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Time to book a Virtual Photo Booth? You bet!!!
What is a Virtual Photo booth, anyway? We’re all familiar with physical photo booths. They are a fantastic social activity, to bring groups of people together. They create excitement and FOMO for your event, when your guests share their photos online. A virtual photo booth can do exactly the same things for you, just online.
By STEPHAN SWART
Time to book a Virtual Photo Booth? - Blog - Sep 2020
One of the biggest challenges of virtual events is engaging your audience. It’s far too easy for them to become passive and bored, especially if they are just watching live stream after live stream.
If you want your virtual event to stand out, you need to find ways to turn your passive audience into active participants. After all, any good event (whether online or offline) should be a 2-way interaction.
That’s where a Virtual photo booth can help!
How Virtual Photo Booths Work:
What is a virtual photo booth, anyway?
Because this is such a new concept, it needs some explaining.
We’re all familiar with physical photo booths. They have practically become a standard requirement for offline events, and for good reason.
They are a fantastic social activity, to bring groups of people together. They give your guests souvenirs of your event, whether as digital photos or physical prints. They create excitement and FOMO for your event, when your guests share their photos online.
A virtual photo booth can do exactly the same things for you, just online.
It’s an application that works in any browser, on any device. All you need to do is click on a link to start it—you don’t have to download any software to run it.
If you’re using your phone or tablet, it starts your front camera. If you’re using your laptop, it starts your webcam.
You can take a photo, Boomerang or GIF—and add borders, filters and stickers to make it really pop!
Now that you understand how a virtual photo booth works, let’s talk about how it can help with your online event.
Here are 4 reasons to have one at your Virtual Event:
1. Create a Unique and Branded Experience
You want your virtual event to stand out, with different activities and experiences seamlessly integrated into your website or event platform.
Well, good news! You can customise every aspect of your virtual photo booth, so that it’s perfectly on-brand.
Change the logo, title and background—and embed it so that it blends in perfectly with your event website.
Design your own borders, filters and stickers, so that the photos are mini-advertisements for your event.
You can even design your own virtual backgrounds, which your audience can use to replace their actual backgrounds. It’s like Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) magic, without the need for a green screen.
There are so many options you can customise to make it feel like a custom-built experience just for your online event.
2. Live Games and Activities
When we go from offline events to virtual events, we lose a lot of the engagement and interactivity. As event planners, we have to find ways to recapture some of that. A virtual photo booth is a fun activity that your audience can participate in. It doesn’t even matter if you’re camera shy, because you’re doing it in the safety of your home—so you can feel free to really goof off.
What’s more, you can turn it into a group activity by hosting a photo game. Get your emcee to give instructions, such as taking a photo with your pet or balancing a book on your head.
You can stream everyone’s photos and GIFs in real-time, with our online gallery feature. Your audience can see what their friends are doing and one-up them with their own shots.
To take it a step further, you can turn it into a photo contest. Choose the top 3 photos from the online gallery and display them on the live stream.
You can arrange to send prizes to the winners, which is a wonderful way to give them a physical reminder of your event. If you’re planning a virtual product launch, use the new product as prizes. Your audience will be thrilled to receive your latest and greatest product in their mailbox.
3. Generate FOMO
Remember checking out your social media feed and spotting an event you really wanted to attend? Maybe it’s an awesome festival, concert or conference—and you felt real frustration if you could not be there.
That’s the power of FOMO (fear of missing out) at work, and it’s one of the most powerful marketing tactics that event planners can use.
This happened naturally at live, offline events. Attendees would share photos of the venue and create a positive loop of FOMO for you.
Your challenge is replicating that for online events. That’s why creating a photo opportunity with a virtual photo booth is so urgent.
It may be fun and games for your audience. But behind the scenes, it’s a crucial piece of your marketing strategy. Brand the photos with your custom visuals, and incentivise your audience to share the photos for you.
That’s how you get them to generate FOMO for your virtual event, for free.
3. AI Background Removal / Virtual Backgrounds
We use artificial intelligence to automatically replace any background. Upload your own backgrounds for guests to choose from.
Messy room? No problem. Make it disappear with a virtual background. Thanks to machine learning, it works like magic—no green screen required. You can even customise it with your own images.
4. Produce a beautiful Collage!
A collage is a meaningful way to show the solidarity and diversity of your people.
It’s a great way to mark the significance of your virtual event, and send a message that you’re all in this together—both to your audience and the rest of the world.
A virtual photo booth makes it incredibly easy to get the photos you need for your collage.
Just share the link to the virtual photo booth, or embed it right inside your website.
Send a couple of reminders to your audience to take a photo during your live stream. By the end of your event, you will get all the photos you need.
It’s zero hassle.
WHERE CAN WE IMPLEMENT THE SELFIEBOX VIRTUAL PHOTO BOOTHS?
1. Remote Teams
2. COVID-19 restricted Events
3. Virtual Events
4. Online Conferences
5. Multiple site activations
And many more opportunities!
A Virtual Photo booth is the perfect way to add interactivity into your virtual event.
But it can be so much more than just a photo booth.
Think of ways you can integrate it into meaningful and memorable experiences!
