“Show Notes”
Marcus is going to talk about your personal brand. He wants to talk about the aesthetics of this. First, what is a personal brand. So, it’s a combination of who you are, what you do, what you are known for a who is your target audience. Marcus is going to focus on how we look.
Marcus thinks women are much better at this than men. Marcus thinks that when people book a photographer, they have certain expectations. He thinks people expect photographers to be cool and a little arty. This expectation makes a difference to our brand.
We have had a couple of stylists on the show including Nick Hems and Suzanne Suthers
Marcus says the first thing is to know your size. Get properly measured so you can work out what is going to fit you. Marcus thinks are then you need a “capsule wardrobe”. This is a few items of clothing that work well together. Marcus recommends getting clothes second hand. He thinks higher quality second hand clothes are better than cheap new clothes. He says you need some items that match your brand. Marcus says if you can’t decide on a colour go for black. Something small with your brand colour can work well with black.
Marcus says there are several points of contacts with people. Usually on Zoom, Networking, on your website and then on the shoot. On Zoom calls it’s important to get the background right. Arrange the background well. Some artefacts in the backgrounds that show you are a photographer are great. Marcus doesn’t like the artificial backgrounds. Marcus does suggest a slide show in the background. He also suggests getting a good webcam or use your SLR as a webcam. Get the camera level and lighting right. Also ensure your label on Zoom clearly says your name and business.
Marcus says then on the website you want at least two photographs of yourself. Sam and Marcus agree a photo of you on the homepage is important. Marcus says a behind the scenes video is useful. Sam says it shows you interacting with customers which is very powerful. Marcus says a photo on the about page is also important, and you need to be in your branded calls. Sam says also using images for example of you having a nice chat with someone by the call me button may help put people at ease.
“Show Transcription”
Sam: Hi Marcus, how are you doing?
Marcus: I’m very well, thank you Sam, how’s yourself?
Sam: Excellent, very good. And what are you going to be talking to us about today Marcus?
Marcus: I’m going to be talking about personal branding but your own personal brand.
Personal branding for photographers as it were.
Sam: Excellent, so for you as personal branding for you, as a person, as a photographer. That’s right,
Marcus: Obviously there’s a lot out there about personal brand. It’s the in thing. I’m a personal branding photographer as I’m sure many of our listeners are as well. There’s a lot out there about personal brand. I’m not going to dive too deeply in the marketing aspects. I’m going to be talking more about, of course, the aesthetics of a personal brand and why it’s useful to have a personal brand. But we’ll start off by talking about what is a personal brand and it’s about who you are and what you do combined with what you want to be known for. So let’s take myself for example, I’ve been doing personal branding photography a few years now but I’m switching it as you know Sam, more to the education side. So it’s still about me but I’m just changing what I’m known for. Yourself stays as a constant all the way through this but who your client is and what you’re known for can change if that sort of makes sense. And then you’ve got to combine that with that question about who is your perfect customer. Who are you talking to? How can you change your personal brand to address who you’re talking to? That big question isn’t it? Why are you doing this? As photographers, we’re not really used to being in front of the camera, of course. It’s not a comfortable place but you’ve got to get over it as everybody has because you’ve got to get yourself out there and you’ve got to market yourself. So I’m going to really just focus in this podcast about the appearance, how we are perceived by our clients, the way we look. And I guess the first part of this, dare I say it, is probably aimed more at men. Because I think women are just rocking their personal brands. So almost personal branding was made for women. But it’s not all this. The rest of the podcast is about both sexes, men and women.
The first bit of appearance is mainly aimed at men.
Sam: So what you’re saying is in general terms, men don’t bother to make any effort with their appearance, basically.
Marcus: I’m glad you said that because I need you as a bit of a foil here because I’m really obsessed by my appearance. I always have been because I like clothes. I’m really into clothing. I have been since I was a kid. And I think when people book a photographer, they do have in mind an appearance, don’t they? They expect, depending on what kind of photography you do, but they expect photographers to look in a certain way, I guess, or your clients. Do you think so, Sam?
