Never in the history of humankind has it been so easy to take photos and share them.  Digital cameras are everywhere.  Your cell phone probably even has a half-decent digital camera built into it.  So the question is:  when you run events for your community group, team, or church, do you take pictures?  Do you share them afterward?

The Joy of Sharing

Photography is amazing; it captures a moment in time like nothing else can.  We all love looking at photos of special events.  Proud parents, grandparents, coworkers, parishioners, and pretty much everyone else with a heartbeat will flip through photos when given a chance.

For really special occasions we put photographs in special places like frames on the mantle and photo albums on the bookshelf.  But what do you do with photos from the not-quite-really-special events?  What about the little league semi-finals or the church picnic?

Easy answer:  share them online!

You can share photos online easily and it doesn’t have to cost you a dime.  The steps are insanely simple:

1. Create an account at an online photo sharing site.
2. Copy image files from your camera / memory card to your computer.
3. Upload image files from your computer to the online photo sharing site.
4. Share the URL (web address) with the world!

Online Sharing Services

I use Flickr (http://flickr.com/) for sharing my photos.  It’s a great service.  You can do a lot with a free acount from Flickr including uploading 100MB of photos each month.  I have a Flickr Pro subscription which costs $25/year and includes some extra perks like archiving of high-resolution original images and unlimited photo uploads.

A couple other top notch photo sharing sites are Shutterfly and SmugMug.com.

Sets and Tagging

Once you have shared some photos online, you should consider taking a few advanced steps.  On Flickr you can group photos into sets and collections, which is useful for organizing your photos.  You can then share your sets with people.  For example, here’s a set of photos I took in Athens last year: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hatchard/sets/72157609677416675/.

Another useful thing you can do is tag photos.  Tags are keywords or terms that you choose to associate with a photo.  The act of assigning tags to photos is called tagging.  Other Flickr users can then find your photos via tags.  And other users can use the same tags on their photos!  When holding an event, encourage participants to use a common tag for the event and you will be able to follow the photos being posted by others about your event.  Here’s an example:  participants at Microsoft Canada’s Tech Days conferences are using the tag techdaysca for their photos.  You can see the photos being share here: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=techdaysca&m=tags.

Online Photo Sharing in Plain English

If you’re still not feeling completely comfortable with this whole online photo sharing topic, try watching this video:

http://www.commoncraft.com/photosharing 

Try It Out and Let Us Know

Feeling brave?  Why not go create an account right now and try uploading a few photos.  Leave a comment below to let us know how it goes.

Happy sharing!

(Photo Credit: photographer)

The world contains far too much boring and tedious writing.  This article is neither because it contains blindfolded typists. That’s right… blindfolds _AND_ typewriters.  Now you just know this is going to be great.

In my last Crowd Space blog post on Tips to Get Your Group Noticed, I promised some follow up posts on several topics including Facebook fan pages, Twitter, blogging, and using Flickr.  Before I get to those topics, though, I want to talk (um, actually, write) about crafting your words online.

We live in an age of unprecedented writing according to Andrea Lunsford.  In a recent Wired article, Professor Lunsford is quoted as saying that we are “in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization.”  Lots of people are writing lots of things.  Unfortunately a lot of those people are writing some pretty bad stuff.

When you are emailing friends about dinner plans, you really don’t need to tap your inner wordsmith.  When you are writing on behalf of a group or organization, put some thought and effort into your writing.  If, like me, you prefer that people actually read your words, it’s worth spending the time to produce decent writing.  A few nuggets of wisdom I’ve harvested from writers much more talented than me:

1. It’s Not About How Smart You Are

When you write, your ultimate goal is to make the reader better.  Your content informs, teaches, enlightens, empowers, or corrects the reader.  The fact that you know how to use ten dollar words is irrelevant.  Or as Grandpa would say: “Yes you’re very smart. Shut up.”

Kathy Sierra has been proclaiming for years that users (or readers) shouldn’t be thinking about YOU (http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/01/users_shouldnt_.html).

Some writers seem unable to stop themselves from making their prose about the writer instead of the reader.  A student I once knew had a supervisor who told him to always write “utilize” instead of “use” because it sounded more academic (in other words, it makes the writer sound smarter).  Most academic writing I’ve seen suffers from a writer’s desire to sound smart rather than communicate effectively.

2. Tell a Good Story

People like stories.  Jesus taught in parables because people relate easily to stories.  Primetime news shows feature individual stories rather than reporting on generalities.  Oprah has built an empire on highlighting individual stories.

3. Use Headlines for Quick Scanning Readers

Muhammad Saleem at Copyblogger calls this writing for diagonal readers (http://www.copyblogger.com/the-10-second-rule/).

4. Be Brief

Edit your work down so you’re saying the most with the least amount of verbiage.  ‘Nuff said.

5. Use a Human Voice

The incomparable Merlin Mann recently rewrote a brutal press release and turned it into something useful.  Somehow we have come to accept that professional language (brochures, press releases, legal documents, etc.) must be difficult to read.  Merlin’s rewrite of the press release is refreshing and you should check it out: For Immediate Relief: Speaking Like a Human (warning: if you’re super sensitive to cuss words, there are a few).

6. Make It Interesting

Make your content more appealing by tossing in some graphs, charts, or relevant images to keep things interesting.  Visuals that speak to the reader’s brain are best, but even a vaguely related image is better than nothing.  Humor (or even humour) also makes your content more enjoyable.  Laugh out loud humor is great but not necessary; a little levity makes it easier to slog through a piece of text.

