Boost Your About Page With Great Photos

An About page is the go-to-destination on a website or blog that explains who you are and what you do. It gives dream clients or partners a peek into why you started your business or blog, and how you can best help them. If your About page isn’t answering these key questions, you’re missing a an important opportunity to get your readers and clients familiar with who you are and start establishing trust.

Use Images to Boost your About Page

We have all heard the expression “a picture tells a thousand words” and this definitely is the case for someone coming to your “About” page. People are intrinsically visual, and having a real person to connect with before listening to your expertise or purchasing your products will help boost the effectiveness of your website (this is especially true if you are marketing to millennials).  Having key information and relevant imagery front and center on your home and about page helps ensure that your first impression is the right one.

Let’s look at a real example from one of our clients. At the end of last year we started working with a lifestyle blogger, Julie Levine, the author behind Florence & Isabelle. Julie writes about lifestyle topics like cooking, modern design, travel and family life through a Jewish lens. She is an expert in her field, and was looking to further establish her brand as the “go-to-resource” for modern, cultured Jewish women.

Julie’s stylish content and refreshing honesty has gained her a loyal readership since the blog began in 2013. Julie came to us when she was ready to move the blog to the next level and start promoting her content through social media, to widen her audience and begin partnering with like-minded brands and publishers.

In order to do this, we did an extensive audit of her blog so far, and quickly identified a key missing piece on her blog: Putting a face to the name.

Julie’s eye for curating content and her distinctive voice was doing a great job of building a strong readership, but there was no visual representation of who Julie Levine was, and no way to connect with the human behind the voice.

Julie Levine explains; “There were no photos of me anywhere on my blog. I knew it was time to start putting a face on the blog. I knew it was an important part of the way readers feel connected. But nailing the right photo, the right image, look and feel for the blog was incredibly overwhelming. How do you express it all: you, your blog, and your key messages — in one or just a few photographs? Well, thankfully Jenni and Sophie knew exactly what to do and how to achieve this.”

We worked with Julie to create a clear online identify and define what made Julie Levine (as a blogger) and Florence & Isabelle (as a blog) different to other Jewish lifestyle blogs out there. Then we hired our photographer, Jacquelyn Warner and set up a photo shoot to achieve our objectives.

How to Use images to Position Yourself as an expert

First think through the key messages you want to convey in your About page pictures by asking yourself the following questions:

•  Who am I as a writer or expert?
• What topics do I write about?
• What makes me (and my content) different from others out there?
• Do I want my personal style to shine through or portray a more formal side to my professional persona?

(The last question is something to also consider when rethinking your headshot, which will cover in an upcoming blog post).

Julie explains more about our process with her: “We had several brainstorming sessions prior to the photo shoot. Prim'd Marketing even created a mood board on Pinterest to help me think through the direction we were going in. I loved that they listened and really understood who I was and they really understand my blog. 

Brainstorm your vision by collating some ideas of pictures you want to recreate by pinning them to your office wall, saving them in Evernote or create a secret board on Pinterest (that you can share with your photographer).

Julie explains further: "It was really helpful to have a meeting at my house with Jackie, the wonderful and talented photographer who took the shots. Sophie @ Prim'd Marketing physically walked through each shot set up to consider props and clothing.  It made the day of shooting a breeze and really fun. I couldn't have achieved this without Jenni and Sophie's help, without their guidance and talent.”

Tips To get great Images:

1. Set up a meeting with a photographer: make this meeting in the physical setting of the shoot (your home, your office or co-working space). This will be a chance to meet your photographer face-to-face and discuss your vision for the pictures and what you would like to archive during the shoot.
2. Make a proposed shot list: Clearly thinking through the goals and details that you need to accomplish (such as showing your consultation process and how you work with clients for example) with your chosen photographer who can help ensure that you’re getting all of the photos you need.
3. Plan the details ahead of time:Include notes in your shot list, specifying the location and backdrop of each picture, the props you need and what you will be wearing (crucial). Pay attention to the colors in your brand and your website, and stick to items within that color palette.
4. Invite a friend to the shoot: Someone you feel comfortable with that will relax you and more importantly make you laugh. This will have a positive effect on your body language and facial expressions, and great better results.
5. Pick final images with your photographer & clients:Work with your photographer on the editing process to decide which final pictures to use. But then, you should also ask a client or colleague who works in your field for feedback about which images draws them in the most.

Julie explains how the end result of adding pictures to her About page improved her online presence by saying: “Prim’d helped me decide which photo to use as my website cover photo and which to use inside the blog for the " About" page. They really know about branding and imagery, and I trusted them to guide me. It's hard to believe, but having the photos on the site has really opened up a lot more opportunities for me. I'm proud of the shots. They really reflect who I am.” 

We work with a variety business owners (even photographers) to visually convey what they do and how they work with clients in a clear and concise way on their website. You can take a look in more detail at how we worked with Julie Levine to create a Branded Shoot for Florence and Isabelle blog and an Editorial Calendar for her social media management on our Portfolio page.  

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