Lenzr is a serial photo contest website that lets business sponsor art. We started the website in August 2009, and have hosted over forty contests in two years. The average price of a photo contest is about five thousand dollars, with prizes and tax included. The companies that sponsor the photo contests get some buzz marketing, and notice some rise in traffic, but more importantly they get a shot-in-the-arm of social relevance that search engines can’t ignore. A photo contest is a catalyst to growing social capital. On February 1st 2011 nine different matches launched on Lenzr, with all manner of interesting and unusual theme challenges. For the first two days there were no photos entered into any of the categories… it was unnerving. But as of March 26th 2011, there were over 300 photos entered in all nine different challenges that compose the latest Lenzr offerings. In the ten… Read more »
Posted in: Analytics Software, Interactive, Lenzr, online business, Photography, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing, Web Resource
Taged with: creating social relevance, evolution of enterprise, Judges, Lenzr, photo contest, Web Marketing, winners
Lenzr is a social media marketing masterpiece that’s tragically flawed, and that’s what makes it so interesting. The serial photo contest website is basic and clunky, and the rules and voting mechanisms are easily bent by human avarice, but at the end of each session, it works. With very few exceptions, every business that sponsors an imaginative photo contest on Lenzr enjoys an inexpensive boost in their business URL’s search engine findability. The last session received over 4000 visitors, over half of them unique. The average visitor reviews seven pages and spends four minutes on the website. On July 1st 2010 the May June Lenzr photo contests came to an extraordinarily dramatic conclusion, resulting in scandal. In the Portable Luxury photo contest, the winning picture was removed by admin (because of ‘voting irregularities’) a mere 15 minutes before the contest was scheduled to end. Debbie Watson felt like she had… Read more »
Posted in: article marketing, corporate social responsibility, Interactive, Lenzr, Search Engine Marketing, Social innovation, Toronto, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing
Taged with: aerial photography, Bill Watson, Debbie watson, Lenzr, Mommakoala, photo contest, portable toilet rentals, Rockton Worlds Fair, Ve3bnw
Let’s start this journal update with good news… As an online storytelling service, Smojoe likes to hand craft happy endings, and we’re especially fond of documenting Lenzr photo contests, especially when prize winners send in proud photography of themselves with their winnings. Slimmswitch won the Neuton CE6 battery powered lawnmower courtesy of a Toronto area grass cutting service. That’s a happy ending. The sponsor was thrilled too; they used the Lenzr platform to promote their solar powered organic lawn care business and used contest messaging to get their name passed around in social networks. Slimmswitch reports that the high technology lawnmower is flawless. It’s good, fast and really quiet. He’s been tweeting about it @LOCOHIPPO. So have I, and in keeping with my tradition of packaging top shelf ideas as fragmented stories, I’ve been putting a lot more resources on Fotki, and webshots. You can find more details there and… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, article marketing, Friends of Smojoe, Lenzr, Photography, Toronto, Web Marketing, workshop
Taged with: battery powered, grass cutting, lawyers, Lenzr, Ontario private school, Order of Canada, PEZ, photo contest, prize, Wikipedia
Yesterday I wrote two blog entries, back to back, two hours each, from 7am til 11am in the morning. Then I spent the rest of the day leisurely bookmarking and promoting the posts in a ritual that has evolved over the years to include Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, and Reddit and I tweet the links on @roberrific and have recently begun to use Zoomit. Toronto Dentist on the Lenzr Blog I started writing this piece by hammering out my recollections of the exact moment when Toronto dentist Dr Natalie Archer DDS of the Rosedale Family Dental Care office at 600 Sherbourne St unit #808 met a 22yr old female York University student named Seattle Dredge, the winner of the Lenzr Kids in Action photo contest, who already has lovely teeth btw; her smile is today far whiter whiter than my own teeth will ever be. While writing the blog I remembered… Read more »
Posted in: Canada Blog Friends, Friends of Smojoe, Lenzr, Photography, Smojoe Clients, Toronto
