When you’re promoting your brand at an exhibition, trade show, or any other event, it is important not only that you attract visitors, but also that you engage with them once they’re at your stand. If you don’t have the tools to engage your visitors, then they won’t spend very long at your stand or spend long thinking about your brand. This would be a wasted opportunity. But how can you engage visitors at your event stand? Here are our three top tips: 

Provide an Interactive Element 

Visitors cannot engage with your event stand unless you provide them with something to engage with. For this reason, every good event stand should have some kind of interactive element. For some brands, the right interactive element will be easy to identify: a ball throwing competition if you’re promoting a ball game, for example, or a digital quiz to promote your online brand. For some products, you may have to think a little more outside the box to identify the right interactive element for you. Popular options include digital games, augmented reality, digital quizzes, surveys and social media interaction. There is a whole industry dedicated to providing interactive technology for exhibits and events and, if your budget allows, these can be a great way to boost your visitor engagement. 

Gather Imagery 

They say a picture speaks a thousand words, which is certainly true when promoting your event stand, particularly on social media. Encouraging your visitors to take photos of your stand and your products is a great engagement technique. But you could elevate this engagement by using EventsAlbum to gather those photos taken by your guests and then use their images for your own promotion. EventsAlbum is an online album where your guests can easily share all their photos from your event by scanning a prominently displayed QR code. Not only is this a great and affordable form of visitor engagement, but it also helps you to generate an abundance of images of your event stand from a wide range of different perspectives. To further enhance this engagement on a tight budget, and encourage your visitors to use your EventsAlbum QR code, why not have a competition for the best photo taken at the event, with the winner receiving a small prize? 

Demonstrations and Giveaways 

Finally, everyone loves a freebie, and event visitors will historically make a beeline for stands where exhibitors are giving away products. These can be as small as sweets and stationery or as large as USB sticks and water bottles, depending on your brand and your budget. Once you have a captive audience attracted by your freebies, why not use this as an opportunity to demonstrate your product? Product demonstrations are also popular and will help you gain the interest of passersby, engage with visitors, and increase footfall to your stand. These two techniques often work well in conjunction with each other, though if your budget is small you could opt to use either demonstrations or giveaways, rather than a combination of both. 

Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behaviour for a given situation. It is also a phenomenon seen, and term used, when individuals on social media engage with or buy from businesses because they see evidence (in the form of photographs, posts and videos) that someone else is engaging with that business. For this reason, social media engagement is an increasingly valuable and powerful tool for businesses.

Here’s how you can use photographs to take social proof to the next level for your business: 

The Benefits of Customers Sharing and Tagging Images 

Social media is an easy and affordable way to help your business be seen by a wider audience, which is why it is such a popular tool with businesses of all sizes. 

Some of the benefits of your customers tagging you in their images and posts include: 

Using EventsAlbum 

However, whilst there are many benefits of being tagged in customer images, this also comes with limitations. The small size and low resolution of images saved to social media means that it would be difficult for you to use these images in your own social media or marketing campaigns. And approaching your customers for a higher-resolution version of the image can be both time-consuming and awkward. 

The solution to this problem is to use a service such as EventsAlbum. If you are able to send out a QR code to your clients so they can submit their images, rather than ask them to email them to you directly, then this will serve two purposes: making it less of an awkward exchange with customers you don’t know as well as giving you access to the original higher resolution photos at full size. This means that you are able to use those images on your site or social media. This could be mutually beneficial for B2B companies as it means both can take advantage of promotion and social proof where an image is used. However, all businesses could benefit from this system, streamlining the process of gaining high-resolution images from their customers, and making their customer engagement more professional and easier to access. 

The average smartphone user holds around 2,100 photos on their phone. As well as photos of everyday items such as dinner, or a cat spotted on the way to work, it means that every smartphone also holds images of unique and special moments. After all, we take our phones everywhere: to weddings, christenings, engagements and birthday parties, and the best way to share those moments with friends and family is by using a shared photo album. 

