We are all publishers now, we know that, as the internet gives organisations the ability to have a voice in the media landscape. But how to use it?
A good picture is worth 1,000 words and in the medium of short status updates a powerful picture is content that will be shared.
I’ve been an advocate for years of ‘sharing the sweets’ and for comms teams to give social media access up to those on the frontline. Why? Because what you are doing should be shared especially if only a few people are seeing it.
With a smartphone in your pocket this ability has never been easier, so what are you waiting for?
Here are five ways
BIG EVENT SPECTACLE: North Yorkshire Police at the Tour de France
When Le Tour came to Yorkshire people scoffed. But this image brilliantly sums up why those at the frontline are exactly those who should be getting access. A brilliant photograph. A wonderful piece of content shared widely around the web with a quick message on what the police were doing. Pic: https://twitter.com/NYorksPolice/status/485420729631260672/photo/1
TO FLAG UP POLICY ON THE GROUND: Caution: Bison on the Road
Flagging up a link to the YouTube channel with this arresting picture of bison being restored to Yosemite National Park this image makes you smile and invites you to marvel at the work of the US Department of the Interior. How can you stage this? With difficulty. How can you capture it as it happens? With a smartphone close to hand. People don’t care about the piece of paper the policy was written on but they do care about the effect the policy has. So, show it to them.
https://twitter.com/Interior/status/484719451703894016/photo/1
IN A CRISIS: West Midlands Police
In summer 2011, riots were spreading across the UK. Rumours were being circulated over the web and in particular Twitter. Some forces and politicians called for the web to be banned while others correctly knew that the right way was to engage. This tweet scotched a rumour that Walsall Police station was on fire. The rumour was scotched in minutes by an officer taking a picture and posting it to his force-approved Twitter stream. The image was shared to harness the power of positive networks. http://twitpic.com/63jj73
POP CULTURE: Star Wars and gritting and Linconshire County Council
All too often organisations can appear aloof and remote. A photo-shopped image of a Star Wars At-At was a good way to get a message across that the roads were icy to motorists.
HUMOUR: English Heritage
The sight of a Roman, a Knight, a First World War soldier and a Red Coat on the underground arrests the viewer and makes them smile.
So, what are you waiting for?
These are some really good examples of how good pictures can enliven an article, or indeed tell 1,000 words.
The flip side is that when a picture tells 1,000 words, are they the words you want to tell? There’s a certain north-western council website which has gone completely overboard on picture-usage – every page comes complete with a huge stock image at the top, pushing the text content down to just showing a couple of lines on a standard laptop screen. Some of the picture choices are just your cliched stock images of a cheque book and pen, a telephone, or paper cutout people holding hands, but some of them are actually completely inappropriate – pictures of homeless people sleeping in doorways to illustrate the pages about housing. At the last look, the home page was dominated by a rather striking photo of a graveyard.
I’d say do indeed look to improve an article with a well-chosen image – but don’t just slap the first thing you find on there, put as much thought into the choice of picture as into the text of the article. I’d say no picture at all is better than a badly chosen, bland, inappropriate, or cliched picture.