When we started our photography competition back in 2010, we made it social by design. Since then we have been keeping it up to date with the latest social media trends; so that not only others discover and share your works, but they also can easily recognize you, your name and your social present; which is always one of our core goals. By sharing photographers’ genuine work of art, we create a rich social experience and a relationship that enthusiastic people will remember thereafter.
If you take a closer look at the marks of an awarded photograph, there are two parts in that. The most essential 80% marks are for the jury to decide, which ensures the standard that a photograph must achieve. The remaining 20% of the marks are in the hands of the contestant. How interactive a contestant is pushes the work to the next level, the much-anticipated Photo of the Month and its first, second, and third place.
To help you take your artistic work to the next level, we craft each of the award photograph with care and let you describe it with your very own words, which portrays your experience while you were taking that photograph. In social media, describing that unique experience acts as a genuine organic content.
Organic content is the key to engage audience. However, to make this successful and engage the maximum number of people, photographers must step forward to share and comment when we award and showcase new photographs. Just like the real world, this needs involvement to build relationships with people who like your work. By sharing, liking, tweeting, and numerous other methods, we actually make a decision of highlighting an artist’s work with friends, family, and co-workers in an extended world that spreads the tentacles of social media.
Below we have listed down the five most important steps to get the maximum engagement in your awarded photograph, which will make sure you get the remaining 20% mark:
Even though our team members always check before awarding a photograph in the most prestigious photography award, it is your photograph with your description that been showcased, so it should be properly checked by you. Before your start sharing your awarded Photo of the Day to your social media and the people your know, you must check it thoroughly. Here are some of the factors that you much go through.
Check the Visibility
Is your awarded photograph visible from all over the world. To know this you can use few online tools listed below:
1. www.geopeeker.com
2. tools.pingdom.com
If you find any issue in the visibility test, you should immediately inform our 24/7 team to fix it.
Title of the Photograph, Your Name, and Description
For the award, each photograph has a title followed by the name of the photographer. You should always check the title and your name and their spelling. Just below them we put the description. We only support English, please do not use any language other than English. Try to make sure the description is as correct as possible. A poorly written piece will go with your name, so do take it seriously. Check the red marked box in the example below. If you find any issue in the Title of the Photograph, Your Name, and Description you should immediately inform our 24/7 team to fix it.
Social media is the place where people share what they value most, which is poles apart from typical media; here, one can experience the result almost instantly. We believe Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, and LinkedIn are among those few that have been changing the way we share. We have divided the social media into two groups based on active and passive share system. Please go through each of them and know how to share your award in them.
Social Media with Active Share: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp (only for mobile devices) support active share. They allow you to share a photo or video from another website, that is why their share button is directly available in your award page. You just need to use those button to share them, and can be done in a matter of seconds.
Social Media with Passive Share: Instagram
Instagram is a passive social media when it comes to share anything other than the images. It simply means, they currently don’t allow you to share a photo or video from another website – you can only upload photos/videos directly from your mobile devices.
Sharing the link of your award photographs cannot be done directly. You can either put that link of your Light & Composition University photographer’s profile as your website link in your Instagram profile, or put each of the award photograph link there. Do make the Photo story in Instagram with each of your award photographs. Take a look at the example of photographer: Hanan Aboregela, how she put Light & Composition Photograph’s Profile link in Instagram and make stories with the awarded photographs.
Alternatively you can share those links by using direct message or as a reply of a comment in Instagram. However, please ask them first that do they want to visit your awarded page in an university website and leave a review there or not. If the response is affirmative, you may only then can share your award link with them, else Instagram system may count it as spam if you share the same link with many people and may block your direct message feature for a certain number of days.
Be Creative When You Share
Don’t simply just share the link in both active and passive social media. Be creative, write few lines about the award and politely ask your friends, family, and especially those people who care about you. Invite them to visit the award page and write reviews in it. (To know more about writing reviews, please check step 3.) Below we add an example of one of our contestant who won the 3rd place in Photo of the Month – 105th Month.
You may just choose to use only one active/passive social media, but each of them are unique and they have their own kinds of audiences, that is why we encourage one to share at least in 3-5 different social media.
At the beginning of this page, we said how important for an artistic work to get responses from others. Asking people to write review for your awarded photograph page is the best way to know what others think about your work and where you can improve. Please keep in mind that we can only count a review/response when it’s been given at the award page, not in your social media share. Please ask the people you know to visit the award page and leave a review.
Check the Reviews in Your Awarded Photograph
You can see the number of reviews given to your awarded photographs and also click the link mark red to read them.
Where to Write the Reviews
Reviews are located at the bottom of each award page. You can simply scroll down or click the link just below the total review count.
Reply to Those Who Write a Review
If you check the list of people who wrote reviews in your photograph, you may often find people from different parts of the world, whom you may do not know. We highly encourage every contestant to reply to their reviews whether you know them or do not know than. Reply to them out of respect for the time they spent looking at your work of art and give their valuable opinion.
An example of reply of the review.
We do count each of the visit in your award page and show it as organic reach, however, if you are active in any social media, you may already know that on an average only 1 out of 10 people who see it – visit the link. You need to share more to get organic reach.