Do you really need more than one headshot? I mean, one is enough to put on your business card and your social profiles, right? If you’ve got LinkedIn covered, you’re all set! Maybe!
If personal branding is part of your marketing strategy, consider the number of different places you’ll have an opportunity to use your headshot: social profile photos, social posts, online ads, billboards and print ads, speaking engagements, receiving awards and recognition—not to mention various parts of your website! Wouldn’t it be nice to have more than one headshot to give some variety and dimension to your brand?
Personal branding using your headshots
Katharina Stuerzl is a motivational speaker and author, and she’s a great example of how to make the most of your headshots through personal branding. When she came to the studio for her headshot session, the main motivator was because she needed a photo that would be included in the book that she co-authored, so that people could see the author behind the words she wrote in the book.
Since her photoshoot, the library of images Katharina got has come in handy over and over. Here are some of the ways she has been able to use the images.
Katharina used her headshot to announce her book on social media.
Katharina used one of her headshots inside the book on the “about the author” page.
Katharina also uses her author headshot in the typical places you might expect to see it online: on her LinkedIn profile, her Facebook, and as part of her email identity through her Google profile.
Here’s the author’s headshot in the cover of a video podcast on which she was interviewed.
Promoting a speaking appearance, Katharina’s headshot appears with several other speakers on a printed flyer. She also used her photo in a program for a business luncheon at which she spoke.
And of course, Katharina uses her headshot extensively throughout her website.
The variety of headshot images she chose all express her outgoing, confident personality, but the differing poses and expressions gave her some options to use in different situations. Having photos in a few different outfits also allowed her to choose photos to coordinate in color with different parts of her website or different printed color schemes.
Having more than one headshot makes your personal branding easy!
Possibly, not everyone needs more than one headshot image.
BUT if you are an author, a realtor, a consultant, or someone else whose face is part of their personal branding—you’ll have many opportunities to use your headshot, and having a library of images to choose from can be a big help.