Some hobbies include collecting coins, others stamps, but here at Miami International Airport we have a community whose passion and hobby is to photograph airplanes. The aircraft spotter community otherwise dearly known as "AV geeks" is a population of aviation fanatics who spend hours at airports capturing photos of planes. Once we realized how much AV geeks loved sending us their photos and how much we loved seeing them, we decided to up the antics, we established "Photo of the Week" (POW). Every week we would showcase a photo sent to us and share it on our social media. This opportunity came just in time during a period where we were novices to the social media world. We were the last large airport in the United States to establish social media channels and the one with the least followers among the top airports.
Our objective was to feature an outstanding photo every week in order to entice AV geeks and our passengers to send more of their photos and thus increase our follower's engagement rate as well as increase our follower over all. In order to make sure there was an overall superior purpose than just on a weekly bases, we came up with a Photo of the Year. Our goal was to have enough submissions each week to then choose the most liked POW, once selected we would create a call to action for our followers to share what they thought should be POW.
In order to encourage followers to send us photos we could exhibit and choose for Photo of the Week (POW) we reached out to some of the members of the AV geek's community. If we could get some people intrigued then it would cause a domino effect and most if not all the AV geeks would engage in a playful competition of whose photo got chosen. After engaging the AV geeks community it was up to the passengers to also send photos. We created call to actions on our Facebook and Twitter accounts. Once photos were received it was up to us to choose the "best" photo and post. One of the strategies we used to differentiate between any other photos we posted on our FB was a "stamp" of approval we placed on the photos for POW. Part of the post also included a clever caption that would captivate our audience. Some of the key features were making sure we did not feature someone multiple times and that we showcased the airports amenities fairly, meaning we highlighted the over 100 air carriers we served as well as our different terminals.
Once we started receiving some of the breath taking shots, we knew there was more to it. We realized we could use these photos not only to increase our followers on social media but it could help MIA with our brand and image. Every year we develop an "Annual Report" in which we highlight the achievements, growth and prospect of MIA. As we were scrambling to put the Annual Report together we realized there was a vital part to telling our story – photographs. We noticed there was no way we could go back in time to capture all the fantastic events that had gone through the year, until we remembered our Photo of the Week. We used the Photo of the Week shots on our annual report. From that point forth social media and the use of POW helped us obtain top-notch images that we could use on our collaterals. Not only did we find another method to prompt our followers to keep sending us photos but we also found a venue to strengthen our relationship with our passengers as well as boost our social media numbers through the use of beautiful photography.
