New Ways To Use Photo-Sharing Sites
New Ways To Use Photo-Sharing Sites

by Susan Marque

Posting photos on popular social networks like Pinterest, Instagram, Shutterfly or Facebook, is nothing new. But the photo-sharing sites can also be used to inspire, educate, keep a community connected, or bring a smile to someone’s day.

Here are five ways to get creative when sharing your snapshots:

No. 1: Make a party memorable

Take a page from The Thinking Closet, a creativity blogger, who shared the Instagram themed graduation party that she fashioned for her sister. Using Shutterfly, Lauren used her photos to create and order the announcements, a monogramed memories table runner, a desktop plaque, and photo coasters for the big day. She even created a banner, printing Instagram photos to look like real Polaroids (but they weren’t!)

No. 2: Become a poet

Create a love of books, poetry, and have fun, with this great all-ages idea from Cool Tools For School. Go to your local library, or your bookshelf at home, and stack books so that you can see the title along the spine. Arrange the titles to create poetic sentences. Then take a photo and post to your photo-sharing social media site. You can encourage family and friends to join in and see what kind of story you can create.

No. 3: Take care of business

If you’re in the photography business — or need to share visuals with clients for rounds of revisions and approvals, then wedding photographer Kara Wahlgren has an idea for you. “I've used Flickr to send album design proofs to my wedding photography clients,” she says. “Clients often order custom-designed coffee table albums of their images. It's a pretty design-intensive process, with me putting 15-20 layouts together per album, and them requesting changes. It's almost impossible to track in an email thread. I realized I could create a ‘set’ on Flickr…and clients could comment right on the layouts. Then as I'm making changes, I can just flip through the set, read their comments, fix it, and upload another set with the revisions.”

No. 4: Start a buzz

Every new book, product or project needs to get a buzz going to generate interest. Using a Facebook Group, you can create an album for each one of your creative “babies” in-progress and then invite your network to view the progress. Viewers will be able to get involved by commenting on photos. If you want your album to be public, you can use this idea on any photo-sharing site, creating a new page for each project, and letting people be in on how your idea grows. 

No. 5: Keep your fellow parents informed

Jessie Fishel is just one teacher who has blogged about using Shutterfly to keep her classroom up-to-date with homework assignments, field trips and share pictures from show and tell. With Shutterfly Classroom Share, parent volunteers can create a private group with a calendar, forms, and, of course, photos. Other parents in your group can order prints, calendars, photo mugs, and more from the pictures posted.

 

Susan Marque got her M.F.A. in creative writing from The New School, writes for magazines, television, and is currently working on a memoir. She is also a healthy food expert, loves both food and tech, and all things photo related.  Her photo art has sold in Beverly Hills and London.

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Internet & Social Media: "New Ways To Use Photo-Sharing Sites"