New Tech: Make an image interactive for your online marketing

They say “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but sometimes you have even more to say about your marketing images. One of the best things about the web is the opportunity to add links to make your stories interactive. Links within copy are a given, but links within images are more difficult to achieve and usually require web programming skills. However, we recently found a free web tool called “Thinglink” that allows you to add hotspots to any image so users can click to find more information.

To use Thinglink, you create an account and then upload an image to their site. You then can click anywhere on the image to add a link. You can link to any website so users can click for more information. You can also add “rich media” links, where you link to images, video, sound, music, shopping sites, and more. These links pull content from popular sites where you have uploaded information (i.e. videos you have put on YouTube, images you’ve put on Flickr). If you add rich media, the information displays right over the image when people click the hotspot, so they do not have to leave the page to see the image, video, etc. that you have added.

Then, you can take the interactive image and embed it on your website or blog, or you can share it directly on your social media sites.

The marketing potential of this tool is vast. If you sell products, you can show within an image where people can make a purchase or explain more about specific features. If you have created a video that supplements an image (tutorials, commercials, tours, and testimonials come to mind), you can put a link within the image so people can watch the video without leaving the page. If you work in real estate, you can create a virtual tour within a floorplan, showing images and video as we have done below. We added a YouTube tour, Flickr Images, and a link to the landing page for the home.

What do you think of Thinglink?