Sam: Maybe. So what do you think the expectations are?
Marcus: I think they expect people, photographers to be, dare I say, a bit cool, whatever that might mean, aware of trends and a bit arty, I guess. But I think there’s expectation of what a photographer might look like. Now, I’m not saying that we’re…
Sam: Yeah, maybe. I suspect it varies massively from who you were.
Marcus: And what kind of photography you do as well.
Sam: A high-end wedding photographer. Yeah, if you’re working with a high-end wedding photography, even within a genre, a high-end wedding photographer you’d expect to be in a very sharp suit looking smart with probably a couple of assistants so they’re not bogged down with lots of stuff. While a very cheap wedding photography you’d probably expect to be in jeans and a smart t-shirt looking like a photography and a pair of trainers. You would be your expectation. And then, yeah, with different types.
Marcus: And a food photographer would be different, would be expected to look different. But nevertheless, though, the point I’m making here is that people are building up a vision before they’ve met you or seen you of what they expect you to look like. And that is part of what this personal branding is all about. Now, we have had guests on, as you know, Sam, haven’t we, in the past? Nick Hemmes, I’m thinking of, who was a stylist, a clothing stylist, and he worked particularly with men. We’ve had… So, you know, I mean, these are experts so you can delve back into those show notes if you need to.
Sam: Yeah, we’ve had a couple of stylists and we’ll put links to their shows in. Yeah, we’ve had a couple of stylists.
Marcus: Nick’s doing very well, by the way. I do follow him. Locally to me and he’s doing very, very well. He’s a bit of a TV star now. Yeah, that’s right. So, first of all, OK, what do we need to do? First of all, start at knowing your measurements. I mean, that is a really good way to start if you’re going to be investing in a wardrobe. Know your sizes. And I know it can vary depending on different manufacturers. But work at your inside leg, your waist size, your shirt size, you know, the neck size, et cetera. If you sleeve length as well, if you’ve got to know that. It’s all properly measured so you know what you can buy, what size is going to fit you. It’s basically going to be buying stuff offline, which I’m going to be talking about. And then we might also think about putting together what we call a capsule wardrobe. So, you don’t need to go and buy loads and loads of clothes. What you need to have is a few items of clothing that work really well together. OK, I mean, there was a caveat to this matter of clothing. If you look at like TV shows, the presenters, they tend to wear the same clothes all the way through the series. You know, you know, David Attenborough, I think he’s been wearing the same clothes since the 50s, you know, the Chino’s and the Navy’s shirt or whatever, you know. That’s his, you know, so it’s not about having lots of different clothes, but it’s having something that people can hook onto and identify as it were. A clothes hook. So, capsule wardrobe is a good way to go. We’ve got a few items that work really well together and get to know your clothes size. And then you can buy your item, as I do, on secondhand. And then you can afford to go for, yeah, I think then you can afford to go for more designer or better made clothing, you know. Don’t, you know, don’t go buying Primark or George or whatever it’s going to be for the same price. If you can buy something that’s been pre-worn for the same price, you’re going to get something that’s going to be maybe like Next or Reese or even Paul Smith or something like that, you know. And so you get a better quality. Better quality means better fit. You feel better with it. It all works out well.
Sam: Just a lot more challenging to know, Marcus, because you don’t like have a row of the same set of trousers and you can try six and then go, which one’s fit? You’re kind of, you just, whatever turns up, haven’t you? And then if it doesn’t fit, you’re kind of, you’re spending a lot of time.
Marcus: So that’s why it’s good to know your clothes, your size. Know your inside legs. What do you know your inside legs have? You don’t know, do you? How can you not know about that?
Sam: I don’t know. Is that what they have on jeans?