The technology behind shared photo albums is amazing in its simplicity, and because it is so easy and straightforward to set up a QR code-generated shared photo album, the entry-level cost of using this technology is affordable for everyone. This means that no matter how big or small your event, or how old or young the guests at your event are, everyone with a mobile phone can access your shared photo album and share their unique images with you. 

The Benefits of Shared Photo Albums 

As well as being affordable and easy to access, one of the most significant benefits of utilising shared photo albums for your event is that you will gain a unique perspective of the event that you simply wouldn’t get if just one or two people were responsible for all of the images. You are able to see your event from the point of view of every single one of your guests. No single photographer can ever capture the same unique range of images as you could if you use all of your guests as a photographer: by capturing and gathering their images, you will have the most unique and varied perspective of your event possible. 

What’s more, shared photo albums allow these special images to be shared widely. Unlike sending photos to one or two guests via SMS or another messenger service, when images are shared via a shared photo album, each moment of your event can be both gathered by and shared with every event attendee that has access to the shared photo album. This makes sharing images easier than ever before.

Examples of Unique Memories Shared Photo Albums Can Capture

Every laugh, smile, hug, or tender moment between friends and family members young and old can be captured and uniquely preserved for you to treasure forever when you encourage all of your guests to use a shared photo album at your next special event.

Launching a new brand or product is an incredibly exciting time, but for your product to get the reception and recognition it deserves, you must ensure your launch day is a success. One of the most significant ways to do this is to think about the imagery that you will both share and gather on your launch day, ensuring that this perfectly reflects the vision you wish to create for your brand. 

We know that visuals impact buyers' behaviour. But the power of social media has demonstrated that customers place more value on seeing real users interacting with a brand, rather than on formal e-commerce imagery.  User-generated content is considered 35% more memorable than content from professional marketers. For this reason, gathering user-generated content for your brand is incredibly valuable, and there’s no better time to do this than at your launch event. 

Gathering User-Generated Content

EventsAlbum is a website that will enhance your launch party, allowing you to capture your event from your guests’ points of view. EventsAlbum is an online album where your guests can easily share all their photos from your event, and it’s so easy to use. You simply set up the event and create a QR code that you share at your launch party or event. Your guests can then scan the QR code and share their photos straight to your events album. This is an easy and convenient way to gather all your guests’ user-generated content in one place, and then access it whenever and wherever suits you.  

Using shared photo albums is a great way to gather imagery from your launch event because it gives you more control over the photos that you choose to share with a wider audience via your own social media accounts. Whilst it’s hard to control the content that your event guests share via social media, you can control what comes from your brand directly. 

Sharing Your Launch Day

One of the best ways to get to know your customers better is to get social with them: that’s why launching a product with an event is such a popular choice. And whilst the majority of your customers won’t be invited to the event, your photos will give them a window into it. Consumers build a relationship with your brand on a personal level and sharing the details of your launch event provides the opportunity to share your brand personality: Are you fun, playful, or flamboyant? This will all be reflected in the type of party you throw.

Other ways to ensure that your launch day images add as much value as possible to your brand include using your brand colours in your event décor and props, so that these will be prominent throughout those images, and making your party memorable with a unique and shareable theme. Don’t be afraid of using social media to bring real-time visibility to your event, using those images you gather from EventsAlbum to choose and curate the very best possible photos of your event. 

Visit the EventsAlbum website to find out more about how this unique shared photo album could enhance your product launch day. 

There are many reasons you might want to share photos with a large group of people: weddings, birthdays, christenings and anniversary parties, for example, are all perfect places to take group photos that everyone in the group will want to see, keep and treasure. But what is the best way to share these photos with everyone without having to send them to each member of the party individually? What is the best way to share large group photos? Here are five great options: 

If you have a large number of group photos or photos taken by a number of different photographers, then the best way to share them is by using EventsAlbum. You can use EventsAlbum and see all of the photos from your event (no matter what it is) through the eyes of your guests. This is a great option because everyone in the group can both contribute to and access the single event album, and because you can access the album via a QR code, there’s no need to worry about the time or the expense of sharing your photos via a messaging service.

