Marketing does not stop once you get people in your door.

I’ve been traveling for the last couple of weeks. In Maryland I stayed at the “Hampton Inn and Suites”. It’s a hotel I was prepared to like. I would call it upper middle class, and rooms run at about $170 a night.

The service underwhelmed me with each interaction: Staff members were bored, inattentive, impersonal, going through scripted motions in their conversations, and fell short on the few services I asked: A toilet that kept flushing every 3 minutes never saw a handy man in 4 days. (I ended up disabling it myself by strapping up the float valve with the cord of the (complementary!) hair dryer.) A door key that kept locking me out of my room, room service that made one attempt at cleaning and then never came back, a laundry service I needed to be returned slightly sooner than their standard 1½ days declined with a shrug…

On the freeway the day after I left, I passed a series of massive billboard ads for… the “Hampton Inn and Suites”. Promising, you guessed it, heaven and earth. And the moon.

Here is the thing about Marketing: It does not stop once you get people in your door. That’s when it STARTS. That‘s when you have your opportunity to show off: Overwhelm people with your greatness, delight them, enchant them. Make them life-long, enthusiastic customers who go out of their way to stay at your place. And bring their friends.

If you already have the infrastructure of a hotel chain empire in place, the difference between underwhelming and awesome takes minimal effort compared to what you have already invested. It comes down to your people:

Hire outstanding human beings and pay them outstanding money. Find a way to make them fall in love with their job. Make sure they are happy about the way they are treated. Make sure they are being heard, and their needs are being met. THEN ask them to pass that level of care on to your guests, and give them the guidance and education how to do it. Make sure they know how you want your guests to FEEL instead of giving them a soul-less script of what to say and do. Give them authority to do the right thing. Trust them to know what the right thing is. Allow them to be human beings.

Give them a way to communicate. Let them share their experiences with one-another, so they can share their pride and learn from each other. Take part in that conversation so they can learn from you. Take that opportunity to instill your culture. Social enterprise platforms make it so easy.

If you need additional funding to do it, here’s a tip: Skip the billboards. Make fewer promises, keep more.

A good profile picture is essential to your online presence. It’s what makes people decide if they even want to read what you have to say. Your profile picture is also your social media logo. It’s how people recognize you or your brand in an instant. I recommend taking a good one, using it consistently across all channels, and planning on not changing it for a long time.

These two pictures were taken in the same spot with the same camera at the same time of day. Even the guy is the same… (It’s my husband Frank by the way and I take my hat off to him for allowing me to publish the picture on the right.)

Do you do the “extended-arm-self-portrait” with your cell phone? If you do, it’s no wonder your pictures turn out depressing. That really is not how you look. It’s a distorted view of yourself. Awesome Profile Picture Photographer.

I’m going to show you a simple way to take a great portrait.

YOU NEED:

1. A digital camera with a zoom lens. Pretty much all compact digital cameras have a big enough zoom. (Cell phones don’t!)
2. A stiff piece of cardboard (~10×15” or bigger) attached to a broomstick.
3. A sunny day.
4. Two friends who have time to do some photography about two hours before sunset. It’s a good idea to pick two people who could use a good headshot themselves. That way everybody’s in it with the same intent. Also, pick people you feel comfortable with!
5. An outdoor space with direct sunlight where you have about 40 feet of space in front of the background you choose. The background will be completely blurred, so choose it by the color you want it to be. Make sure it has some depth. The photo below shows the space where I took Frank’s pictures. The white square marks the exact background spot.

