Why your photo is such a big deal
There are many discussions about importance of the photo. But here is a piece of research we have done, triggered by a scientist who stated that a brain can recognize and construct the history of a picture in less than 1 Milli Second – well that’s a 100?s of a second. Read this:
We wanted to know more:
Here is what we did: We asked a few people to go through their Twitter friends as fast as they could. We used Friend Or Follow to “compose” a picture of the friends. Simply enter your Twitter name, click on friends and go. In a large computer screen you see approximately 180 small photos. Big enough to recognize a person – and small enough to get about 180 on one page.
Now give yourself 2 seconds – 21 and 22 – when you go over the list. If you fast your brain decides immediately who you know and who not and if you remember you get the stories of many of them with it in just 2 seconds. divided by 180 that’s roughly 1 millisecond each.
Of course you can argue if you actually took 3 or 5 seconds to go over – the point is: On average our brain takes a millisecond to recognize a picture and not much more to pull up all the records and memories.
But just imagine reading a list of 180 people with their written name – often some so similar that you won’t know who is who without reading more details.
What does that tell us:
If you are consistently using the same picture across all networks it is much easier to recognize you and bring you in context with stories and memories. If you don’t and you use a picture others haven’t seen yet – maybe nothing happens, no memory, not even recognition.
Marketers Know the power of an image:
Business executives and marketers spend an enormous amount of time to ensure their logo is 100% exactly as it should be, Even the smallest distortion or change in color makes them go wild. Why? Because any confusion costs loss of recognition.
We are people not logos
Yes – but our ambition to get known our hunger for recognition and our effort for more popularity is not just a stupid ego thing – it is an inherited engagement in all living things: natural competition based on the law of natural selection. And those who think of themselves I never going to make it is simply because they mentally decided to never make it. Everybody else is trying to perfect themselves wherever they can. Having the exact same photo on all occurrences is only one piece of the puzzle but a relatively important one :).
Checklist:
[ ] Select one photo you really like (or the one you like most)
[ ] If you don’t have any ask a friend to make some. Important: Ask him or her to do 25 shots – one after the other and then select the one you like. Anything less than 25 is not good as there is always a closed eye, a fly on the nose, the moth not right… and it doesn’t cost anything to make many more.
[ ] Use a simple tool like Powerpoint*** and “crop” it to a square picture, copy it to Paint and store it in 80×80 pixel and one version in 800 x 800 so you always have a high res version as well – You will need that when you receive the Nobel Prize for presence management – at least when you get the prize for the best XeeMe.
[ ] Go to all your social media sites and add it to your profile. You can use “Quick Setup” to get there. Come on – of course it is a lot of work to do it all right but didn’t you spend a lot of time already there?
[ ] If you have a XeeMe go through it and make sure you are well presented on all sites. Obviously that would be the fastest way and if you don’t have a XeeMe yet – a good reason to start.
[ ] Whenever you signup to a new site just go to any of your existing profiles right click the profile picture and select “Copy image location” or something to that extend. Store it on the new site and you are cool.
*** Obviously if you have a professional tool like PhotoShop you use that one.
Presence Management
Keep in mind: presence management is as important as bookkeeping at year end or housekeeping before your guests arrive – only that they visit you all over the social web every single day. As a XeeMe user you know that you get up to 100 visits a day! Your presence is where people go to after they heard of you, read about you, saw something from you. It’s one of the four social media pillar: Presence – Network – Content – Engagement
Axel
