Many people often find themselves planning conferences, conventions, or other types of large meetings. In fact, over 270,000 conferences and 11,000 trade shows occur just within the United State every year. There are many things that are important in the construction of these events including location, programming, and marketing. The ultimate goal is to make a conference a positive experience for attendees that aids in their professional growth.
When planning a conference, the small details are extremely important. In fact, there are many things that conferences can do to enhance the experiences of their attendees. As a professional photographer, one thing that many conferences do that tends to have excellent responses from participants is having a headshot booth. Here are the reasons why I believe a professional headshot booth is something every conference should have.
Adds Value for Participants
People attend conferences because they find value in doing so. While a conference is great for the exchange of ideas, networking, and development of new knowledge, many of the things that stand out for attendees are tangible takeaways.
While you may use new knowledge to create a new initiative in your organization or refine processes, a headshot booth provides participants with a very valuable tangible takeaway – their own professional headshot.
If you think a participant won’t find value in a professional headshot, ask yourself when the last time was you updated your own LinkedIn profile photo. Professional headshots are something many people do not invest in, so providing an opportunity to get their own will be beneficial for attendees.
Excellent for New Professionals
While anyone attending your conference can benefit from a professional headshot booth, offering this service tends to be incredibly popular with new professionals. Those with only a few years of post-college experience under their belt and even those fresh out of college or grad school often do not have their own headshots.
Having a professional headshot booth is a great way to engage this unique segment of your attendees. Many conferences devote extra effort into this segment, providing tracks for new professionals, ways to engage them into the profession or organization, and exciting opportunities for mentorship. A headshot booth marketed heavily to this segment is a great idea.
If you are an organization wanting to help get the next generation of leaders engaged, providing things they need is the best way to do it!
Address Downtime
Every conference has downtime. Whether it is 30 minutes between presentations, time when an attendee simply doesn’t have anything they want to attend, or that time when the day nears an end, you’ll see many attendees sitting around on their phones and laptops.
Providing interesting options for things to occupy time during these periods is a sign of a conference that has their participants’ needs in mind. The key for an engaging thing for people to do during downtime is that it needs to be something that can happen quickly, one of the reasons vendor booths work well for this.
Having a headshot booth that is prominently located on a major walkway or concourse is a great way to provide an accessible and engaging thing for attendees to do when they find themselves with downtime.
Affordable
One of the biggest benefits about adding a headshot booth to your next conference is affordability. Contracting a photographer to shoot one headshot is worthwhile but also can be a bit expensive. Headshot booths are able to greatly decrease the cost per photo.
Because a headshot booth allows a photographer to take a lot of photos in an organized manner in a comparatively short amount of time, the result is that you are able to get a lot more from your money. For a conference planning committee, this enables you to provide great value at an affordable cost.
Whether you wish to pay for the entire cost of the headshot booth like most conferences or simply subsidize the cost for attendees, you’ll make a great decision. With many conferences spending money on fun photo booths, why not give your attendees something much more valuable for the price you spend?
Improve your Branding
Conferences want to be known as being receptive to the needs of attendees. Doing so can go a long way towards improving your branding going forward. Having a headshot booth for your conference is a great way to add to positive branding.
Attendees will always remember your conference when they take a look at their headshot. Additionally, they are sure to spread the word to others about where they got such a high quality photo. Additionally, you would be surprised what small things can do for repeat engagement. You may see attendees registering to return for years to come.
Increase Participant Knowledge
While a headshot booth by itself provides attendees with an important takeaway from your conference, you can also pair it with information to provide additional knowledge to people who come to your conference.
It is relatively easy to pair the presence of a headshot booth with a presentation about effective ways to utilize your headshot or something else focused on enhancing your personal branding. This is particularly the type of program that will excel in a new professionals’ track or can be aimed towards older leaders who may not have kept in touch with issues like personal branding.
Integrating some of the extra offerings into your conference programming is a great way to leverage their popularity to increase knowledge and engagement.
How Do I Setup a Headshot Booth at My Conference?
If you are wanting to add a professional headshot booth to your next conference, you simply need to reach out to a photographer. Many photographers like myself have the setup necessary to create a well-organized headshot booth for your event. If you would like to use my services, feel free to reach out today. Having a headshot booth at your conference is simply a must!
Check some of my postings on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/samheadshots