ADJUST YOUR CAMERA SETTINGS:

1. Go to your camera settings menu and set the image size to the highest resolution, or choose the biggest image size your camera can take.
2. Turn the ISO to 200. With higher ISO the picture becomes grainy.
3. Turn off the flash.
4. This last setting is what we need for blurring the background. Don’t be scared off, this is not complicated at all. Look at the picture below first. If your camera has the A- or AV Mode, we’re going to use it. If it doesn’t, we’re going to use the Portrait Mode.
   A/AV MODE CAMERAS:
   Turn the camera mode to A or AV (Aperture Priority Mode). Now turn the main dial of your camera. In the A or AV mode, turning that dial will change the aperture. The aperture has values like these: F2.8 | F3.2 | F3.5 | F4.0 | F4.5 | F5 | F5.6 | F6.3 | F7.1 | F8.0 | F16 | F22. The camera will pick the appropriate shutter speed for each aperture. You’ll need to know this correlation for your shoot. Not understand it, just know that it’s there. We can’t set it yet, that has to happen in the final settings of the shoot with the actual lighting and background.
   PORTRAIT MODE CAMERAS:
   All you have to do is turn the dial to Portrait Mode. The camera adjusts aperture and shutter speed for you. In some compact cameras, the mode settings are not on an external dial. You have to find them in your camera settings menu.

SHOOTING:

1. Set a chair about 15 to 20 feet away from the background. Have the first person out of your trio sit down. Hold your camera in portrait-orientation, not landscape. Then walk 15 to 20 feet away from the model. At that spot, zoom out (lengthening the lens extension) by the pressing the little T-button until you can see the headshot you envisioned in your view finder. Using a big zoom, we are creating a pleasant, undistorted view of the face. We also add depth to the background by compacting and blurring it. Don’t forget: We’re going for a close-up. Don’t leave much room around the picture you want. Cropping it later is not the same, because the perspective is different. Do keep in mind that most profile pictures are square. That means you’ll lose some top-and bottom space from what you see in the view finder right now.
   
2. A/AV MODE USERS:
   Turn the main dial on your camera until you have selected the smallest aperture number your camera offers. It will probably be between F3.5 and F5.6. (If you have one lower than F2.8, don’t use it. Stick with F2.8.)
   PORTRAIT MODE USERS:
   You don’t have to worry about this. The camera will pick the best combination.
3. Now the broomstick-holder is going to lift up the broomstick with the cardboard to block direct sunlight from the model. The shadow you’re creating needs to cover the entire section of the model that will be shown in the picture. You’ll have to experiment a little bit here, but the further away you are from your model with the cardboard, the softer the light and shadow drop-off will be. The photographer should be in charge of directing the broomstick-holder.
4. Focus your camera before each shot, and focus on the eye of your model that is closest to you.

OPTIONAL READ: COACHING TIPS FOR THE PHOTOGRAPHER:

Apply these when it’s your turn to shoot, and ask your friends to read this so they know how to help you when it’s your turn to be photographed:

1. Ask your model to sit in a natural way. Meaning in a way she would sit if she wasn’t being photographed.
2. Remind her to keep breathing.
3. Keep directing your model so she’s not left alone. I often ask my people to pick a spot behind my right shoulder, look at it and think about someone they love and why they love them. Or look at the ground and think about their favorite place in the world and how they feel when they’re there. Or I have them close their eyes, tell me the last thing that made them laugh out loud and the second they’re done telling, I ask them to open their eyes. It’s how people come alive in a picture and how you get a picture with a heart.
4. You need your model to engage with you, but a picture where she is actually talking will never work. What really works is asking people to have their face do the talking.
5. When people stop posing and forget about the camera, you almost always get the best pictures. Relaxing around the whole situation really helps. Some distraction is good. Pets, kids, something to talk or laugh about makes it all a lot easier.
6. When you get stuck or things get stiff and tense, start over. Take down the camera, have a chat, have your model stretch, breathe, close her eyes. Then start again.
7. Tension usually eases after a while and people get more relaxed and natural. Take advantage of that and the fact that you have a digital camera: shoot for a few minutes and take lots of pictures. That way you have a better chance of getting the one shot where everything is just right.

That’s it. Writing this was harder than I thought it would be. If there is something I didn’t explain well enough, or if you need some additional help, please let me know in the comments.

Thank you for reading!