Marcus: Yeah, 32. So that’s normal. Normally your waist size. Yeah, okay. You’re quite skinny. I’m a 30. You’re quite skinny then, aren’t you? I’ve been a 31. Yeah, that’s your inside legs. So that’s how you go. And then you get different fits. You know, you get a slim fit, you get a regular fit, and you might get a wider fit.
Sam: But you didn’t want, and so it’s quite challenging that way because it’s not like when you go to a shop and you go, I like those trousers. I can find them in my size and my way. It does make it a lot more challenging. You’ve got to invest a lot more time. You didn’t want. And so it’s quite challenging that way because it’s not like when you go to a shop and you go, I like those trousers. I can find them in my size and my way. It does make it a lot more challenging. You’ve got to invest a lot more time.
Marcus: If you combine you and you can go to the shop and have that experience, of course.
It can be done other ways as well. You can just have one item, just a couple of items. And these items need to match your brand, obviously. And this is what this is all about. And that could be, you know, the color. My brand, I wear a lot of purple. If I’m presenting or doing a YouTube or whatever, I try to wear my brand colors, which is purple. Tries, if you’re doing Zoom doesn’t really matter so much. Zoom doesn’t matter so much. But we’ll come on to different ways of basically connecting with people. That might matter. If you can’t decide the color, I have got down here. Black is best. I think, you know, that’s a bit of a cliche, but black is a good one to go for. It’s very flattering.
Sam: And it can work with a bit of color of your brand, couldn’t it? So you could be mainly wearing black, but have something small in the color of your brand. And then it would really stand out as well.
Marcus: Yeah. A little detail, a scarf, whatever pocket scarf it’s going to be. But black, you know, in my wardrobe, I’ve got a lot of black. I do wear a lot of black. It looks cool. It’s flattering, and you don’t have to think too much about adding black to black. You don’t know about black shirt and black jeans. It’s going to work. Oh, and also, of course, you know, if it’s not just clothes, it’s also just a couple more things. Look after your skin. Look after yourself. Go to a hairdresser’s. Go to a barber’s.
Sam: Well, so we’re saying, to be a photographer, you need a hand. You need a skin regime, Marcus. This is new on me.
Marcus: I think it helps. Tune in, what, Sam? I think it all helps. And I, you know, I mean, it’s good for your confidence. If you’re looking good and you’re feeling good, it’s going to make you feel more confident. I mean, you know, it’s just part of that marketing mix. So it’s worth going.
Sam: So basically, don’t turn up like a scruff bag. Make sure you’ve been to the barber from time to time. You know, you’re looking after yourself. You’ve got the clothes which look in the part. And as we said, I think we talked in other shows, the part is very, very different, depending on what you’re doing. Yeah, you might be turning up to do a shoot on a farm.
And that’s going to be very different to how you’d turn up to a courtroom.
Marcus: Sam, I’m talking about, yeah, for the suit itself is quite, is a little bit different. I’m talking about how you present yourself. And there are basically, there’s three ways in which you present yourself, roughly, is either going to be like we’re doing now on a Zoom call. And I spend a lot of time in Zoom with my clients. The second point might be, touch point might be networking, but you’re going to be meeting face to face. And the third one is going to be on your website. So we’ll come to that in a minute. So let’s talk about Zoom.
Sam: Surely also the shoot’s part of that.
Marcus: It is, but I think with a, it definitely.
Sam: And then you turn up, and you’re kind of, you look a complete mess on the shoot.
That’s not going to be good, is it?
Marcus: No, quite. And the suit, the reason I do have, you want to be a little bit more comfortable maybe. So you might be wearing more comfortable shoes or trousers that are a little bit like, you know, if you’re owning a man for a law, as photographers you do, you probably don’t want the best place.
Sam: We’ve got the lovely story, haven’t we, from one of our guests who literally managed to roll, she managed to roll on a dog poo during her wedding. A dog poo, yeah.
