Building a Brand...

I am on a mission...a mission to get my photography business up and running over the next several weeks.  In preparing to get it up and running I have been reading everything I can from other photographers on how they got their business going.  My favorite read thus far has to be Jasmine Star!  She is such an inspiration.  If you haven't visited her blog yet you must go there now (well, after you are finished reading my post).  She is so open and real!  She has a giving spirit and I think that is part of what makes her such a big success.

Throughout her blog I have read about branding.  To define branding I give you this from Brick Marketing: A brand is the idea or image of a specific product or service that consumers connect with, by identifying the name, logo, slogan, or design of the company who owns the idea or image. Branding is when that idea or image is marketed so that it is recognizable by more and more people, and identified with a certain service or product when there are many other companies offering the same service or product.  


I have read about branding on other photo blogs and I understand that it is so important.  Here are a few articles that I have recently read pertaining to building a brand:
On Marketing Essentials International website they have an article titled 12 Steps to Building Brand Awareness.  The author shares 12 ideas of making contact with your customer.  Also on the same website is an article titled It's Almost August...What are you going to do different in your photography business this fall? This article encourages photographers to try something new to boost business as fall approaches.  I look forward to reading more from this great site.

In one of Jasmine's post from 2009 she shares a link to an article about Trader Joe's building their business around their ideal customer.  A couple of ideas from this article are to create an image of your ideal customer and give him/her a name.  Then, do everything with your ideal customer in mind. In Jasmine's post pertaining to the article about Trader Joe's brand, she shared her inspiration boards of magazine spreads.  I love this idea!

I have found myself looking more and more at magazine's the past few days.  I like the idea of drawing inspiration for fashion spreads in magazines...ideas for poses and such.  My goal over the next while is to be more vigorous in creating images that my clients will cherish for years to come.  With that comes being more assertive in many aspects of my business.

What blog post is complete without a picture?   Here is one of my favorites from a few years back...