Does your headshot match your branding? This small, but important piece of your branding deserves more care and attention than an old cropped Facebook photo. Your brand headshot says a lot about your brand’s personality and can help you emotionally connect with your customers more quickly.
Here are 4 tips to make sure your headshot matches your branding:
Before you take any headshots, you should have a good idea of how you want people to experience your brand. A good place to start is by thinking of your brand as a person. Choose 3-5 adjectives that describe this person.
Are you more approachable or authoritative?
Are you more formal or casual? Are you more fun or serious?
Once you have your adjective list, you can start researching images that convey this message.
Use your list of adjective to scour Pinterest for images that fit your brand description. You’re going to use this board as direction for your photo shoot in the following 3 key areas:
To guide you on the types of locations that will best suit your brand personality, look for settings that match the feeling of your adjective list. For example, if your brand words are “casual, fun, and approachable,” you might consider images set on a cozy couch, a coffee shop, or at a park. If your brand words are “authoritative, professional, and powerful” you might look for images in an office setting or a city.
To guide what you will wear in your photos, choose images with clothes that both fit your adjective list and complement or match your brand’s color palette. Again, if your brand is more casual, you might opt for a blazer, jeans, and heels with a fun pop of color. If your brand is more corporate or luxury, then you might want to suit all the way up in bold or dark colors!
To help your photos looks more authentic, find images of poses that feel comfortable and natural (don’t forget to practice them!), but also convey your brand’s posture. For a more approachable feel, choose images with relaxed, candid postures. Maybe on a couch with a computer or laughing while walking down the street. If you’re the power suit kind gal, find images with strong and powerful poses. Think crossed arms, leaning forward, strong eye contact, or hands on your hips.
Quality photography can be expensive (but so worth the investment), so you want to make sure you get a lot of marketing mileage out of your photos. Think about all the places you will use your photos for your marketing, such as website, to your brochure, business cards, social media and more.
Once you have a general idea of where you will use them, get specific. Where on your website will you use your images? Your welcome banner? Your about page? Your contact page? etc. Thinking through how and where you will use your photos will help your photographer put together a shot list to make sure you have enough portrait, landscape, intimate, and action shots for all your marketing materials.
Now that you’ve done your research, it’s time to hire a photographer. Use your Pinterest board as a guide to choose a photographer that matches your brand style. If you’re looking for more corporate headshots, you may want to look for a studio photographer. If you want something more casual or artistic, check out a brand or lifestyle photographer. (Hint: Instagram is a great way to find local photographers!)
And when you finally make the hire, you’ll have already done the hard work. All that’s left is to send your photographer your Pinterest board as direction for shoot day. Then relax (and smile!), because that’s when your personality shines most!