Marcus: So you’d only be doing that in your bespoke handmade trousers. Certainly not. So that’s what I mean by the suit. But let’s talk about the Zoom call first of all, because we are, you know, it’s here, and it’s going to be, I think I can, don’t see it going away for quite a while yet, Zoom. So with the Zoom calls, and we were just talking about this before we came on, because we’re going to start talking, hopefully we might be doing a bit of video or something on YouTube.
Sam: I have to do some styling before then, Marcus.
Marcus: So first of all, background. Let’s get your background shorted out on Zoom calls, so you’re looking professional. That can be either having your studio lights in the background like I do, because I’m filming in my studio. Or you could be having a logo, like you’ve got Sam in the background there. But take time. Yeah, a wall, but arrange it. Once you’ve done it and you’ve got it sorted, you can be using that for a lot of calls. So it’s worth putting a bit of time, put a bit of lighting there, some artifacts that suggest you’re a photographer. You can also think about putting together a slideshow of your work that you can have.
Sam: Sorry, Marcus, what’s your thought on, can I say, what’s your thought on kind of the artificial background as a kind of ignore your office and it might be a junkyard and go, I’m going to do the.
Marcus: I don’t like those at all, Sam. I don’t like them, especially when they’re blurred. I don’t like it. You do it, just do it, get it done properly.
Sam: Yeah, I often find as well around it, it kind of works and then the illusion breaks because a dog comes in or a person and it all goes weird, doesn’t it?
Marcus: It’s not authentic, Sam. And this is all about being authentic. And it’s not a one-off thing. You’re going to be doing this for a year, you know, for your career, you know, whatever, when you’re using that space. So, but a slideshow you can do, you can have, I’ll just keep a slideshow you can have in the background. You can put that into make a little movie and have your slideshow showing in the background. You know, that’s quite handy, so people can see your work. But certainly, you know, get a decent webcam, get it at, they’re not too expensive. You can even hook up your own camera to it or a phone as well.
Sam: Well, you can hook up, you can hook up your SLR, can’t you? I mean, I keep messing mine up, but I mean, I’ve got an EOS. You can just, there’s a little app you download from Canon Bang and you can, most SLRs you can, with a bit of faffing, you can use them as a webcam. And if you’re a photographer, you’ve almost certainly got an SLR.
Marcus: Yeah, exactly. Get the height, get the height of the camera right as well. You know, it should be just like you’re doing a headshot of a portrait photography. It should be just below your eye line, you know, it’s a salmon sinking down there. So get the camera right, get the lighting right as much as you can, you know, facing a window, have some net curtain as if it’s really bright to soften it down a little bit. Have your business name there, Marcus Armabadoc, that’s always on mine. You know, things that once you’ve done.
Sam: Yeah, lots of people are bad at that, aren’t they? Like, actually, I’ve not put my surname, but I’m only with Marcus. If I’m going into a Zoom network meeting, I always put my surname, and lots of people don’t. And then you might want to speak to that person again and you think, oh, I’ll just find him on LinkedIn. And what do you got? It’s their first name. I mean, you’re never going to find Jane on LinkedIn in a thousand years. Yeah, your surname has an absolute minimum.
Marcus: Yep, yep, exactly right. And then finally, the third touch point we talked, I talked about is the website. So I think, and Sam, I’m going to look for you for clarification on this, as you are the website expert. But really, you want at least two photographs for yourself on your website. You want one on your homepage above the above the fold, as it were. And yeah, you’re not.
Sam: Maybe I’m not sure about above the fold, because you might want a really good shot of the type of photography you do above the fold. But definitely on the homepage.
Marcus: Definitely on the homepage. And even the behind-the-scenes video, that’s what I’ve got on mine. And I think that seems to work quite well. You know, so people can actually see you, see you in action. And that gives a whole nice vibe straight away.
And the second place you want.