Taged with: Bariatric Medical Institute, Dr Natalie Archer DDS, Dr Yoni Freedhoff, Kids in Action, Lenzr, photo contest, Seattle Dredge, teeth whitening, Toronto dentist, Weighty Matters
There’s something for everyone on Lenzr.com, as three new photo contests launch for the months of November and December 2009! Medicinal Plants in Nature celebrates natural medicine and hopes to collect images of potent herbs and flowers growing wild in the great outdoors. The discipline of depicting plants and flowers accurately with respect to their form and colour is called botanical photography, and members are encouraged to pinpoint each plant’s medical applications. A successful botanical photographer is both a scientist and an artist. The discipline requires a detailed knowledge of plants and their habitats as well as a keen eye for making attractive pictures. Sponsored by Ontario’s premier natural medicine clinic, the member that uploads the highest rated photo WINS six different Neal’s Yard Remedies which are formulated from botanical ingredients. The prize package includes Orange Flower Facial Wash, Rosewater Toner, Orange Flower Facial Oil, Yarrow & Comfrey Moisturizer, White Tea… Read more »
Posted in: Lenzr, Photography, Search Engine Marketing, Social innovation, Social Media, Toronto, Web Marketing, workshop
Taged with: Brighton Ontario b&b, car insurance, Lenzr, mobile app developer, natural medicine, photo contest, prize, wine tour
Halloween came and went and I have loot bag full of memories from Deb Lewis function at the Gardiner Museum. Deb Lewis looked great and her party was a big success. This is me with Farah Fawcett At the Gardiner Museum. Halloween is a healthy opportunity to wear a full body mask and truly be someone else. Three glasses of rye and I became The Gladiator for a spell. On Halloween night the fourth photo contest on Lenzr ended. Ontario Tourist Attractions amassed over seventy five different submissions which accumulated almost 3000 votes. It came as no surprise to me that Mommakoala’s image ‘No Pesky Neighbours Here‘ was the winner with 93 total votes and a registered rating of 8.7. This is a quirky image and unusual pictures seem to win Lenzr photo contests. Sponsored by Kanetix.ca this car insurance quotes provider was thrilled with the success of the endevour… Read more »
There are three photo contests on Lenzr this summer, with three different prizes. Its now the middle of July and Lenzr.com is off to a great start. All three of contests are up and running and offer great prizes. The whole competition will end midnight 31 August 2009, but for me and everyone watching the spectacle, the real rewards come when Google updates the PageRank value Lenzr.com and then the client websites. So far in the very first Lenzr contest period, the debut summer competition, the best prize for photographers to win is without question the reward that has been posted in Summer in Toronto. Here the lucky winner gets their choice of smart phone* and that prize is compelling because people want to know what phone will the winner chose? Which phone would you choose? Summer in Toronto – This web challenge is the place to show us what… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, Interactive, Lenzr, Search Engine Marketing, Social innovation, Social Media, Toronto, Uncategorized, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing, Web Resource, workshop
Taged with: best cell phone deals, Lenzr, photo contest, skyline, smart phone, time management, Toronto
Local photo contest website Lenzr.com launched on July 1st 2009. Happy Canada Day! The fireworks all over Toronto are bursting to celebrate the birth of this nation, but to me, the pyrotechnics are popping for Lenzr. After a two months gestation period which began when the notion was first conceived on my chalk board, and then transcribed into a seven page IA document (drawn on the fabric of experience learned from Dumpdiggers.com), William Webb of Innate Media Group delivered a demo on June 15th and now finally the beta site at Lenzr.com/toronto is presently running the first photo challenge. At the core of this photo contest website you can hear the echoes of the photo battles for old coins and marbles that occurred last fall in the Dumpdiggers Arena. As a website designer, I gained a lot of wisdom making the antiques social networking site at Dumpdiggers.com. Lenzr was built… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, Future Technology, Lenzr, Search Engine Marketing, Social innovation, Toronto, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing, Web Resource
Taged with: Dumpdiggers, Lenzr, photo contest, Toronto