5 Reasons You Need a Personal Branding Session
Personal Branding sessions are a more elaborate headshot session with multiple looks for the various platforms where your brand or personal brand is represented. It comes down to what do you want people to think, see and feel when they look at your image: power, approachability, confidence, leadership, or all of the above. It comes down to what do you want your pictures to say about you in your branding, and being outdated is not an option these days. How does the traditional image compare to the more modern image on the right? Do you feel differently about the one on the left verses the right and do you see her differently?
Everyone has a brand these days. You can replace the word brand with the word reputation. They are essentially the same concept. Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not around, and branding is what you do about it.
Today our whole lives are online. We work online, we date online, we socialize online and take meetings online. With the introduction of a global pandemic, you probably spend the majority of your time in virtual meetings, virtual happy hours, and virtual meetups not to mention social media and LinkedIn. There is a new way of doing headshots and my industry calls it Personal Branding. These sessions come with multiple outfit changes, different backdrops and lighting scenarios and sometimes they include lifestyle images.
Here are 5 Reasons you may need a Personal Branding Session:
Your headshot is 10 years old, was taken at a party or is a selfie. People are meeting you for the first time online, and you need to look like your headshot. People will come up with their own reasons as to why it’s not updated, and most of the time they think it’s because you're insecure about your appearance.
First impressions stick even after they meet you in person and that goes with the first impression from your headshot too. And just like clothing goes in and out of style, so does photography. You don’t want a dated photo. It comes across as you don’t care about your career and you don’t take your professional life seriously.
I see a lot of headshots being used that were cropped from an event or were taken as a selfie. Don’t get me wrong, iPhones have come a long way when it comes to quality photos but a professional photographer can bring out your personality, confidence and approachability. A professional photographer also knows lighting and posing so that you get gorgeous images that represent you today giving you a killer first impression.
You’re an entrepreneur, executive, or leader in your industry. If you own your own business or are a leader within your company or community you need a variety of professional images. When you are at this level your brand is represented on multiple platforms within the marketplace and you may have different types of clients. You may also write for industry publication, be interviewed in the business journal, you are certainly front and center on a website. This is when a personal branding session is very important because you will need different looks, tones and personas for the various platforms and customers, yet you want tol tell a cohesive story about who you are as a person and a leader. You can accomplish this with a personal Branding Session.
You have a public facing job: blogger, realtor, actor, speaker, or author. If you are in a public facing job, you will need multiple looks that tell the story of your brand and who you are as an individual. You may need content images for websites, social media content and messaging, for interviews, book covers, and speaking engagements. You are likely present on a number of platforms that will consistently need good quality images that represent you and your business.
You serve on a non-profit board(s). If you are on a nonprofit board, they will ask you for your headshot. The board could be very different from your day job so you might want to consider how you want to be seen as a leader on the various boards you serve on. And you’ll be presented with a variety of people so you will want to put your best face forward and speak to this audience in a way that fits the board. Because we are seen on so many platforms these days, it’s important to have many images that represent your style.
You are dating online. I have people hire me all the time for dating profile pictures. I met my love online on Bumble to be exact. :) I hired a Relationship coach and I learned a couple of things for one we should be intentional with dating which means intentional with how you present yourself. She told me to have a mix of professional images and personal images. I went on one date and we now live together and he is the love of my life. I’ve had clients tell me that the quality of dates have gone up since posting the images from our session. We are always making decisions about who people are by the way they look and how they present themselves. We do it in person and we certainly do it online so you want to put out the best version of who you are by having a personal branding session.
Bottom line we are making first impressions online whether it is for our careers or in our personal lives and we want to make good impressions. It is human nature to want to always try to present the best version of ourselves. We do this in-person so why not do it online?
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