Not everyone is keen to splash their photo all over the internet or social media. This is particularly true for families with young children, who may wish to maintain the privacy of those children and minimise their online presence. Recent reports have found that many kids will have well over 1,000 photos of themselves on social media before they're 5 years old, but sadly these photos can sometimes turn up on disturbing websites and forums. For this reason, it is increasingly common for parents to keep images of their children offline, and most people respect this. According to a report by Ofcom, 70% of people do not think it is acceptable to share images of others without permission. This can make sharing photos of special family events, such as birthday parties, christenings, or weddings for example, very difficult. How do you balance the needs of families who wish to maintain the privacy of their children with the needs of families that want to share photos of special events?

How do you share photos privately with your family on a large scale? Here’s everything you need to know: 

Create an Event QR Code 

One of the easiest ways to share photos with your family and friends privately is to create a QR code for your event with EventsAlbum. The family members attending the event simply scan the specific event QR code and then use it to upload all of the photos they’ve taken directly from their phones. You can display all the photos on a rolling live gallery as they're uploaded at the event, allowing your guests to interact with the process, but these images remain private with only those family members or event attendees that have access to the QR code that is only used for your specific event. This is a fun and easy way to share photos whilst also keeping them private. You can try a free demo here and begin the sharing process! 

Use Private Facebook Albums 

Many people already have a Facebook account, which means that using private Facebook albums is often considered one of the most straightforward ways to share event photos with your family. But before you choose this option you should consider that Facebook's privacy issues are well-documented, which means that many people prefer not to share their data with the company anymore. It’s also important to note that some families would prefer their children not to appear on Facebook, even in private albums, so this is something you consider if your event is being attended by children. 

Cloud Storage Services 

They can be both complicated and expensive to set up, but if you have a considerable number of images to share (perhaps from several big family events) then Cloud storage services allow you to share photos online privately. There are plenty of different options available, but the three companies that dominate the arena include Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive. Each of the services allows you to create a folder, upload the photos you want to share with your family, and then share the folder via email. This is ideal for large numbers of photos but can be more time-consuming to implement.

They may look like nothing more than black and white squares, but QR codes are quickly revolutionising the way we do almost everything! A QR code (short for Quick Response code) is a machine-readable code that consists of black and white squares that can be read in the same way as a barcode. They are typically used to store information or images and can be read by both cameras and smartphones.  This is a process that happens in seconds, meaning that in a newly touch-free world, QR codes are suddenly everywhere. There has been a 94% increase in QR code usage since 2018. But what can QR codes be used for? And how can QR codes be used to access multiple photos in a photo album? Here's everything you need to know:

What Can QR Codes Be Used For? 

The uses available for QR codes are near-endless. Because many smartphones have built-in QR code readers, QR codes are increasingly being used in a wide range of social situations. In a post-Covid-19 world where both tracing and minimising Covid-19 contact is vital, QR codes have been used for location tracking and for reducing the use of multi use items; you can scan a QR code to access a menu in a restaurant, for example. They are also regularly used in marketing and advertising campaigns because potential customers can quickly scan a QR code to access additional information. This can also lead to a reduction in advertising costs, with QR code usage reducing the need to print leaflets and flyers. In all these cases, the QR code will be used to direct to a website URL. 

Other uses for QR codes include, but are not limited to: 

- In retail, so that consumers can access more information about a product. 

- In the travel industry, to share information and simplify processes such as hotel check-in. 

- In the transportation industry, to provide real-time information to passengers e.g. the whereabouts of the bus, the next tram time, etc. 

- In property on 'For Sale' signs.

- To encourage email newsletter sign-ups for your business. 

QR codes can also be used in a non-business context, e.g. at special occasions for sharing wedding photos with guests or between social groups. But what if you want to share more than one image? Can you make a QR code for a photo album? The simple answer is yes. 

