Online Evolution of Photo or:How I learned to stop worrying about my copy and

love the picture

Agenda…• History Lesson.. Yay!– Pictures rule

• Pinterest– Boards of Interest

• VisitAlaska• Grayline• Westmark

– What works…• Trippy– Uses for CVB?

• Sourcing Photos– Twitter / Instagram– Flickr – Creative Commons

History Fun Time

• Literally the first picture published to the ‘World Wide Web’ in 1992• Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of WWW) asked for a few scanned photos• From humble beginnings fast forward 20 years….

– Over seven billion photos uploaded to Facebook each month– Five million + photos uploaded to Instagram every day!– 70% of all Facebook activities revolve around photos

Pictures = Digital Currency• Photos count for the highest level of engagement in social media

posts– Content that includes images receives more frequent clicks from website

visitors.– 47% increase in engagement for those articles with photos on their pages

against those without.

• A photograph’s meaning resides in its immediate experiential value. – I actually did this… look!– Text updates are ignorable– No one wants to click on a link– Photos a key part of one’s online identity

Entre Pinterest• Pinterest currently valued at over one billion dollars– Third most popular social network– Food is the most popular– 22% of users interact with Travel related content

Boards of Interest

What works…•Majestic scenery• Repin ratio of 4.7 is solid

•Animals – cute, fluffy, animals•Fun activities•Food!

Dood…Trippy! “Pinterest for Travel”

Nearly 118 million people in the U.S. will research travel online in 2012

Trippy Thoughts How can we use it?

•For individuals• Organize / plan your trip• Get recommendations from friends• See where friends are going, view other trip itineraries

•For Tourism Offices / CVBs• Show off our brand (Alaska)• Brand pages only for select partners• Get in touch with brands@trippy.com

Finding Photos•Flickr is a great free resource for images• Use ‘Advanced Search’ to select images from creative commons

•Stock Exchange• “Of all of the stock photo sites on the web sxc.hu is the best”

•MorgueFile.com• Morgue File has many photos that you are free to use commercially

•EveryStockPhoto.com• Every Stock Photo searches several other stock image sites for you.

•Other resources:• http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/45257.aspx• http://www.authormedia.com/2009/07/11/where-to-find-free-legal-photos-online/

•Photos can really humanize your brand in a concrete and relatable way.

•A photo tells the story of now. The best copy in the world can’t compete with a photo sometimes.

•Social media photo sharing was worth one billion dollars to Facebook. See instagram purchase…

•Trippy is great for end users now, suggest inquiry about brand pages.• Trippy is still relatively small and growing