Viral Photography

YouTube has gotten a lot of press over the last couple of years for being THE place to be seen. Companies around the world fight to upload videos for free that will be seen by millions of people and discussed around water coolers. (Do people still mill about water coolers? Or has e-mail killed that?) Video, however, can be costly to produce, to say nothing of the time involved in creating it. Time and energy make sense when creating a 30 second television spot, but that kind of video advertising will at least have guaranteed placement. There is no guarantee, regardless of the level of production you put into it, that anyone will bother to watch your video. If it is a really engaging idea, great - but if not, that's a lot of time and energy lost. Fortunately, there's a simpler solution: Photography.

The Strategic Public Relations blog had an interesting note on this, specifically citing the Los Angeles Fire Department Flickr page. The idea that most companies could supply photos of "anything that could be considered even remotely cool or interesting" doesn't seem that far fetched an idea, does it? Certainly not for the LAFD, which provides photos of everything from brush fires to community events. Many of these photos are interesting, or funny, or at the very least engaging. What is more, they aren't "produced." Since the advent of the digital camera, most companies have interesting pictures they can share on sites like Flickr, or Fotolog, or Photobucket - all with free accounts and the ability to share who you are. If you don't mind your pictures being available freely to anyone else who might want to see them, there really isn't anything for you to lose.

About the Author: Eric Reid

I am the Social Media Services Manager for Off Madison Ave. I've been with the company since 2006, when I was hired to do SEO, and link building in particular. When social networking sites started cropping up, at first I started using them to create backlinks - but they weren't the best for that, given all of the "nofollow" attributes. However, I did see the potential for all of the direct referral traffic they represent. Since then I've been actively pursuing both tactics for clients: Links that can help them for search, and social postings that get them involved in the conversation. It's about the coolest job you could ever get. ;)