Sam: Lots of photographers have that and that is nice. And kind of, yeah, those behind-the-scenes videos, a lot of photographers use them and they are nice. And you can, it shows you interacting in a nice way with your clients as well as people can see the way that you’re talking to the clients and the way they’re reacting. As long as that’s positive, which I’m sure it is for most people. And yeah, capturing that really can edit it, put people at ease, doesn’t it? Because they can relax that person. A bit when they were petrified when I spoke to them.I cut that bit out.
Marcus: And once it’s done, once you’ve got it made, get it on your website and it’s there for as long as you, you know, probably a long time.They’re about paid .
Sam: Photos as well of that behind-the-scenes stuff is good too.
Marcus: Yeah, all that. But these are two main ones. The one on the home page and one on your about page, which is going to be, you know, a headshot with you in your branded outfit. You know, the outfit you decide, the clothes you decided on. And you’re going to be carrying on that look all the way through on your Zoom calls, on your networking. That’s basically what it is. That’s how you build a personal brand through the way you look for photographers. And believe me, I know, because I did it.
Sam: So yeah, I think having more on your website could be good, especially around the contact me section. So, you know, if you’ve got a page and go, I know, you know, chat with me if, you know, you don’t want it everywhere because you drive people mad but kind of a picture of you having a cup of coffee with someone. It kind of makes people think, oh, well, that’s, you know, gives that pressure in the mind of who they’re going to speak to and it shows a nice relaxing chat. You know what I mean? So some of those dotted around. It’s a balance because you want to put your face everywhere. But yeah, those kind of pictures of you having a chat with somebody else in the room, having a cup of coffee. I know we sometimes say the kind of, you know, there’s an awful lot of branding shots of the sat there with a cup of coffee or a laptop or a glass of champagne. And yeah, you definitely want some variety from that. But I think for those, giving the impression of your with somebody else and chatting, I think the shots of you with someone else are really good. If you do that, Marcus, you know, chat a photo of the person with a client having a chat.
Marcus: Oh, I do. Of course I do that. And yeah, there’s, you know, the whole art to getting those shots looking really good. But yeah, there we go, Sam. I think, you know, I mean, it’s really helped me. It’s helped me in my career, building my personal bank because I know what people say about me and they’ll say, oh, Marcus, that, you know, floppy head guy always wears scarves.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, that’s it. It’s a look on that and it works, doesn’t it?
Marcus: Which is fine. I’ll take that.
Sam: Yeah, they know you walk in a room and they go, oh, that must be Marcus. He’s that floppy head guy with the with the scarves.
Marcus: Yeah. And as I said, early in the head.
Sam: The only man in Bristol who can tie a cravat.
Marcus: And as I said, early in the show, people always expect it as a photographer to look in a certain way. And you can basically, you can use that to your advantage.
Sam: There we go. So turn up looking like a photographer and then obviously the for some of the shots, you don’t always have to have the camera because that gets a bit cheesy.
Marcus: No, no, no, I would avoid having a camera. But well, maybe one, but I would avoid having a camera.
Sam: So it depends what you use it for, doesn’t it? Like the LinkedIn headshot. So then just as people are scrolling, it’s instantly obvious what you do. Well, yeah, if you’re on the website, you know you’re on a photographer website so you don’t need it so much. It kind of depends on the context. It’s really useful for that. Like on LinkedIn, where there’s an awful lot of people, it makes you it makes it bloody obvious what you do very quickly. I think there is loads of things to do. We’re all going to be thinking about our wardrobe and what we wear and we can still keep our pajama bottoms for when we’re on a couch. In my case, my shorts, because it’s quite warm. Nobody ever knows I’m always in shorts on Zoom calls. So, yes, Marcus, thank you very much. And listeners, what you need to do or what would be really great to do is to sign up to the newsletter. The newsletter has been fully revamped. You now get the week’s podcast. You get detailed tips from Sam and Marcus every single week. Something new, new ideas to help you in your business. Marcus is busy scouring the photography news and is also adding several articles from the new photography news in there every week. And you can access the Facebook page. So, the newsletter gives you loads and loads of bonuses extra to what you get from just the show. So, please do sign up.
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