Why keeping your brand photos up to date is important
Over the years, as business owners, we…
grow with experience & insight, having more to bring to the table
our message shifts as our understanding deepens & expands
our ‘ideal client’ evolves and our offerings transform
…but our photography may not!
I don’t know about you, but I’m not running my biz in exactly the same way I was five years ago (or even five months ago!).
Our photos make up such an integral part of how we connect with our peeps, and when they’re no longer in-line with our current offerings and energy, they reflect who we WERE, not who we are.
Our photography is a key element that allows our prospects to get an intuitive feel for us and our businesses.
They often form the first impression new visitors or followers get.
Photography helps us to communicate the energetic shifts (not to mention the physical ones!) that have occurred over time when we keep it fresh, meaning we can greet the humans our work is really for from a current place, and communicate the heart of our offerings in real-time.
There are multiple ways to do this through our imagery, including candid phone snaps, selfies, AND our professional brand photos. Here is why keeping our shots up to date is so important.
Have you ever arranged a meeting with someone, attended a class or turned up at a workshop and awkwardly wondered whether you were in the right room?
The person you were meeting with looks VERY DIFFERENT to the photo you saw of them online.
It can feel unsettling to have an idea of a person in your head and then find them to look very little like their photo in real life, purely because the image was out of date.
These are not the initial thoughts or feelings you want someone to be experiencing when they meet or work with you for the first time.
While you might have every good reason to not have updated your photos yet, this misalignment doesn’t communicate that you’re a business owner who cares about how they’re showing up, investing in themselves and their biz, and keeping things current. If you’ve changed in important ways since you had your last photos taken, it’s time for a refresh.
How we feel about our photos affects how visible we are prepared to be.
During the months after our move to rural Somerset in December 2020, I struggled to share any images from my last personal brand shoot. I still loved them, but they were out of date. Made in the Summer months of 2019, in Brighton where I used to live, the world had changed in massive ways since then, I had changed. AND I now had a fringe! I felt blocked about using the photos as if they were current because they did not represent me, and the lack of matching photos stopped from fully showing up online until I had my new images.
If we aren’t aligned with our photographs, it can feel jarring to keep seeing them on our website, social media or email newsletter, and we may end up hiding ourselves in ways we would not, if this was not an issue.
You are not who you were when you had your last shoot!
When our photos represent a version of ourselves that no longer fits us or our work, it can feel limiting (and weirdly inauthentic) to keep showing up as this previous self. It feels so much more freeing and in integrity to have photos that represent us, the spirit of our work and our identity, and can even inspire us to promote what we have to say!
Neither of these are great experiences! I wonder whether you resonate with them?
If you’d like to explore further, here are three questions to reflect on to bring further insight and clarity around how your photography is affecting your business and visibility.
Take it deeper with journal prompts:
How are my current photos affecting the way I show up?
To what extent are my current photos representing who I am in my business right now?
What would I like my photography to say about me?
I’d love to know what comes up for you! Message me here.
If you know your shots are out of date or no longer reflective of who you are now (especially if this is holding you back from showing up in all your wonder!!), it’s time to think about booking in a photo shoot. Imagine how in-flow it will feel to have images that you’re confident to share and proud to have representing you!
Your work matters, and it’s important that your peeps are seeing the version of you that’s aligned with all that you offer!
In the meantime, updating your website and socials with more recent images of yourself that feel like YOU, even if just from your phone, is better than hiding or feeling misaligned with how you represent yourself.
If you’d like to explore the kinds of images that will help you take your business where you’re going, book in a call with me here and we’ll explore.
Just got questions at this point? Check out some of my previous posts here, or feel free to email me at becky@beckyrui.com.
I hope this has been helpful!
Becky x
