Category: Blog

Here’s the science bit…

Our brains react faster or more immediately to visuals (photos). Psychologist Albert Mehrabian demonstrated that 93% of communication is nonverbal. Some research shows that we process visuals 60,000 times faster than text. More studies find that the human brain breaks down image elements immediately, while language takes longer to process.

Have you ever wondered why phone numbers are made up of seven digits? It is because words are processed by our short-term memory, retaining only seven bits of information at a time. Hook your words with a stand out the brand image to make your impact and etch your message into the long term memory of your audience.

One of the big negative effects of using stock images is that they will portray you, present you to your clients as generic not the unique person and business that you are, and make you bland in not standing out from the crowd. Think for a second about just how many people will use the same image as the one that you like. They are totally impersonal, not on brand and honestly, they can look fake if not used correctly.

By using stock images, you are weakening your brand. The algorithm in all of the platforms will know that you used a stock image and will push down your post. Google and all the social media algorithms prefer and push up an original authentic photo.

With your profile photo, not only do you appear on our main social media page as in our profile photo, but you also appear in a few more different places online?

Here are five.

1. In The news feed of our followers – every time we change our profile photo it will appear on our follower’s news feeds

2. In the Posts on our page’s Timeline – every time we post something your profile photo will appear next to it

3. Replies in comments on our posts – it will appear every time we reply to a question or comment

4. The Cover photo on our Timeline – it appears next to our cover photo on Facebook and LinkedIn

5. Comments and posts we make on other pages – it will appear every time we comment or post on someone else social media account

Creating a good profile picture will make collaborating with others easier, especially if we haven’t met them yet because.

If you need help creating the right profile photo, that will represent who you are and what you do, feel free to book a chat with me at ema.p.photography@gmail.com and will go from there.

 

 

 

While I strongly recommend that everyone who wants a strong presence online for a successful business needs to update their profile pictures (first to be more consistent across sites and second to genuinely reflect who they are and what they do) a follow-up question always comes up: How often should I update my profile photos?

As a very loose rule of thumb, I would say that changing your profile picture more than once every week is too often, and less than once every two years is too seldom.

From a personal and social perspective, having an updated profile picture indicates to others that you are active on social media.

Have you ever noticed that people who have an updated, professional, and consistent profile picture seem more organised than those who do not? In my opinion, these days, a social media profile picture is equivalent to what an ‘appropriate job interview outfit’ was 20 years ago. Appearances can speak volumes.

Another great thing about updating your profile photo is that notifications of this update are pushed up to your network by most of the social platforms and are rated with higher importance than other content.

Therefore, in summary, I think updating your profile picture should be part of your social media strategy and needs to be done every 2-18 months.