Jill Merkel - Nashville Fitness and Nutrition Coach Personal Branding

I loved working with Jill Merkel for her fitness and nutrition themed personal branding session in September! Jill is a registered Dietitian in Nashville and provides fitness and nutrition coaching and consulting. She mostly works with athletes with active lifestyles and women that deal with body image issues.

Discovery and Session Goals

While we were planning Jill’s fitness and nutrition based personal branding session, she knew she mainly wanted pictures for her website and social platforms. Her goal was to have a library of images that portray her expertise and personality so she could use to connect with her potential and current clients. We wanted her brand pictures to be fun and playful, yet professional! I always encourage my branding clients to incorporate their brand colors and on-brand props into their session. This allows you to build brand recognition across your different online platforms! Jill did a great job incorporating her own colors, purple and green, through out her session!

Personal Branding Process

We started this Nashville branding photo session at an Airbnb in East Nashville. Since Jill is a nutrition coach, it seemed fitting to start in a kitchen with fresh fruits and veggies! We captured images of Jill prepping food, making a smoothie, mixing ingredients for healthy oatmeal, and more! When planning a branding session I believe it is important to pre-plan your social media content so you know what kind of images you will need to post! It made sense to capture several different outfits and types of food in the kitchen, because that is a topic that Jill can talk about repeatedly on her online platforms!

Jill also wanted pictures portraying herself working, reading, journaling, and even relaxing! The airbnb was the perfect spot to capture all of these kinds of images! Jill loves to read, so we took several different kinds of pictures portraying her favorite books! This will allow her to reference reading and different books on social media, without running out of content to share!

Since Jill also works with athletes as a fitness coach, we decided to head to Germantown for the second part of her branding session! Jill changed into yoga pants and running related shirts and posed with different murals around town. Once again, we maximized our time at one setting by changing outfits and incorporating different props and poses before moving on to the next location. It is so helpful to have a gallery full of images you can pull from that are all cohesive and consistent with your brand and content themes!

The Results

I absolutely love the relatable and professional vibes from this shoot! Jill ended up with so many pictures that show her personality, expertise, and love for her job as a dietitian. This fitness and nutrition themed personal branding session will allow Jill’s potential clients to see how she can help them reach their goals while building the know, like, and trust factor! You can see how Jill has already been using her new branding pictures on her own website and her Instagram page!