When you consider booking a brand shoot, you might ask yourself why you need a brand shoot and how it will help your business. I am here to tell you more.

A brand shoot is more than just a photo shoot. It is the creative collaboration between you, the brand and business owner, and me, the photographer. I do not just take the pictures, but also help you plan the shoot and map out how we document your business.

The images we create together can be used in many different ways to help promote your business and be visible to your clients. Here are a few ideas for you on how to use your personal branding images.

On your website.

Your website is your shop front and like in a real shop, it is nice to see the face of the person you are buying from. Use a good headshot on your ‘about me’ page and tell your customers a little more about you or how you started your business. Good business photographs will keep your customers on your website for longer and if you construct your brand story well, you can guide customers from one page to another until they either buy or contact your for a service.

Social Media

It is important to shop up on both Facebook and Instagram. Showing up does not only mean being there and posting content, it also means showing your face at least once a month. Unlike what you might think or feel about photos of yourself, studies have shown that social media posts with a beautiful portrait of you (the business owner) can have significantly more engagement than product or service photos. People are naturally interested in people and everybody loves finding out about the story behind a business. Be consistent with your posts and engage with your customers to build trust.

Marketing & Advertising

We live in a digital era and customers make quick judgments whether they like what they see. This is particularly crucial for your marketing material. If you have an online brochure that you send to your clients, it will need to have an instant wow factor that blows your client away. Having high quality and consistent images helps with this by making you look professional. If you combine that with useful and most importantly helpful information, you are on for a win.

Content.

When I say ‘content’ I am referring to the text that goes with your images. If you just post a beautiful brand photo to Instagram but make no effort to accompany it with any useful information for your customers, your engagement will quickly nosedive.

Planning content is not difficult. Who is your ideal client? What problems do they have and how do you help them getting over these problems? What is your unique selling point? What are your processes? What tips do you have for your clients? The list is endless. Once you start thinking about content and writing yourself a list, you can probably image the images that should go with these posts. Together we can work through these questions and write a shoot list. A three hour personal brand shoot will leave you with 120-150 beautiful images and if planned properly, it will provide your with images for dozens and dozens of useful blog posts on your website (amazing you’re your SEO!) and on your social media (fab for engagement).

PR (public relations)

I have taken many pictures of companies that were printed in local magazines. Having a catalogue of beautiful images to use for your online shop front and all your social media platforms will attract attention and when a PR opportunity comes along, you have your images ready. Professional images make you look professional and being published in a magazine raises your profile. But don’t wait for PR opportunities, be brave and contact magazine with your beautiful images and some well written copy – you never know what doors might open for you!

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