe established at the time of the proposal and contract.
Now your photos are ready to be used anywhere! Have a look to my portfolio here.
But now tell me: have you already done your Personal Branding Shooting? Or not yet? How did it go? And if not, what are you waiting for at this point?
I hope that I have been clear and that it helps you, but if not, please ask me any questions and I will be more than happy to help you.
See you soon,
Veronica