Ok so I’m following along the Blog Mastermind Program and Yaro suggests that we add more personality to our blogs to develop a closer relationship with our reader. One way he says is to add your picture to your blog to show your personality and build your brand.
Yaro says…
I want you to be very open, honest and real with your readers. You can do this by using your real personality and photos of yourself….
Well, I’m not one for pictures but I snapped this one with my laptop webcam of me with NO make-up I might 
add… (by the way gentlemen, that’s a huge deal for us women).
Anyhow, I have to say that I really love this Lesson, it’s the first one that I’m really enjoying. There’s alot more that will come out of this lesson that I’ll be adding to the site here, and I’ll be off this week to get some professional photos done for the site here.
In the meantime, here’s a true view of what I look like as I’m working on the site. 🙂
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So where would be the best place to put the photograph? On each blog post ?
Funny Melitsa! 🙂 Ah… nope probably not. But that’s where my own personality comes in, I think it’s funny to see my mug there. I won’t have it up for long, just posting on what I’m doing at the moment. I do plan on getting some professional photos done and adding them to the About page and probably the Contact page.
I saw you following me on Twitter. Sorry, but I had my limit in following. I just subscribe to your blog, anyway.
About adding a photo in a blog, I totally agree on this and even made a post about its importance last July this year.
I truly believe that it adds confidence to the blogger, and increases opportunities because of transparency. Having a self-photo means that the blogger is a human, and not a robot.
Thanks!
Thanks Angel, yes today I went through all of my Twitter followers and followed everyone back. I don’t do this task very often and wanted to update it. I feel it’s important to follow back to build relationships. Thanks for your message, I love the aspect of connecting with others.
Ugh, this is something I need to do. I have my photo on two of my websites and all my social media profiles but I left it off my latest blog because I’m hoping to get a fresh image – just haven’t had time to get all dolled up for photo shoot. Thanks for the reminder though – now I’m going to add it to my to do list so it gets some priority – because this is advice that I agree with 100%.
>>So where would be the best place to put the photograph? On each blog post ?<<
That depends – if YOU are teh brand, than I would show the pic on every page. I you are “just” the siteowner or proprietor of a smal lbusniess, the about page may by sufficient.
On my site for example, i have a picture of Santa on every page, but there it goes very good along with the christmas theme. An other site i maintain, only features a small pic of me doing something site-related on a very short about page.
Melissa – Wonderful! Glad it’s getting you motivated to get a pic up at the same time as you can see I didn’t doll myself up, I even don’t have make up on. Professional pictures are the way to go but in the meantime this works for me mostly going through the process.
Santa – Great point! Of course you are your brand so that makes sense, I think I would probably scare readers off if I was on every page :-).. but I have seen other marketers do this successfully.
I added my picture to my About page. I just can seem to find a good place to include on every page of my blog.
Hey Omar, looks great! I can see that your brand is more about crazy/busy dogs? Just first impressions. I like your picture too, it’s quite relaxed and ties in nicely to the theme of your site, the outdoors is perfect!
Vera wrote:
>>Professional pictures are the way to go but in the meantime this works for me mostly going through the process<<
Vera, when getting a professional photo done it is important that it does not get too good. I quite often find pictures of website/blog owners that seem to be taken out of their college yearbook or from their wedding album.
In my opinion, the picture has to reflect the personality of the author (website owner) as well as the style of the website/business. A good example is Lynn Terry on selfstartersweeklytips com
Oh yes for sure, I love Lynn she’s great! Her pictures are very nice also. The one thing I don’t like either is stuffy business photos… I do like Ed’s also, he seems pretty relaxed over on his site. Right now I have broken out a bit on my face so now I have to wait, thought that was over at age 15, I gather not. 🙂
@Melitsa:
I thing the best place to put your photo would be the ‘about’ page.
Regards,
Matt Kolorowanki,
Illustrator
Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I have one up on my about page. I think that’s as much as anyone would want right now 😉
I agree that it helps to have a personalized profile in your blog so readers can entirely relate to you.