As business owners, we often pour over our logos, our pantone colors, our graphics, our fonts, our instagram, our pinterest…the list goes on and on…but are we thinking about the 5 Brand Stories you should be telling with our visuals? We often don’t think enough about our Brand Story Visuals as business owners. We tend to lean into the “standard” smiling headshot, laughing headshot with our hand in our hair, and then the laptop shot seen ’round the world. It’s the comfort zone of quick and easy that any photographer and business owner can quickly replicate and move along.

Because I’m passionate about creative small businesses, I challenge you to think about your brand visuals in a deeper way. The more you can connect with your potential clients and customers, the more impact you can make in their lives. You can serve them with your whole heart when they get to know you so they can relate to you and trust that you will care for them in ways other businesses may not.

So let’s look at the 5 Brand Stories you should be telling with your visuals:

~1~ The Who:

Who do you serve? Who are you FOR? Who is your ideal client?

Show images of your ideal client working with you, shopping in your bakery, wearing the clothes you sell, hopping on calls with you, having you design in their homes. Tell the stories of your clients so that your potential clients can see themselves working with you one day.

~2~ The What

What do you do? What are your special gifts? What does it look like to work with you? What’s the story behind what you do? What does the process of working with you look like?

In his book, Know What You’re For, author Jeff Henderson writes “Words are powerful, but research tells us over and over again that words PLUS images are more powerful.” SHOW the world what you do and who you do it for!

~3~ The When

When is it best to work with you? When are you offering your services or products? When is the promotional time in your business?

I like to make sure I shoot for seasonal timeframes for my business owners. It looks a little silly to post a photo of you in a tank top in the middle of January (unless you live in a very warm climate…we did live in Hawaii and celebrated the holidays in our swimsuits). Even with my headshot mini sessions, I ask them to bring varying sleeve lengths so that we make sure we have shots for them to use throughout the year. The photo shoot below was all shot on one day…but it looks like they happened over time.

~4~ The Where

Where do you do the work? Where do you meet with clients? Where are you helping people? Where do you love spending your free time?

The story of where is so important. I was hired to shoot for Jessica Rasdall’s Speaker Academy. I flew down to Tampa and spent time in the beautiful condo where she was teaching and leading her intensive. While they worked, I shot behind the scenes, I did images of them creating together and alone, and I also did shots of them presenting their “mock” talks so they’d have shots to promote their speaking skills. The images we did for Jessica told the story of what it looks like to come to one of her intensives. You could imagine yourself there because you could see right where the students were working and creating. This is an important piece of brand storytelling.

~5~ The Why

Why do you do what you do? Why are you so passionate about your offerings? Why do you love serving the clients and customers in the way that you do? Why are You the person for the job?

In Simon Sinek’s book “Start With Why”, he says “We say WHAT we do, we sometimes say HOW we do it, but we rarely say WHY we do WHAT we do.” Show the people why…tell the story of why you do what you do. This is where it gets personal. This is where your origin story and your heart get to shine.

If you are answering these five questions in your brand visuals and copy…then you are making a HUGE impact for your business and for the lives you hope to serve through it.

I’d love to share a quick planning tool if you are hoping to get a branding shoot on your calendar soon. You can download it here. This planning sheet gives you content ideas to consider and a GREAT form to brainstorm on!!

Blessings,

Corry