A primer on photo engagement on social networks in journalism.

1. Photo engagement
Ivan Lajara
March 26, 2013

2. Why use photos on social media?
• Photos create more engagement and the
more engaged your community is the more
they’ll interact with you and see your posts
• To increase visibility
• For crowdsourcing and curation of events

3. What photos should I share?
• Good ones, obviously, but mostly photos that
evoke an emotion or response.
• News photos of fires, missing persons,
weather
• Lifestyle and whimsical photos
Emo llama is not
happy about being
included in this slide

4. What networks should I focus on?
According to a recent Pew study:

5. Engage differently on different networks
On Facebook, images that cause a response (a
share or like) should be prioritized.
Experiment with text inside images.
People like to share good news. People also like
to share bad news (did you go ‘OMG?’ Then,
share it!)

6. Engage differently on different networks

7. Engage differently on different networks
On Twitter, add an image with some links
Watermark your images or make them small if
you are concerned about people taking them
(but know that once it’s out, it’s out)
Live tweet images of events and feed them to a
live coverage widget in your site, like
ScribbleLive or Rebelmouse

8. Engage differently on different networks

9. Engage differently on different networks
On Pinterest, remember that the site favors
vertical layouts.
Add descriptions and links indicating there’s
more where image came from.
Remember that you can embed your images to
your site.

10. Engage differently on different networks

11. Engage differently on different networks
On Instagram, add links to cutlines and push
them on other social media, like Twitter or
Tumblr (or feed a hashtag to a Rebelmouse
embed on your site).

12. Engage differently on different networks
On Tumblr or Google +, embrace the power of
the gif
Example:

13. Crowdsourcing and curation
• Use Olapic*, Geofeedia*, Storify or
Rebelmouse to crowdsource and curate
user-generated content.
• Push hard: Add widgets and promotion on
your site, social media and print. People won’t
just send you a photo because you sent a
tweet.
* These are paid services. Evaluate your needs considering using them.

14. Crowdsourcing and curation

15. Crowdsourcing and curation

16. Crowdsourcing and curation

17. TIPS
• Before posting, ask yourself, ‘would I share this if
it wasn’t for work?’
• Feed your website with your social media posts.
Just because you are posting on social media
doesn’t mean you can’t populate your site with
your content.
• Prioritize social media networks that create more
engagement. So, yeah, Facebook.
• Crowdsourcing won’t work if people feel like you
are not doing your job. Add a bunch of your own
and invite people to contribute more.

18. Concerns
• Verification of crowdsourced images. Fakes.
• Copyright

19. FURTHER READING:
• How to make a slideshow with Pinterest and
Instagram images with Storify in under 2
minutes
http://storify.com/ivanlajara/how-to-make-a-
slideshow-with-pinterest-or-instagra
Pew Internet: Social Networking (full detail)
http://pewinternet.org/Commentary/2012/Mar
ch/Pew-Internet-Social-Networking-full-
detail.aspx

20. Contact me
• http://twitter.com/ivanlajara
• http://on.fb.me/ivanlajara
• http://about.me/ivanlajara
• ilajara@journalregister.com