Atlanta Brand Photographer | Building a Personal Brand

Starting a business is a huge deal. There are a lot of steps to take in the process, but one step that I feel is frequently overlooked is how to brand yourself. This goes further than picking a logo and making a website, especially for service-based businesses where YOU are the product. So how do we go about building a personal brand? Here are a few things to keep in mind!

Three things to remember when building a personal brand:

1. Establish your aesthetic. This sounds super cliche, but in order to keep your work consistent, it’s important to decide how you want your brand to look. Are you drawn to a moodier look? Is your style light, bright, and natural? What do you want people to think when they see your brand? These are a few questions to ask yourself to figure out what style you’d like to portray. Recommendation: hire a branding specialist like Amavi Studio to help develop your brand identity. Amavi Studio has done branding and web design for us since day one! This will help you become recognizable throughout your community.

2. Develop a brand voice. How do you talk about your business? How do you talk to your clients? Are you willing to share your personal life? When developing a brand voice, it’s important to consider who is listening. If you want to talk to your audience like they’re your very best friend, you totally can. Just remember to stay consistent. Find out how your potential clients will be interacting with you, and use this to your advantage. If you rely on social media for most of your clients, you can allow yourself to be a little more casual in your brand voice. It’s all about reading the situation and making the best choice for your unique brand.

3. Create consistent and interesting content. This seems obvious, but it’s so important. Part of my job as an Atlanta brand photographer is to figure out what look and feel my clients are going for, and help them create imagery to go alone with that. Working with the same photographer, or same copywriter, or same designer on projects can help ensure that your work is portrayed in a consistent way. Do research to figure out what topics and trends are popular and use that to develop content that your clients will resonate with.

 One of my favorite parts of my job is working with new businesses on brand shoots. During a brand shoot, we start from scratch to create a whole library of images that set a baseline for how a brand is going to be portrayed. This includes headshots, website listing images, and a number of lifestyle images that are perfect for social media. It is so exciting to see my clients use this content to grow a successful business.If you’re a photographer looking to learn more about brand photography, stay tuned! We just announced our new online course, Brand Photography for Beginners: The Art of Digital Storytelling. The course will be launching in mid August!