A Hotel’s Guide to Using Flickr (Things I learned the hard way)

Flickr is perhaps the web’s most active community of photographers, currently hosting around 3.5 billion photos viewed by over 76 million visitors last month. The site was started in Vancouver in early 2004, and bought by Yahoo a year later in March 2005.

It’s interesting to note that Flickr is not the largest photo sharing site – ImageShack, Facebook, and PhotoBucket all host more photos. But those services do not provide the same level of exposure for photos, and are largely used as online storage or for sharing with a few friends. Flickr, on the other hand, is an online photography community, and is built to share photos with as many people as possible. Photographers such as Trey Ratcliff, James Neeley, and Kris Kros regularly get thousands of views for each image they post. This focus on sharing and distribution makes it ideal for hotel marketers looking to build their web media presence.

Photo by Stuck in Customs on Flickr

Before I dive into the “how” of promoting your photos on this site, let’s go over the “why”…

The 5 most compelling reasons for hotels to use Flickr in their web marketing

1. Flickr increases your web presence, building awareness among potential guests and travel planners
2. Flickr can link back to your hotel website, encouraging direct bookings and helping your search engine position
3. Flickr hosts your images for free
4. Flickr syndicates your photos across other websites (important in Google’s universal search – which includes media)
5. Flickr provides the opportunity to build relationships in your online community

As a bonus, Flickr has a large international following…particularly as a percentage of its users. Many social media networks are heavily weighted in one country, so this diversity is helpful if you’re trying to reach an international market. Art really does cross the language barrier:

Search data from Google Trends

Registering your Hotel Flickr Account

Registration is easy. Since it’s part of the Yahoo network, an existing account there will speed the process.  I recommend you use your hotel name as your Flickr username for search optimization purposes.

Customizing your Flickr Profile

One of the first things you want to do is change the URL of your photos. By default, it will look something like http://flickr.com/photos/96576897@N00345/. That’s not very friendly to search engines or regular people. Change it to include your hotel name or important keywords. You want your permanent URL to be something like http://flickr.com/photos/yourhotel/

The rest of pretty straightforward. You can upload a small image for your hotel’s avatar. You’ll probably want to fill out the “about” section with a brief description of your hotel, and then enter your website URL.

Ideas for your Flickr Photostream

• Professionally shot photographs of your hotel’s interior and exterior (example: Tiara Hotels)
• Professionally staged theme photos (see Witt Istanbul’s vintage travel-themed photos for a good example of this)
• Photos of your neighborhood
• Photos of your city (landmarks, little-known attractions, etc)
• Directions to your location in photos (guests arriving by foot from a nearby train station may want to know which landmarks to orient themselves by, for example)

Photo by Josiah Mackenzie on Flickr

Optimizing Flickr Photos for Increased Exposure

Just as there are adjustments for making your website appear higher in search results, there are steps you can take to optimize your Flickr photos so more people see them. As with any search optimization project, it involves putting your important keywords in prominent places:

• Put keywords in your image title (instead of the ugly camera-generated DCGW100322…or whatever)
• Include keywords in your image description
• Place a keyword-rich link back to a specific, related page on your website
• Tag your photo with relevant keywords

Here’s an example of an image from Lawrence Travel Center that is doing a pretty good job with image optimization. They have keywords in the right places and have a keyword-rich link in the description back to their website. I feel they could add a few more relevant keywords to the image, but they have the basic idea.

Power Tips 95% of Flickr Users Don’t Know About

Shhh…here are techniques that few people share, but that Flickr’s most effective users have been using to generate massive profile views and gain huge followings. I’ve noticed them by being a Flickr user myself and working with several other top accounts. If you just create an account, upload some photos, and leave you can’t expect to gain huge traffic. You have to do a little extra.

• Be smart with your licensing. “All rights reserved” is an old mindset that doesn’t work well in new media. Creative Commons offers a great alternative – select a license that meets your needs best. Allow anyone to download or republish your photos on their site with attribution. This spreads your brand much faster than if you reserved all rights and prohibited republishing. (See David Meerman Scott’s free ebook on ‘losing control’ for more on this topic.)
• Embed Flickr photos on your website whenever possible. Embedding increases your view count, and ‘interestingness‘ according to Flickr’s algorithm. This is why you want to use the open licensing described above.
• Use conceptual tag themes creatively. Don’t just tag photos with obvious hotel terms. Use as many relevant keywords as possible…describing the room, your property, and so on. Top photos will also have seemingly abstract terms like “light,” “design,” and “relaxing”…because those conceptual terms are what people search for.
• Participate in lots of groups. Groups focused around a subject like hotels or your city can be a great platform for boosting the popularity of your images. But don’t just dump your photos in the group pool and leave: get to know the other members and interact with their photos. Participation in the community is true in any social media situation, and applies here as well.
• Create varied content. This is seldom practiced by organizations on Flickr, but very important. For example, with Witt Istanbul Suites we included a great image of the Istanbul Skyline. Not everyone will be searching for ‘Istanbul Hotel’ on the site, but quite a few searches take place for ‘Istanbul Night Skyline.’ Having a hotel-produced image of that phrase enables them to capture some traffic there.
• Geo-tag your photos. Quite simply, this is placing your photos on a map showing visitors where the pictures were taken. It’s important for reaching people looking for photos in the area your hotel is located. (There’s a tutorial from Flickr describing the process.)
• Create great content. That should go without saying, but developing fascinating images will make your promotional efforts much easier. If you’re taking the pictures yourself, learn how to use different lenses, lighting, and processing techniques to create captivating images. Great photography will spread organically and virally.

Photo by Josiah Mackenzie on Flickr

Examples of Hotels on Flickr

I’ve linked to several photostreams earlier in this post, but here are a couple more examples of hotels and hospitality companies on Flickr:

• Happy Hotelier (Guido has a set with photos of his Haagsche Suites, but is a good example of someone who publishes a diverse range of interesting content)
• Royal Ramblas Hotel
• St. Martenslane’s
• Domes of Elounda (suites in Crete)
• Hyatt Hotels (they have decided to put all their properties under one account)

Hotel Groups on Flickr

• Hotel Design <- My group
• Hotels
• Hotel Rooms
• Great Hotels of the World
• Hotels & Resorts – Around the World
• Luxury Hotels
• Hotel Chatter

Helpful Tools for Hoteliers Using Flickr

• Flickr uploading tool (free) – a must if you’re uploading lots of pictures
• Flickr badges allow you to automatically update your hotel website with new photos
• Flickr plugin for WordPress
• Big Huge Labs produces a few very helpful tools (along with many fun ones)

Further Resources about Flickr

• Killr Flickr Tips Blog
• Top 10 Tips for Getting Attention on Flickr
• How to Rock Flickr Like a Champ
• 100+ Tools for Flickr Addicts
• 60+ Tools to Enhance Your Flickr Experience
• FlickrLeech (my favorite tool for creative inspiration)

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