If you’re not familiar with Flickr, then you’ve been living under a rock. Flickr is “the best online photo management and sharing application in the world,” according to their website and I can’t say that they are wrong, Flickr allows you to put all of your photos online and share them with an international community via their social network. But that’s not all it allows you to do. The following is a simple way to promote and drive traffic to your blog using Flickr.
Take pictures of everything
Flickr offers a free membership, but for a mere $24.95 a year you can get an unlimited membership…and you should. Once you’ve setup your unlimited Flickr account, you should start taking photos of everything. If you’re a good photographer (or at least know how to frame a shot) then you’ll have even better results. You see, not only is Flickr a way for you to share and host your own photos, but it’s also a huge database of photography that other bloggers (with your permission) can use in their own posts. The more photos you take, the more options other bloggers have available when accessing your photos.
The best photo in the world is worthless if not tagged correctly
Now that you are in the habit of taking good pictures of everything around you, it is important to make sure people can find them. I can take a great picture of my friend Brandon and Lindsey in the woods, looking like they are in love, but if I only tag it “brandon, lindsey” then I am limiting my audience significantly. Every time you upload a picture to Flickr add as many keywords as possible. When bloggers are searching for photos to use in their own blog, they are not searching for your friends’ names, but rather for situations, props, etc. You want to make sure you type in as many keywords as the photo can possibly portray. When listing keywords list whatever action, emotion, prop, product, costume, person, etc. is happening and you’ll show up in more user searches. Here’s an example of a photo I have on my Flickr account:
Keyword Tags:
happy sign sit n spin santa hat shovel dawn over zero suited productions xmas party 2006 christmas austin texas photoshoot raychel deppe jon ray jeff ray fun white elephant shovel
You’ll notice that I didn’t just mention the people in the photo, but also everything else in the photo. By doing such, I increase the odds of someone randomly landing on my photo through a search, than if I were to merely list names of people alone.
Of course, this is another situation that comes down to having compelling content. But, if you take good photos consistently, then not only will you have the benefit of repeat viewers, you’ll be able to drive more traffic to your blog and/or website.
Added Bonus
Of course, people may only subscribe to your Flickr account, which is fine. Over the course of time, if you engage those people through Flickr’s messaging/commenting system, you shouldn’t have a problem converting your Flickr fans into your blog fans. But, if you’d like to speed the process up, you can always brand your photos with your blog’s web address or logo. This just jumpstarts any conversations you might have with someone about your blog.
Link Backs
Ultimately, you’re going to want to take pictures that people want to share, or that illustrate a point. Look at the topics that are hot in the blogosphere and see if you can think of a photo that would represent those topics. It doesn’t have to be complicated, only effective in illustrating a point. Provide photos like this often enough and you’ll have bloggers all over the web linking back to you time and time again.
So, pull out your camera and start snapping pics!
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