About Flickr

Flickr is social-networking website that is built to allow people to post and share their own photos. Owned by Yahoo, it is the most popular of this category of sites. According to Alexa, it reaches approximately 10% of all Internet users and is the 42nd most popular website on the Internet.

Potential Hospitality Industry Uses of Flickr:

• Millions use Flickr. Search to see if there are already photos of your travel destination or lodging property. See what people are posting about your hotel, motel, inn, or your area.
• Flickr will link to your website with the photos you upload. This is a great internet marketing strategy: It will help drive qualified traffic, as well as provide potential search engine benefits.
• Flickr is a convenient place to share photos of your hotel or lodging property, and lets you create slideshows to put on your website.
• Flickr is a powerful and convenient way to manage your own photo library. Photos can be made private if you don’t want the whole world to see them.
• Flickr will print all kinds of collateral (calendars, booklets, posters, prints, stamps, etc) from your photos.
• Flickr will let you create a community, offering great photo sharing and online marketing opportunities for Chamber of Commerce’s, CVBs and tourist associations.
• Flickr gives you the opportunity to comment on photos that are relevant to your business.
• Flickr offers easy and intuitive photo-editing of your photos. A good place for people who don’t pre-edit their photos on their computers to tweak them after they upload them.

Tagging

The secret to Flickr is “tagging,” or labeling photos with words and phrases so that search engines can determine what the picture is about. That photo of your spa you upload may have a funny name like 452yt23.jpg, but when you upload it into Flickr, you can “tag” it with its name like “Nantucket spa.” Because Flickr is a “social Internet” site, a Flickr user can view your photos and add his or her own comments and tags like “dream vacation” because you are part of their dream vacation.

Tip #1 - Create and Optimize your Profile

When you create your profile, you have an opportunity to tell the wider community who you are. You also can setup links to your hospitality website(s) and e-mail. Make sure you choose or create an icon (I took a piece out of one of my photos to make mine) to represent yourself.

Other Flickr users can add to your profile through testimonials. Check out a screenshot of mine below. If you visit my profile, please add a testimonial.

Tip #2 - Upload and Optimize Photos

When you upload photos, make sure you:

• Add applicable and keyword-rich “tags”
• Give the photo a good title
• Write a description that is appealing and keyword-rich
• Add links in the description to related websites

Here is what it might look like when it is complete:

Tip #3 - Organize and Optimize with Sets

I typically upload a bunch of my photos, and pick only the best ones to jazz up with keywords, titles, tags, description, links, etc.

As I upload my photos, I put them into “groups” which are logical. This allows me to arrange them, as well as to create a group page. For your group page, write a thoughtful title, description, links, etc. In this case, I chose the same photo to be my group icon. What you can’t see in this screenshot is the library.

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Categories: Blogging, Featured Articles, How To: Tips & Tools, Web 2.0.
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