Bloggers, especially company bloggers, can sometimes forget how important pictures can be as a promotional tool. Someone who does an excellent job of utilizing pictures as a promotional device on his blog, is Roger von Oech, creator of the Ball of Whacks.Roger does a great job taking pictures of people enjoying stimulating their creativity with his Ball of Whacks. These pictures basically serve as a third-party endorsement for the product, which is incredibly powerful. It's one thing for Roger to blog about how everyone loves his product, but when he can marry that claim to pictures from people that ARE enjoying the Ball of Whacks, it's an incredibly powerful selling tool.
And a byproduct of his blogging and pictures, is that now other bloggers want to post their own pictures on their blogs of the Ball of Whacks. Luc of Mindblob fame did that a few days ago, posting about how on a recent trip to NYC, that he made a point to seek out the Ball of Whacks. Cam Beck and Gavin Heaton have also posted their pictures after receiving their Ball of Whacks.All of this started, because Roger was smart enough to start blogging, and to become a trusted community member. Him developing that equity with the community leads to
others wanting to find and help promote his products. And of course, the great pics he has of others enjoying the Ball of Whacks certainly doesn't hurt!How can you better utilize pictures in your blogging efforts?
Tags:The Viral Garden, Marketing
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3 comments:
Thanks for the wonderful words. What you say about the photos is spot on. With the Ball of Whacks (but it could be your product), the photos shows the human connection and positive emotion. The viewer thinks, "Yeah, that could easily be me playing with "x"). So, think of the photos as "empathy aids."
Thanks again.
Good points Roger, and you also have fun with it, showing the Ball of Whacks 'next' to the Sphinx, or on the field at Texas Stadium. Good stuff that we can all learn from!
Excellent point Mack! Actually I had a second post in mind after my "Quest to get the BoW" post. I see a distinction between 2 types of pictures really.
1. The pictures taken by bloggers who engaged conversation with Roger, know Roger from his blog or met him, like the people (including myself) that you pointed out in your post.
2. Pictures taken by "customers" who found out about the ball through a different patern (retail stores, online stores, etc.) and don't actually know Roger. And these you find here :
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=ball%20of%20whacks&w=all
My point is : If I were to think about a next step for selling this product, I would imagine a microsite with lead examples (1.) of BoW sculptures and a call to the community to "create further" and post their creations there (2.).
Well, this is just food for thoughts, naturally! ; )
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