Who can forget Steve Jobs iconic headshot from Time Magazine’s cover or from the cover of his own autobiography.

You do not need to wait to become as successful to have your professional headshot. On the contrary a good professional headshot furthers your cause and project you in correct light in front of your colleagues and customers and in a way fast track your journey to become more successful.

Now a days everyone has a camera in their pocket but still very few can say that they have a very good portrait of themselves let alone a professional head-shot. Investing in a high-quality, professionally taken head-shot is an investment in your personal brand. It shows you at your best, the way you want prospective clients to see you.

In this day and age, we all have this digital identity. It’s like your calling card. Business cards are out, headshots are in. It puts a face with a name. Companies and personal brands are starting to get that. Anybody that is entrepreneurial needs a headshot, even if it’s just going to sit on LinkedIn.  

Many of us are not naturally photogenic. As a result, amateur photography can actually end up making you look nothing like you do in person and definitely not your best. A professional photographer that specializes in head-shots knows how to position you, how to choose the best backdrop and how to use lighting to get the best shot possible.

Now a days so many corporate expect their associates to put up a professional picture on their corporate messenger and other communication tools. It becomes even more important for people in management and customer facing roles.

Now that social media has taken on such an important role in promoting our professional abilities, having an impact-making headshot is more important than ever. Since every social media platform requires a profile image, your headshot will have a far-reaching web presence in addition to more traditional uses like the staff page of your organization’s website and publication in conference or speaking engagement–related materials.

For another thing, a nice headshot can be useful for so many situations:

Your email account

• Your email signature

• Your LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram photos

• Your personal website or your portfolio

• Your guest posts or bylines

• Your company bio that more and more companies send out when you start

• Your entire professional life. Trust me, at some point in your career, you will want to have this on hand.

Still need reasons why you need a professionally done corporate headshot? Here are 3 more to consider.

1. Your best clients want to deal with people, not faceless entities. Although you may be working for a company and but for your client you will become the face of that company and it makes a lot of difference when your first impression (as they often see your image first before the first communication and many times forms an opinion based on it) projects you in the best possible manner. The same thing holds true for colleagues, managers as now workforce is often distributed in multiple locations and people interact over corporate messenger/email and can see your image before their first interaction.

2. The right headshot can say a lot about you. That’s right. Having the right headshot says a lot about who you are. If you are considering using a cropped family or wedding photo as your business portrait, it may be fine in some industries, but if you are in a client facing position, such images could project the wrong message to your clients or even your employees if you are in management position.

3. It’s everywhere, so get on the bus, or be under it. When you visit a social media website like LinkedIn or Facebook to look up a colleague, potential client or employer, or an old friend, what is it that you look for when you first get there? For most people, it’s usually the profile picture, avatar, or “bio pic” that first draws your attention. There may be well over a million Nitin Sharma, but there’s only one with a particular face, so that’s what we look for when we load someone’s profile, whether it’s on my social media, website or a business about page, we are drawn to peoples’ photos because faces offer a personal dimension to our everyday business interactions.

   Because knowing the person behind the business is so critical to establishing long lasting relationships, it’s become very common to see businesses of all sizes use photos to establish connections with current and future clients. Professional portraits, or “head-shots“, are now everywhere. You see them on the websites of Fortune 500 companies, as well as those of small businesses. They are on social media sites for professionals as well as micro-blogging sites like Twitter.

Conclusion

Business headshots are now everywhere. You see them on public websites as well as intranets, and even in traditional print media such as journals and magazines. Headshots are a way to connect with potential clients as well as colleagues in ways the textual descriptions and professional accolades cannot. But using any sort of photo as your headshot simply isn’t enough. It’s important to use the right professionally done headshot to create that all important first impression.

Now if you need some inspiration then I would recommend you to take a look atone of the best headshot photographer in the world and my mentor Peter Hurley and then you can always give us a buzz and book your slot and put your best face forward in your corporate journey (pun intended).