Five Tips To Making Sure You Look Great Online

I was recently speaking at BarCampDublin about how business blogs are a great way to build buzz about your brand and can enable you to attract more clients and grow your business.

I was talking through my top tips for what makes an effective business or corporate blog.

However when I mentioned that I recommended that as a business leader, we will enhance our personal brand and our corporate reputation by adding our photograph, a couple of people in the audience questioned that recommendation.

Now perhaps this was because the audience were technical companies and I’ve noticed that many technologists and researchers prefer to stay in the background and not always put them selves forward as they consider that as overt self promotion which they prefer not to do. I remember a meeting some months ago for a research institute I am on the board of, where one of the leading medical researchers point blank refused to have their photograph online of the new website that was being launched – although they were very happy to be quoted in research papers and speak to the national media.

One of the audience members replied to the person raising the question and affirmed that they believed that we should have our professional photograph on our business blog or website. For them it instilled trust.

You see, most often the second place that people will click to on your business blog or website is the “about us” page. We want to see who we are doing business with and are asking ourselves:

• Are they credible?
• Are they someone we can relate to?
• Are they in fact a real legitimate business?

In fact one business blogger advised me that when they added their photograph to their blog, their subscriptions actually doubled to their business blog feed. Now whether this is to do with any other factors, I cannot say – but that one change is what they attributed the increase in subscriptions to.

You may not wish to have your photograph in the banner of your business blog, particularly if it is a group blog, however I would encourage you adding your photograph to the “about page”.

If you do not have a recent professional photograph, here are five tips to ensuring you look great online:

1. Invest in hiring a professional photographer to take your photographs – choose a photographer who has experience in professional portraits
2. Make sure that your main photograph reflects what you stand for – I know of one person who wore glasses in the photos on their website but when they went to conferences, they left their glasses at home which meant no one recognised them
3. Take several changes of clothes to the photo-shoot – have different photographs taken – for example some might be casual and some formal
4. Make sure that you get a digital copy of the photographs – this will enable you to easily change their size to meet different needs over time
5. Once you have your photographs, create an online media room – making your photographs available on your business blog and website will make it easy for journalists and event organisers to access your photograph.

So as you continue to build your personal brand online, I would encourage you to express who you really are online, if for no other reason than it will mean that people know what you look like when you turn up for that next meeting in a crowded hotel lobby.