Today, I’m at a photoshoot for Lizzie King, otherwise known as @vitalovebaby on Instagram (well, when I say ‘at’ at photoshoot, I mean the photoshoot is happening in my kitchen, as completely incidentally, I rent out my house as a location house and location kitchen for all sorts of editorial shoots and filming for television commercials, but allow my webdesign clients to use it for free if they need a photoshoot done).
Anyway, in the past year, Lizzie has gone from zero to 5000 Instagram followers, through posting the delicious healthy meals she cooked initially for her children, and then started selling frozen to her followers. Now she’s become a recipe guru providing inspiration to thousands of mums looking to cook healthy, tasty, wheat and gluten-free food for their families.
Lizzie puts huge effort into her Instagram feed, and gets a fantastic response with her followers literally begging her for recipes. But aside from hosting the occasional cooking demonstration evening and selling homemade frozen baby food (which ironically, despite being the reason the business started, she has increasingly less time to do) she has not made much money at all from her endeavours.
With no recipes, digital products, cookery book or even a website, all her fans are trapped on Instagram with nowhere to go. She’s not been able to move them on from Instagram to a place where they can take actions that benefit her financially, such as buying her products or booking her.
UNTIL NOW!
Today’s photoshoot marks a shift in Lizzie’s enterprise, both in terms of strengthening and defining her personal brand, and becoming more business minded about the entire thing.
Regular readers will know I firmly believe there is no point in launching a website without a great set of photos as first impressions count so much, and there’s nothing worse than a selfie or a snapshot on a website when it is a professional site, or you want to build a credible personal brand (snapshots are fine on the blog, but not as opening or page shots). That’s why we’ve had a fantastic shoot today with professional food photographer, make up artist and food stylist. The results are sensational.
Next, I’ll start building the website and most importantly, creating functionality on the site that is all about monetisation, such as regular, easy-to-book events, recipes packaged into bundles and available as paid-for downloads, calls to action to book Lizzie to speak at events.
Not only will the photos be great for the website, but they can then be used for publicity afterwards (making them doubly worth the investment). All publications care about now is the cost of a page. And they are far more likely to feature a story if it comes with a free set of fantastic images. A great set of images can even see your story given more space than it would otherwise be given or propelled to the front cover.
I’ll keep you posted on the Vitalove site and helping Lizzie continue to give her followers great value, but also earn money from her hard work. With her good looks, and talents, I see Lizzie having it all: an events programme, cookery book, tv appearances and being a sought after speaker. I can’t wait to work with her to help make it all happen.