Using QR Codes for Photo Albums 

Because a QR code typically directs a user to a specific URL, if you want to share a QR code photo album then you would need to either create a folder in Google Drive or create an album in Photos and then generate a QR code for the link to either of these locations. You can then set up open access permissions so that anyone with access permissions can add their own photos to these albums. Whilst this makes sharing photo albums via QR codes possible, it is also quite a time-consuming and labour-intensive process. 

If you’re time-poor or want to create a shared access photo album via QR code for a special occasion, a much easier way of doing this would be to use a company like EventsAlbum. This is an online album generation website where anyone invited to do so can easily share their photos with you e.g., wedding guests can easily upload photos. You set up the album group, create a QR code and link to your album from their site. The whole process is quick and easy, and doesn't require you to download a photography sharing app (or do anything else time-consuming) to make it work! 

With the onset of social media and the prevalence of the camera-embedded smartphone, everyone’s an influencer, which means that you can’t escape user-generated content. There are 55.5 million smartphone owners in the UK: that’s 87% of all adults. Those cameras are everywhere, and so are the posts to Instagram. 

As a professional photographer, whether you’re attending a wedding or a corporate event, you can be sure that a whole host of attendees will be taking their own photographs of the event at the same time. But what are the pros and cons of this user-generated content? Could it be beneficial to professional photographers to have so much user-generated content from an event? Let’s decide: 

Pro: An Excellent Marketing Strategy

From the point of view of the event host and the marketeer, user-generated content is an excellent tool. It captures the fun of the event from the attendee's perspective, invoking positive emotions, instilling social proof, and creating a social media buzz around the event. The more unique users that share their user-generated content of your event, the bigger the buzz surrounding it and the greater the likelihood of it trending. From a marketeer's point of view then, user-generated content is a dream come true. 

Con: Do Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth?  

From a professional photographer's perspective, this enthusiasm is likely to be a little more tempered. It can be hard to get the shot you want when you have event attendees taking their own photos and creating their own content at the same time. This can be particularly difficult for wedding photographers that have a set list of images they need to secure, but they can’t get the shot because of the sea of other cameras (and camera phones) in the way.  

Pro: Platforms to share photos are a Great Way to Capture Intimate Moments and a New Perspective 

Even the very best photographer can’t be everywhere. If you’re busy capturing photos of the bride and groom with their families, then who is getting those shots of the groomsmen taking shots? User-generated content is a great way to get a new perspective on events. Even the most formal corporate events have moments of fun and joviality that the event organiser is going to want to see! This is one of the main benefits of user-generated content: it ensures that the event is caught on camera from every angle! 

Con: Too Much Can Be Shared 

Many private event hosts (such as a bride and groom) are reluctant to allow their guests to share their own user-generated content from the event, preferring to control which images are released and when. They don’t want to create a social media buzz around their wedding. And they don’t want their colleagues to see those photos of Auntie Beryl falling over after she’s had one too many! One way to avoid this, whilst still enabling guests to take their own photos, is to have an EventsAlbum for the event. This is a QR code-generated album that allows guests to easily and simply share their photos with the event host. That way, the host can see all those great photos, but the rest of the world doesn’t have to. 

User-generated content can be massively beneficial for corporate and public events: It creates a social buzz that can increase brand awareness, ticket sales, and overall event enthusiasm. And the content can raise a smile no matter the event: what bride and groom don’t want to see their flower girls and page boys sneaking a cake under the table? Whilst user-generated content is almost always a good thing, it is the way it is shared and distributed that often needs greater control. As a photographer, finding a way to implement this control could result in happier customers, which means great reviews and more business.

Event management technology can help to improve events for both event planners and their attendees. Planning large corporate events can be incredibly demanding, but with the right technological tools, you can ensure that every event is successful. Not sure which event technology solutions are right for you? Here are four simple ways that you can use technology to improve your corporate events:

Technology is now easier and more available than ever to use in an event. If you’d like to look into using technology to further enhance your event, EventsAlbum can give you a simple method of QR codes to utilise and harness guest photography into one event without having to do a load of work yourself. Sign up today and we’ll help managing your event that bit easier.

