Philip Wride – Social Media Marketer and Community Manager

As is becoming standard practice for one Thursday evening a month it was once again time for a #DigitalSurrey event. Last night the host was Canon at their HQ in Reigate and the speaker presentation was about the evolution of the photo and the impact Social Media has had.

Whilst focusing more on the history and evolution rather than how we are using photos today it did make some interesting points in relation to communities. Where previously photos were used for the purposes of conjuring up memories of events or people, or defining identity, they are now being used for communication. Communication of an activity, experience or both.

As technology has developed we’ve become more accustomed to sharing photos, storing them online rather than in photo albums and taking photos has become more about the social experience rather than just focusing on the immediate circle of friends and family.

Back to communities and community management. Do you share photos from the offline events that you operate in order to show the rest of the community what happened? Do you get the community to contribute their own photos on topics? Someone once said a picture is worth 1000 words, should we therefore not be placing more emphasis on using them in our communities to get a point across or drive discussion? “What’s your favourite holiday memory?” “Insert picture of Mount Everest” – I’m sure that would drive some fantastic discussion in a travel related community.

I’m definitely going to be seeing how I can incorporate more photos in my content plans and also attempt to get users to contribute their own for certain things.