Photos from the Stage are More Versatile Than You Think

• March 6, 2019

Don’t look at content creation with dread…

..it’s an opportunity to flex your creative muscles…

When you’re on stage, in front of the room, delivering a keynote, bringing everyone in the audience along with you for a ride that will have many twists and turns and end with a bang, that’s when you’re at the height of your superpowers.

It’s a pretty magical experience, 🙂

These moments are powerful and when you share them with your audience, they do a good job of getting their attention amongst the 50,000 other things populating their social feeds.

One of the more common stories that I’ve seen speakers and authors leverage their stage photos is the good ol’ “really happy to be speaking at ______ conference today…”

Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to come up with a way to tag the organizer and show them your appreciation for the talk, and to illustrate to your audience your #speakerlife, but, these images are a lot more versatile than for just this purpose.

When crafting a memorable and referable online presence, it’s important that you share stories that illustrate your expertise, life as a business owner and life as a human being in order to connect with your audience on a level that creates a deeper connection and rapport.

Then, you visually punctuate the sentiments of these informational and inspiring stories with powerful images from the stage – in addition to branded lifestyle portraits, but, that’s another topic for another day, 🙂

The awesome thing about these candid images is that the sentiment and emotion created through facial expression, body language, lighting and composition can visually punctuate an assortment of potential stories that you want to pair with it.

Let me show you what I mean with one specific speaker image that I’ve captured for a client.

The Flexibility of One Photo is Enormous

This photo is of Jeffrey Hayzlett, and was taken at a NYC chapter meeting of the National Speakers Association.

His dynamic presence, genuine facial expression and demonstrative body language makes this photo a slam dunk around which to create a memorable piece of content.

Now, when looking at this photo, a variety of potential ideas for stories pop immediately into my mind.

Of course, when it comes to a specific speaker, certain stories make more sense for them to leverage, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume all these ideas are in play for Jeffrey to develop further.

These are not fully formed ideas, but simply the starting points for potential ideas that could develop into full-blown social posts.

I’d like to break down these various idea nuggets into three categories: stories that illustrate expertise, life as a business owner and life as a human being.

While simply looking at the image and brainstorming anything that comes to mind, here are a few idea nuggets that immediately strike me:

Illustrating Your Expertise

• “During my recent talk at @NSANYC, I shared a couple insights about…”
• “When you’re speaking in front of an audience, don’t pretend to be anything less than who you are. Deliver the message in the way that’s natural to you…”
• “When I am in front of a room delivering a talk, I feel at home…”
• “Being a leader means…”
• Pull a quote from a talk, interview or blog post that has a humorous twist in a way that this photo could visually punctuate.

Life as a Business Owner

• “I’m extremely grateful for being able to make a living speaking from the stage…”
• “While at a recent NSANYC event, I was excited to see my long-time colleague and friend_____, and I had to point him out…”
• “When I’m speaking in front of a room, I’m not in front of a faceless group of folks, I talk to them as if we’re one-on-one, shooting the breeze…”

Life as a Human Being

• “Although I am living the dream speaking from the stage for a living, there was a time that there was doubt and I wasn’t sure if this was the right path for me…”
• “As a speaker, we are business owners, and moments like this make the effort worth the challenges, but, the challenges are indeed, challenging…”
• Create a post that is punctuated with the #booyah hashtag since Jeffrey Hayzlett uses this hashtag in his social posts.

Now this is just a quick brainstorm that took less than a few minutes to generate these potential story ideas, and, I’m sure with more effort, even more ideas could be mustered up for this one particular photo.

Oh wow, its like that?

The takeaway from this is that the idea generation process can be repeated for every single image that lives in your image content portfolio, whether it’s an image taken of you from the stage, a branded lifestyle portrait or an image taken with a smartphone.

The versatility and flexibility of your image content is dependent upon how you approach each photo, and your ability to look beyond the what.

The what of the image is the foundation, no doubt, but, the sentiment of these images reach far beyond the walls in which the photo was captured, and that flexibility is always at your disposal, once you recognize the potential.

When I help provide this insight into the content creation process with my clients, I literally see the light bulbs going off in their heads as this newfound perspective is truly reinforced in their minds, forever changing the way that they approach creating social media and blog content in order to create a rapport and relationship with those they serve.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s a good start to the process, 🙂

John DeMato is a NYC branded lifestyle portrait photographer and content creation expert who serves speakers, authors, coaches and high-level entrepreneurs across the country. His 50+ e-book, S.H.A.R.E. M.A.G.I.C.A.L. I.D.E.A.S., lays out the how, what and why behind creating a memorable and referable online presence – sign up to get your FREE copy today.