Watch This Episode of MwahTV About Strong Personal Brand In Photography
In this episode of Mwah TV, I'm sharing how a strong personal brand in photography help's to grow my clients' businesses. This helps to make them a lot more memorable. I'm sharing some fundamentals about exactly how I do this, as well as sharing some examples of real-life clients with you.
Sound Familiar?
If you've always wondered how you can stop people saying things like,
"What's she all about again?"
"meh?"
or the question,
"What does he even do?"
Into someone having a really strong and well-thought-out opinion about who you are, and how you do what you do. Then by the end of this episode, you're gonna know, how I go about taking a dish-water, diluted personal brand, and changing it into a distilled and refined liqueur personal brand in my photography, for my clients. And yes, that was actual dishwater.
I've had my own photography business for eight years now, and prior to that, I had a career in public relations and marketing. I like to think that this hybrid approach and formula really help me to make sure that I achieve successful results with all of my clients. Maybe, you're next?
Are You A Personal Brand?
Whether you like it or not, you have a personal brand.
What people think of you based on your behaviour, your actions, and how you show up professionally can be argued to be a very large part of your personal brand I think that's true, but it's also a very simplistic way to look at it.
Deciding on how you want to be perceived, and being a lot more intentional with your actions is a great way to begin curating a strong personal brand.
Your Personl Brand Values
In my experience though, when somebody asks me what I stand for, and what my fundamental values are, I find it quite zapping in the creative department. I find it quite intimidating, it's quite a big question to ask someone, who are you and what do you stand for?
I don't know about you, but I feel like I have to go out and find a soap-box to stand on, or find a cause that blends beautifully with my business in order to have a personal brand, and I think that's counter-productive.
Instead, what I like to do as a Creative Swiss Army Knife, is find out about my client's lives, what they do outside of work, and who they are, really, as people. Then think about how that can affect the mood and the feeling that is associated with them when people think about them and their personal brand.
I find that this route to it just feels more organic to me.
Sometimes the values approach can take away the fun, and it can take away the individuality of somebodies personal brand. Now if you found this way of thinking to be counterproductive when you're developing your personal brand just like how I have, you might find it more beneficial to start trying to group together the themes and the constants of your personality that you know are really you.
My Cocktails Theme
One of my themes, for instance, is just called, cocktails. I use this to support my own strong personal brand in photography.
This theme can be unpacked in a lot of different ways to understand more about me, Laura Pearman. On the surface, it is the shallowest of forms, I do genuinely like to drink a lot of cocktails.
But When We Go Deeper
But in a deeper way, the term cocktails, when I think about me, is a great way, to sum up, my constant exploration of ideas around duality. Fusing things together, new hybrid ideas to create new idea cocktails. It's something that I do in all aspects of my life and I think it's a big part of my creativity.
And Even Deeper
I'm a Gemini, so I like to think about my personality as a cocktail. I also think that my style of photography has a certain sense of extra-ness about it. I love a complex lighting setup wherever I can fit one in on a photoshoot, I will do it. And I really love the extra sparkle of adding in some additional narration or even some symbols that explain a little bit, subliminally, who a person is when I'm doing personal branding photography.
- Just like a cocktail,
- with a bit of fruit on the side,
- and a pretty straw,
- and a sparkler.
Laura Cook's Strong Personal Brand In Photography Results
Let's take a look at Laura.
She shot with me a couple of years ago, with my Full Sch-Whammy Service.
You can see here, that the before headshot is nice. She's smiling and looks friendly, technically it's well-lit, it's in focus, and she's doing an open, casual pose there.
In planning with Laura, I learned a lot about her ideas and fundamentals, in being passionate about helping already successful businesses and entrepreneurs find further joy and empowerment with their finances. We quickly got to the visuals around this by thinking about the end result of all of Laura's expertise.
What does it feel like after you've experienced her expertise?
Living a life of success on your terms, and opening up your mind to a secure level of opulence. This informed the venue I sourced to give a setting for her session. We picked a stately home that was filled with historical elegance. It had a modern opulence in the way that it had been decorated.
Laura had already completed a great project with her graphic designer. Together they had picked out a colour palette that had been inspired by semi-precious jewels.
These rich colours can be seen from accents in her styled outfits and tastefully underlined in the way that her makeup was created.
She says,
Want To Talk About Your Brand With Me?
The best way to get started with getting my expertise on your branding no matter what stage you are at is by having a Cyber Cocktail call together.
Richard Tubb's Strong Personal Brand In Photography Results
Let's take a look at Richard. We shot together a couple of years ago with my Quirky Service.
You can see here, that Richard's before headshot is standard especially for the world of IT. He's smiling and he's got the safe suit get-up on as well.
In planning with Richard, I learned a lot about his love for comics. Richard is very open and describes himself as a proud geek. Whilst you may assume that everyone in IT is a geek, there are, of course, lots of different ways to be a geek.
We dialled into his particular love of comics by finding some comic-centric spots to shoot in. This shows Richard in a colourful, alt. way.
Richard says,
Timestamps for this Episode of #MwahTV
How Branding Visually Is Good For Business
If you've enjoyed learning more about strengthening your personal brand with distilled visuals, then you are gonna want to take a look at my three-part special. This goes deep on why having more branded visuals in your marketing is ultimately, much better for business. You can get started with episode one right here.
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