Snappy H’appy – about running the photo challenge

Thought I’ll write a bit about some lessons learned from hosting this photo challenge. 

#1 Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want
My expectations of photo challenges in general is that I hope it will build a sense of community among all the participants since we’re all doing this project together. The first photo challenge I hosted, I felt did not do this well enough. There wasn’t much interaction between the participants with each other.

So this time, I thought a co-host would be a good idea. And Meghan from Firebonnet.com did a wonderful job of visiting all the participants and in some cases having even more conversation with them than I managed to.

I don’t really like to impose, but this time I did also ask that participants try to visit and leave a comment on the host, co-hosts and other participants’ blogs. And I did observe greater levels of interaction this round of challenge compared to the last.

#2 Find ways to make sharing easier
There are two key things that I wanted to improve upon with this challenge – (1) making it easy for me to help you to (2) share your challenge content.

The most efficient way of sharing is the use of LinkyTools in blog hops. But I didn’t really want to do that. A recent Linky Tools breakdown caused many blogs to end up with pages with broken image links. Definitely not the best user experience to have for both the blogger and the readers. Also, Link Tools has no SEO benefits for the users who submit their links to the blog activity. But given that we are all in the same photo conversation, the exchange of links and any SEO boost that come with them I think is beneficial for all parties so like in the first round of the challenge, I persisted in collating all the participant links and publishing them on each post.

The problem with this is that it is pretty manual work, and I was usually behind on it for my first photo challenge. I have to say that the Phoneography Monday Photo Challenge by Lens and Pens by Sally and Michelle’s Weekly Pet Challenge are two of the few challenges that also take on the extra effort of collating the links. This definitely helps to drive the conversation, versus leaving the links to languish on the comments, because it does get tedious for a participant to come back and filter them out to visit. At least, I feel so.

What I came up with was the idea of the Photo Grid, that helps participants track their progress visually and allows other users to easily visit each of their photos for the different themes. It was also more efficient for me to collate the links as they came in (as long as you remember to leave them in the comments on the right post ;) ) rather than wait for the end of the week to do so like in the first photo challenge. By then, it becomes quite a chore hunting around for links :P It has made this work more efficient, although the posts still end up late sometimes due to me spending more time or less writing the post for each specific theme.

I know you have shared on your blogs that there are some themes you enjoyed more and some less. It was the same with me, some I enjoyed writing more, some I was less enthusiastic about but thought it would help to make a complete set of challenges for people exploring the different features in photo apps. So I am sorry that some times I am late and it throws you off at times. I do apologise!  :)

#3 Find ways to make the challenge more engaging
You would think that the Photo Grid appears to be more effort to me this time round compared to just copying and pasting links. But I assure you that it is effort that I find worth doing. For one, more participants have completed or are on your way to completing the full set of challenges compared to the last challenge. You guys are just so awesome for doing this the whole way with me and Meghan!

I also thought that it would help to provide some app suggestions for each theme to help you along, but in fact, a lot of times you have already some of your own favourite apps up your sleeves to share, which is really fantastic! I love that this makes the challenge more of a two-way conversation. I’m learning from you, as much as you’re learning from me. ;)

There were some failures as well. Chiefly the late posts. And also starting some activity on Pinterest, but not being able to sustain it the whole way. So I thank you for your patience and tolerance in this learning process!

Now I’ve rambled enough. Below you’ll find the photo grids. This was supposed to be the finale post but, I think Zeke’s Adventures and perhaps Sassmuffins and Forestwoodfolkart may be intending to complete the full challenge still. Zeke’s Adventures had an accident and a few rough weeks, which is why they need more time.  So I guess we’ll hang on a bit until you guys are done. ;)

For the finale post, if you can let me know the one photo that you are most happy with that you created for the challenge, that would be helpful for me to highlight in the finale. ;) Thank you so much!

Congratulations for reaching the end of the Snappy Ha’ppy Photo Challenge!
Hosted by weliveinaflat.com and firebonnet.com 

Completed Photo Grids

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Photo Grids
pending completion

Challenger| Zeke’s Adventures
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Challenger| ForestWoodFolkArt.wordpress.com
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Challenger| sassmuffins.com
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Challenger| LivingWithMyAncestors.wordpress.com
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