We live in a snap-happy world. Every second, 806 photos are uploaded to Instagram and 8,796 shared on Snapchat. People don’t just want to experience things in real life, they also want to share these unique and fun moments with their friends and family online.
So it’s not surprising that social photo opportunities are changing the event experience — and even giving rise to a new type of “Instagrammable” events. Events like Color Factory and Museum of Ice Cream have both taken Instagram by storm, largely because of their photo opportunities.
If you want to keep up, you need to provide the personalized, photo-friendly experiences fans crave. Here’s how you can use social photo booths to stay relevant in the age of Instagram.
The age of Instagram at events
Event-goers have been using Instagram to share experiences online since 2010. The app’s easy editing tools and fun features like filters and Instagram Stories allow for quick finessing and sharing for its 500 million registered users, most of whom are between 18 and 29 years old.
For photo-friendly events like Color Factory and Museum of Ice Cream, the draw of the perfect Instagram photo has largely fueled their success. Museum of Ice Cream, for example, currently has 241,000 followers on Instagram, while the hashtags #moic and #museumoficecream have accrued 22,069 and 78,634 posts each on the photo-sharing site.
But it’s not just peer-to-peer social shares that have created buzz. Influencers like Drew Barrymore, Beyonce, and Kim Kardashian have Instagrammed their Museum of Ice Cream experiences, too. All this social media attention has paid off: The San Francisco location, which opened in September 2017 for a six-month run, sold out in less than 90 minutes.
What the rise of social photo booths means for your event
These incredibly successful events both feature embedded social photo booth opportunities within the event. Already framed perfectly to fit the surroundings, attendees can quickly pose and email themselves these photos.
So how can you take advantage of this desire to share live experiences on social media? First, by focusing on providing photo-ready experiences at your event, like a smart photo booth — which allows fans to take photos, looping videos, and GIFs and post them directly online.
Second, by displaying your event hashtag everywhere, so you can measure engagement online — and use the photos posted in your own event promotion. And third, by using a social media display to broadcast fan posts on the big screen, so they can share their experiences with as broad an audience as possible.
How to upgrade your photo booths for the age of Instagram
It’s not enough to provide an old-fashioned photo booth, though. If you want the experience to feel relevant, you need to think beyond the still image.
Social photo booths offer the photo and video capabilities your attendees want, with the technology you need. It’s all about the details: How will fans get their images on their phones to share them without having to manually type info in?
That’s where technology comes into play. The Hypno GIF photo booth, for example, integrates with Eventbrite’s RFID solution to make it super simple for attendees to get their photos or videos. Fans simply tap their wristband and are sent an email with their images.
Enhancing the experience beyond the photo
Of course, even the best photo in the world won’t make up for a sub-par attendee experience. Find out how to upgrade all aspects of your event experience in Craft the Ultimate Event Experience.
