Why Flickr Images Boost Your Blog

Pictures speak a thousand words, right?
At a time when people lead busy lives and don’t want to read through a long blog post, why not make life a little bit simpler for your readers by including pictures?
For instance, how does this sand sculpture make you feel? What are the eyes looking at, how is the […]

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Pictures speak a thousand words, right?

At a time when people lead busy lives and don’t want to read through a long blog post, why not make life a little bit simpler for your readers by including pictures?

For instance, how does this sand sculpture make you feel? What are the eyes looking at, how is the mouth shaped, why are the cheeks bulging?

I shot this photograph last summer at the eighth annual Hampton Beach Master Sand Sculpting Competition. I felt captivated by this icon of an “angry sun,” the sign indicated, named such because of global warming.

The sun spoke to me–and I uploaded the photo to my Flickr account. [Source]

My one-year-old baby is a Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS. Among its features are 8.3 megapixels, face tracking technology, and image stabilization with a 3x optical zoom. It’s small enough, resembling the size and weight of my BlackBerry, that I stick the camera in my pocket for target practice.

Once the photos are in my camera’s memory, then what? I could upload it to my computer but who would see them? I could print and frame some, but that only works if you come over. Some people upload photos to Facebook–but I find Flickr much friendlier for its tagging and sharing capabilities.

In this sense, Flickr is a social networking site. Once you create an account, you can share photos with your friends and the world. There’s even an internal mail system. I bet you didn’t know that, did you?

Flickr is to photographs what YouTube is to videos.

Have a look. Click here and view my photostream. I usually upload new camera photos every few weeks, and add non-photos (web screen shots, etc) on occasion, too. About two hours ago, I added another batch of some 30 shots, taken over the past month.

Want to see the idealist.org job fair I stopped by last week, a photo of me from mid-February, the oodles of marketing material in the local Chamber of Commerce, or my Subaru covered in snow? Click the links and you can see them.

Do you see how my photos have titles, descriptions, and/or tags? That makes it easy and intuitive for someone, anyone, you, to search my photostream and find something suitable.

But don’t limit your photo clicking to me.

Zenotri shoots elephant sex at a zoo, Licht experiments with microphotography with drops of water, Red~Star finds lip-locked seagulls, and crystalchroma shows us a road sign warning cars about elderly people crossing the street.

Don’t you agree your blog would be more pleasing to the eye if you included a picture or two? Aren’t you more inclined to read someone else’s blog, a website, even a newspaper article–if a picture is attached?

Pictures DO speak a thousand words.

STOP! Do not use ANY Flickr photograph in your blog.

Many photographers do not allow you to display their photos. It has to do with copyright.

But there are workarounds, and Skellie explains the best reasons to use Flickr images and how to know whether a photo is able to be used. More on that in my next blog post…

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Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this, please consider following more tips by RSS or email delivery. | Twitter | FriendFeed | Email