Marnie Ochs-Raleigh's Business Portrait
On the @EvolveSystemsUS Twitter account, @WendyBlomseth suggested that we blog about business portraits on blogs and websites. This sounds like a good idea!
The best definition of a business portrait for use on a blog or a website is that it is a professional looking photo, typically a headshot, of the person or people running the website or blog. Think of it as like getting your school photo taken, but instead of your parents displaying it in a nice picture frame at home, the portrait is now being displayed on your blog or website.
Business portraits are a good way of setting the tone and ethos of your website. If you are a company that is known by a particular person as the public face of the company, then including a well-shot portrait of that person on your website may be wise. One example would be Dahlquist Machine, named after the President, Jeff Dahlquist. Including an image of Jeff Dahlquist is a strong indicator of confidence and determination in the company’s purpose and products. When you see his photo, you know who he is and subsequently what the company is.
Another good use of business portraits on a website or blog is for an emphasis on the team of a website. Sunset Dental, a company specializing in dental equipment for dental offices, has a page on their website that displays each member of their team as well as their job titles. It’s a great way for visitor to the site to become comfortable with human faces before they do business with the company; plus, it’s another excellent opportunity for SEO, because if each team member with a business portrait also has a short biography attached to that business portrait, then the keywords and phrases in that biography (such as “dental accountant” or “certified machinist”) will help your website rank higher in search engine results!
One other thing. While not only is it good to have a business portrait stored away for whenever you may need it, we also suggest having all of your contact information handy, whether it is your email address, Facebook business page URL, Twitter account URL, LinkedIn account URL…etc. One of the ways we recommend clients keep all this information in one place is through services that offer digital business cards, such as BusinessCard2. Using one of these services you will be given a piece of code that you can place on any website but which will allow viewers to see all the many different ways they can contact you, plus they will get to see your handsome business portrait image as well!
Business portraits and digital business cards are just two of the ways the online business landscape is changing. Evolve Systems will be here to help you manage these changes!
If you have a topic or a question for the Evolve Blog, please feel free to leave a comment or send us a message on Twitter!
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Loved reading this. Keep it up!
A professionally crafted business photo saying exactly what the client needs his customers to know about him and his business is essential to get a leg up on competitors.
One portrait cannot do it all.
The photo we give to Mom is not the one that gets us the contract, is not the one that gets us the date, and is not the one we show to friends.
Great article, and I just referred to it on my photography blog.