It’s your Wedding day, of course you want to capture as many memories as possible. Not just the ones taken by your professional photographer but the candid photos of you and your guests. You are naturally racking your brains for ideas of how to capture these images, so we have put together a few ideas below

Hire a Caricaturist

We’ve all seen the funny pictures, and everyone has wondered what they would look like if drawn by a caricaturist. A caricaturist is someone who can have fun with the guests and turn the captured moments into an event in itself, providing entertainment as well as giving you those unforgettable images. There are many options when it comes to hiring a caricaturist, prices range from around £140 to £960 depending on the quality of drawing and the type of picture you are looking for. The downside is of course these are of individual people rather than candid moments, however it depends what you are aiming to get from your day.

Polaroid Cameras

Another idea is to scatter polaroid cameras around your event. This way, the guests can pick them up and take photos, immediately having the printed image in their hand to perhaps stick up on a board you have prepared. Whilst some may think of this as a prohibitively expensive idea, some people already own polaroid cameras and others might be open to lending them. If you do need to buy from scratch, polaroid cameras start from around £40. The downside to the cheaper options is photo quality and the fact they are single print, there will be no digital copy of the photo taken to use at another time. Still, it is cheaper than a photo booth!

Photo Station

This is a fairly new concept to weddings, due to the recent ready availability of tablets, however it is a nice idea if you are happy to have your device out in the open for all to use. It is as simple as putting your tablet on a stand (roughly £24) and leaving instructions and maybe even props, for your guests to use it to take photos. Then, at the end of the night, you have all of your photos in one place to easily view and store. This is what I would call, the 21^st Century photobooth!

Disposable Cameras as Wedding Favours

Back to a classic now, pre technology, and that is disposable cameras. Can’t think of what to do for Wedding Favours? This idea kills two birds with one stone as you have your favours and a way to capture those candid photos. You can either buy the ready made favours for £10 - £15 each, or if you’re feeling creative, go down the DIY route with packs of 6 disposable cameras costing around £40 and a trip to Hobbycraft! Of course, the downside to this is photo quality and lack of digital copy, similar to the polaroid option. There is also the option of the infamous thumb in the corner of the picture. Again, it depends on your aim for your candid photos.

Designated candid photographer

Do you have a teen attending the Wedding who needs something to keep them entertained rather than being asked about school and told how much they have grown? Give them a mobile phone if they don’t already have one and ask them to snap away. Of course, with this option, you do run the risk of a million selfies!

Custom SnapChat filter

Snapchat – not just an app for the young! You can create a custom filter for your guests to use, called a Geofilter. This is a location specific filter, that guests can add to photos or videos that they take at your event. For £4 you will get around 8 hours usage, starting at 22,000 square feet, however if you would like a larger area for your event then £30 will get you 81,000 square feet and 25 hours use. This does, however, limit you to that one platform and your photos can't be transferred to another storage device.  Still pretty cool though!

Create your own hashtag

If your Wedding is full of people who are young or at least ‘down with the kids’, chances are, most of them will use or know about Instagram. By creating your own hashtag, for example #jenanddavesweddingcolchester, and putting it up on signs around your venue, all people need to do is upload their photos to Instagram with your hashtag. If you want to view your photos, simply log on to Instagram, search for your hashtag and voila! Important to note with this option, that Instagram do reduce the quality of the photos when uploaded. So if you are looking for photos that can be printed after the event, this might not be the choice for you.

Online photo sharing QR code

Of course, no blog would be complete without a little bit of self promotion, so why not avoid the fuss and preparation and use EventsAlbum for your guests photos. Simply set up your event, create a QR code and have it around your venue/on tables for guests to use. All they have to do is scan the QR code and upload photos to the website. No need to set up an account or download an app. Your photos are then securely held in one place for you to use at your leisure. There is no compromise on quality as we do not resize the image and we offer the option of a live scrolling gallery, so your guests can view the photos as they are uploaded. All of this, for just £30. So, what are you waiting for? The sign up button is just at the top of the page 😊