Last week I photographed Dr. Meenakshi Raj.
Dr. Meenakshi Raj – now tha’s a great head shot!
Meena needed a good head shot for her business profile. Initially Meena asked her son to take a picture on her phone, but it wasn’t great. It would have been better if they had followed some of the tips that I have posted previously about taking your won head shot!
In our fast-paced world of social media and online consumerism, profile pictures are all important.
According to Maximise Social Business’ post (see full post here), your profile is 7 times more likely to be viewed by others if you have a photo on it.
But – you can’t just use any photo, using a bad photo can be almost as detrimental as having no head shot there at all.
According to Constant Contact’s post (found here), there are a couple of no-no’s for your LinkedIn profile:
– Not having a profile photo. This might seem like a no-brainer, but not having a photo can have a big impact on the overall appearance of your profile.
– Using an unprofessional profile photo. Quirky photos that might fly on Facebook are not a good choice on LinkedIn. Keep your headshot professional.
– Uploading a poorly-cropped profile photo. People upload profile photos all the time that are not sized correctly for LinkedIn. This often results in the “half-head” syndrome. Don’t be the person without a forehead in your profile photo! Also, you don’t want to use a photo that has multiple people in it. Your beautiful face should be the only one in the picture.
So take the time and invest the money in a professional photographer that can help you with all of these things. Meena now has great images for all of her business requirements, her website, collaborative websites, social media sites, business cards and marketing materials.
Here’s what Meena had to say about the experience with me:
A warm and welcoming, but still professional image.
“I hated photo sessions, but needed one for my work. After postponing couple of times, I confessed I am not photogenic. Trudi laughed and started my photo session- the best photo shoot ever- oh, she made me feel so gorgeous, I lost all my apprehension and got this most gorgeous photo ever….thanks to gorgeous Trudi ….I am coming back:)”
The photo shoot experience can be fun if you find someone that you are comfortable with, so have a look around. Most photographers will have a head shot of themselves on their website – see what you think about them from their profile pic!