For organizations, to effectively make a presence and exert impacts on photo sharing sites, they need to do more than uploading pictures, and hard-selling information/product/service with the pictures. An essential part of successful organizational photo sharing is... sharing.
With sharing, the logic is actually quite simple- those photos should not only be yours; they should also be your viewers', which means something within/about your photos can be felt, recognized, liked, and remembered by the target publics. Such emotional connections will lead them to give their inputs on the community (by commenting photos, or even sharing their photos), and become more involved with the organization (by joining your photo sharing groups and actively participating in communication).
Throughout many success cases, two aspects are consistently crucial with organizational use of photo sharing.
1. Helpfulness is valued in photo sharing, too.
Nikon Digital learning Center on Flickr is popular because of helpful photo taking tutorials and advices on member-uploaded photos given among group members (mostly photography enthusiasts) and by photography professionals hired by Nikon. Also, Nikon's Flickr has well served a large number of frequent Flickr users who care about quality of photos they take.
2. Participatibility is key.
Every month, Mass MoCA's Flickr Finds gives themes to its Flickr group members to take photos on. The January 2010 Flickr Finds featured photos capturing a touch of blue. Best photos were picked out and then put on the Mass MoCA blog (below are some of them).
Mass MoCA's Flickr has become very popular, as again, with its very interesting participatory Flickr activities, it manages to engage photography enthusiasts- a demographic factor too important to miss out on for using Flickr.
I'd like to hear your thoughts about what elements are important for organizations to secure the sharing in photo sharing!
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I like your second point that participation decides the overall traffic flow of a photo sharing page. There is no point of having a page without any traffic. Good point.
ReplyDeleteExcellent point Jean. I particulary liked your comment about "how something about your photos should be felt, recognized, liked and remembered by the target publics" I agree that organizations should promote a participatory culture and encourage their stakeholders to get involved in their organization by taking organizational photos - definitely promotes a sense of ownership. I have made a similar point on my blog. Check it out and let me know your thoughts as well. : )
ReplyDeleteJing: Thanks. I guess getting traffic is the most challenging part for any social media campaigns as well, not only for photo sharing.
ReplyDeleteNeha: Thanks. Yes, I do think a key to photo sharing sucesses is to identify and interact with your target audience using visuals.
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