website, internet, social-networkingI’ve opened a photosite. It’s aimed for a local geographical region.
My initial plan was and is to make this site a local place where people could share their photos, write posts in their blogs and also present their service as professional photographers.
Presence of professionals would open certain possibilities for monetization since professional photography is getting more and more popular and there are more and more professionals in my region.
And potentially popularity would make it possible to cooperate with photo-stores, photo-courser and other related companies.
There are no such sites in my region that I know of.
The site is very simple to use and very user-friendly. So usability is not a problem. The problem is how to attract users?
I made the site local because I’d thought it’d be simpler to promote it on a local level, but it seems it’s not so simple (though I didn’t start advertising yet).
Here are my thought on the contest:
1) the form of voting is just like/dislike (with compulsory justification which is seen by other users in a form of a comment)
2) in order to take a part in the contest a user must have at least 20 photos in his/her account, that would bring more content
3) allow only one photo from one user
4) only the participants are allowed to vote for other participants
What do you think about it? Would you participate in such contest? If no, then why? My goal for now is to bring more content, attract more interested people and make it active.
Another question is how to promote the contest. I want it to be as effective as possible. Now I think primarily of social networks: i’m going to place announcements of the contest in popular communities. Also I’m thinking about forums. But I want to be sure that my contest will be attractive enough so all of it wouldn’t be in vain.
Thank you for reading my question. Please, share any thoughts
You have to remember, with any given decision there will always be trade offs. Do you want the site to be more for professionals, or more for the masses? Obviously you can have a little of both, but you need to pick a target audience, and go for them. I would assume from your question that you would like to attract professionals, but your target audience is the general populace (or rather the ever growing number of “professional” photographers, otherwise the idea of having it merely on a local level would yield very few true professionals.)
with this target audience in mind, think of how to talk to them. You had an idea of using social media, and thats perfect. Lots of people love to share their work on social media. Might I suggest that on your web site you allow them to share their work on facebook, twitter, photobucket, instagram, etc. That will spread their work, and bring other users to your site. Make it as easy as possible by adding a button to do it for them. Possibly even suggest to them after they upload that they share it with their friends.
I would also suggest a strong campaign for your contest on these sites. Get family and friends involved. Start taking pictures yourself and uploading them to your site, then share them with everyone you know. Something is bound to stick.
Next I would make it as easy as possible to vote, add a picture and enter the contest. While your limits are well meant, they limit users, and make it harder for them to do what they want. Consider lowing the number of pictures required to join the contest. 20 sounds like a lot to a new user, considering that absolutely everyone will be starting with 0 pictures, maybe this requirement is better for a later contest. Also the requirement to have written justification may dissuade certain people from voting, thus eliminating interest. And while I understand that you want only one picture per user, since there are few users to “spam” the contest consider raising it to 5 or eliminating it all together, this will allow many pictures to be entered, and make it seem like a bigger contest.
Lastly there needs to be some incentive for the winner. If you don’t have the means for a grand prize, or even if you do, I would suggest that often to photographers, fame is better than money. Maybe you have the winner’s picture displayed on the sites home page, or make it the site’s background, or have a hall of fame. This will do two things. First, that user is more likely to compete in later competitions, and return to the site to post new pictures even when there isn’t a contest. Next, that photographer is going to show every person they know their picture on your site. This could promote others to join, or bare minimum increase the number of hits you get each day. Ask them to share their victory on social media, and announce it there to.
Remember, pick a target audience, and just go after them. Others may filter in, but if you cast your net to broad, your site won’t have focus, or meaning, and no one will want to use it.
It sounds like your site is designed to be social - and that’s a great start.
Only, why would anyone come to a social site that’s empty?
A competition doesn’t guarantee quantity of entrants, and nor does it guarantee quality. If one or both of those is important to you, there are two options that have helped in other cases.
First, if you have cash to spare, you can use money as the draw. You need to do your homework to find out what figure would work, and you’ll still need to work hard to promote the competition, but money does talk.
Second, you can work to get “celebrity” endorsement. Who are the celebrities in the field, and how can you reach out to them? Where are the events and exhibitions, and who organises them? What are the local membership organizations that professionals, prosumers and enthusiastic amateurs? Does the local press ever organize, feature or support competitions? Build a list, and then start reaching out, to find people who will lend their name or bring their audience to your event.
That’s the end of my “how” answer. But is this a good idea? I’m not convinced.
I can imagine a photo site that majored on some form of competition forever. It might be a series of challenges - this week’s competition, next week’s. It might be continual - a site making it super easy for other people to discover and share your photo with their comments, with the “voting” coming from social graph analytics. It might be another take on the Flipboard idea, but helping blog writers connect with photographers. There are so many possibilities, and in every case, a launch competition would be coherent with the value proposition.
But that’s not what you’ve made. Your competition is going to force people to use your site, and give you little or no data on what you want to find out, which is, do they love it?
So it seems to me that every hour and every dollar you will spend designing the competition, researching the market and developing relationships would be better spent at this stage by finding some local talented photographers and helping them get onboard. By doing that, you will be getting to know your market from the inside, finding out what they value and what they don’t, what they find easy and what they find hard, what problems they have and which you could help with.
So my thought is, build a community before you ignite your launch rocket. Most launches fail. But if you have a community who know you care about them, they’ll cheer you on, and encourage you to try again and again until you get airborne.
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