Who are you anyway?

Posted by: Krishna De | Posted on: July 1st, 2005 | 1 Comments | Posted in: Uncategorized

I’m not sure how you feel if you are searching the web to look for solutions, but it can feel impersonal.

As Mark McCormack, founder of IMG says, "All things being equal, people will do business with a friend; all things being unequal, people will still do business with a friend".  In other words – we do business with people that we like and trust!

If your web site is to be more than an on line business card and you want it to help you bring people through your marketing funnel, you need to develop a plan to encourage your web site visitor to ultimately trust your advice so that they become one of your valued clients and purchase solutions from you.

One of the ways to overcome the impersonal nature of the web is to make sure your web site has a photograph of you and details of your biography. 

I don’t know about you, but when I visit a web site, I want to be able to check out the credentials of the person who is proffering me advice before I make a decision to buy from them – unless of course it’s a site such as Amazon where I know exactly what I am looking for and it’s their pricing and availability that attracts me to them.

However I’m not suggesting capturing your image with an old Brownie Box camera or an instant Polaroid!!  It is definitely worth investing in a set of professional photographs.

Last year I had some new professional photographs taken by Margaret Moore of Photogenic.  On preparing for my time in her studio, I did some research about what kind of photographs I wanted her to take and most importantly what I didn’t want!  I made sure ahead of the phot-shoot that I knew the image that would be acceptable to my clients.

Margaret was fantastic; she put me at ease and made some great suggestions, amongst which were:

• bring along a couple of changes of clothes so that you can photograph different images for different occasions – be that on the web, in a speaking profile, or for your e-book
• and get your images downloaded in digital format onto a CD ROM.

This last piece of advice has proved extremely valuable as I’ve had to provide a number of people with my photograph over the last year.  Often it required to be of a particular size to be included in someones web site or literature.  The fact that I have the photo’s available on my PC means that I can make the required changes quickly and without additional cost.

Saying all that, informal shots also have their place.  One of the coolest photo’s I’ve seen in a long time is that of my friend Krissy Jackson of Now Coaching.  Krissy is a life coach, a New Zealander by birth but now living in Switzerland.

Her web site intro is ‘Let me turn your world around’ and to accompany it her photo is taken in the mountains and it truly does look like she has turned the world around!

If you don’t have a set of photographs you’re proud to show people, do think about investing in some up to date pictures, then your web site visitors will get a better sense of who YOU are!

P.S. – if you do decide to invest in professional photographs, do research your photographer and check they are able to shoot commercial portraits.  It is a different skills to wedding family photography and family portraits!

And do check out Krissy’s web site – she’s hosting a number of life coaching and fitness retreats in the next few months in great locations including Austria and Mauritius.