Marketing / Communications
Articles
“Web Marketing: Send Media Ready Photos,”
America’s Byways Resource Center;
Vistas, May/June 2004
Public Relations: Send Media-Ready Photos
Are you missing out on national marketing opportunities for your byway? If the National Scenic Byways website does not have media-ready photos of your byway, you are!
The National Scenic Byway Program’s marketing efforts over the past year have had quite an effect. In the first quarter of 2003, they generated 28,966,094 media impressions. This year, they generated 65,883,603 for the same quarter—more than a 125 percent increase! If this trend continues (and it will), there will be over 65 million more chances for you to make a good impression in the next three months alone.
The travel industry and media frequently come to the website to gather stories and photos about byways. Byways with media-ready photos are more likely to be featured favorably in those millions of impressions than byways without them.
Media-ready photos are images, stored electronically in the Digital Media Library, that users can download immediately and use in publications as-is. For most uses, a media-ready photo needs to meet the following criteria:
1. It must have good aesthetic quality. It must be pleasing to the eye. It does not need to be scenic or natural. A photo of graffiti could have high aesthetic quality.
2. It must have good subject quality. Simply put, it must be a good picture of what it’s a picture of.
3. It must be a clean photo. It cannot be over exposed, under exposed, out of focus, scratched, dusty or dirty.
4. Its use cannot be restricted. It should be either in the public domain, or the copyright holder must have granted permission for any byway-related use.
5. It must be reproducible photo. Whether you send us an electronic version or we create one from a print or slide, that electronic version must be at least 1800 pixels in one of its dimensions. This will allow the media to reproduce this image for most uses.
Media-ready photos are hard to come by. Your brother-in-law and his Kodak Instamatic are not the answer. A professional photographer is—and not just any professional photographer. You want someone who is well acquainted with your byway and what makes it special. Also, you want someone who is familiar with digital photography and image scanning. Such knowledge will dramatically simplify the process of getting your images onto the website.
When you engage the services of a photographer, discuss possible subjects ahead of time and provide direction that is consistent with your marketing campaign. One common mistake with digital photos is to disregard their resolution. A photo file that looks splendid on your monitor may not look so fine in a magazine. Most monitor will display about 1000 × 8000 pixels (dots of color). An image with this resolution would be less than 1.5” × 1.4” if printed at the 300 dpi standard for most media uses. A user cannot simply increase the size of the printed image.
To make the most of the website and the marketing efforts occurring at the national level, send your media-ready photos to:
National Scenic Byways Online
Utah State University
UMC 4205
Logan, UT 84322-4205
Or , submit them electronically online at http://library.byways.org