Now, as promised, some blindfolded typists:

(Photo credits: keyboard, typists)

Hey, have you heard about the group in your town that’s putting on that cool event?

No?

How come?

WAIT.  Stop and think about it for a moment…  How come you haven’t heard about the event happening in your own town?

What did you come up with?  Was it because no one told you?  You didn’t read about it in the newspaper?  It wasn’t announced on Facebook or Twitter?  You didn’t see any posters about it?  You didn’t receive any emails about it?

It all boils down to a simple fact:  YOU DIDN’T HEAR ABOUT IT!

If you’re a leader in an organization that puts on events, you probably want people to know about (and attend) them.  If you run a community group or charity or service organization, you probably want people to join or help out.  If you serve in a church, you probably want to reach people with your message.

In other words, you want your organization to get noticed.  How do you do that?

Make It Interesting / Noteworthy

It’s so simple and yet so difficult – if you want people to talk about your group, you have to give them something to talk about.  When you put on an event, make it something that people will not only want to attend but something they will want to talk about.

A lot of kid-oriented programs like summer camps or Vacation Bible Schools promise to let kids throw a cream pie into the face of a director, organizer, or pastor if some target is reached (attendance, donations, etc.).  You don’t see a pie-in-the-face demonstration everyday so the kids talk about it and get excited.

When I was in grade school, we sold chocolate bars to raise money for the school.  The student who sold the most chocolate would receive a 5 pound chocolate bar!  When you only weigh about 50lbs yourself, a 5lb chocolate bar is nearly a miracle of nature.  [Guess who won that chocolate bar?  ]

Don’t beat yourself up trying to find something that **everyone** finds interesting.  That’s not the point.  You must make your organization and your events interesting or noteworthy for people in your target audience.  Not everyone cares about marching bands but some people do.  Reach out to the people who care.  Single mothers trying to take night classes might not care much about cream pies in the face but they will find a free childcare service noteworthy.  (I’m willing to bet that almost any mother would also find a 5lb chocolate bar interesting as well, but I digress.)

Grab a pen and paper.  Write down some ways you can make your group interesting or noteworthy to the people in your target audience.

Go on, grab that piece of paper.  The rest of this article will still be here when you’re done, I promise.

Create Flyers and Posters

Creating flyers and posters is so easy these days that you shouldn’t even think twice about it.  They don’t have to be fancy.  You don’t even need fancy software – your favorite word processor will do the job just fine.  Make your flyers and posters 8.5 x 11 inches (letter size) so you or a friend/colleague can print them at home.

Hand out flyers or hang up posters at places where your target audience can be found.  If you’re running a technology user group, drop off posters and flyers to some local tech companies and computer bookstores.  If you’re hosting a group for people with gluten allergies, take posters to health food stores, supermarkets, and specialty shops.

In the movie Whip It, Bliss discovers roller derby from flyers while she is buying combat boots from a thrift shop.

Create Downloadable Posters

You don’t have to drive all over the city to distribute posters for your group – let other people help out.  Create downloadable posters then ask people to print them out and hang them up at their workplaces or other appropriate locations (as long as they have permission).

Again make your posters 8.5 x 11 inches (letter size) and then create PDF versions of them.  Some word processors will automatically export or save a document as a PDF.  If yours does not, you can download a utility like PDF995 (http://pdf995.com/download.html) that will let you “print” your document to a PDF file.  Upload the PDF file to your web site and then let people know where to find it.

Create an Email List

Make sure you send out email reminders before events.  Encourage people to forward the emails.  In each email, invite people to contact you to be added to the email list (this will let you build a direct connection with someone who received the email as a forwarded message).

A lot of communication has shifted from email to social media tools like Facebook and Twitter or instant messaging tools like Live Messenger and Google Talk, but don’t let that dissuade you from using email as one of your communication tools.  The rumors of email’s death are greatly exaggerated. I don’t know anyone who has completely abandoned email in favor of other tools.

Around here we’re partial to Crowd Space for sending out emails.  It really is a great tool for managing a group and sending out emails.  In addition to general announcements, it can send out emails to specific subgroups such as people aged 18-35 or only people who live in a certain city.

Facebook, Twitter, and All That Stuff

While email remains an electronic communications mainstay, other communication tools have also become extremely popular.  Some things you should consider:

• Create a Facebook fan page for your organization.  It’s super simple.  Go to http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages to get started.
• Create a Twitter account for your organization.  Again, super simple.  Go to http://twitter.com/ to get started.  Find some people to follow who are involved with your group or part of your target audience.  And please use Twitter to spread useful information (it’s an innovative system but also easily abused).
• Start a blog (e.g., http://wordpress.com/).
• Start an email newsletter (you can use Crowd Space for that!).
• Use Flickr to share photos from your events (http://www.flickr.com/).

If this is all rather confusing for you right now, don’t worry:  we will have some follow up posts here on the Crowd Space blog in the coming weeks to go into more detailed about things like Facebook fan pages, Twitter, blogging, and using Flickr.

Newspaper and Radio

Most newspapers and some local radio stations offer community event announcements as a free public service.  Take advantage of that!  Get your events listed or mentioned.

If you’ve done your job earlier and made your group or event interesting / noteworthy, you might also be able to get interviewed and snag some extra addition for your group.

And That’s Not All

This is not an exhaustive list by any means.  There are lots of other ways to get your group noticed.  The things mentioned here are specifically aimed at groups working with little to no budget for marketing or advertising activities.  If you have money to spend, well, the world’s your oyster. 

What things have worked for your organization?  Share your experiences in the comments!

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Photo Credits: toast, band, train, think