We’re always looking for opportunities to get out and fly. So, when I got a text from a friend notifying me to get some pictures of a train derailment that occurred here in town, I grabbed my jump bag (always at the ready) and headed out before showering. I was able to capture some video and some pictures in about 10 minutes of flight time. I posted the image on the social media page of a local news channel.That day the image was used as part of a new report.
Here’s a few things I’ve learned if you want to use aerial photos to promote your business, service or real estate. Note that I used the same image each time.
You could post the image in several places. Your Facebook page, then again on a local community forum, then on a news site. However, if you want to promote your original post here’s what I would suggest. Post the initial image on your Facebook page and set it to share publicly. Then copy the link for that post and use that on local community forums as well as news media (if applicable) Facebook pages. The image will show up there but it will actually be drawn from your Facebook feed. Also, make sure you put a “photo credit” any time you post it. Since I wasn’t being paid for the images as this was a public service, I made sure to put “Photo Credit www.pixelairways.com” in the text of my post. The result is that a local news program inserted our company name in their news report. See the image below.
Screen capture by Jim Osman
In one day we had over 345 shares of the image which means that people put our image on their Facebook walls and our site received more one day traffic than ever. That was fun.
