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How to draw attention to your photos on Flickr
10 years ago
“What i like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.”
― Karl Lagerfeld Hi peeps! 
lollazer here.
Recently I've been experimenting a little with what the most effective way is to draw attention to your photostream on Flickr.
Taking photos and maybe printing them to hang them up the wall is good and nice, but let's be honest: Getting feedback and attention and maybe even a little praise is extremely satisfying and can be very important for your progression as a photographer.
So, how can you soak up as many of those delicious views and favorites as possible?
First of all, tag your images. This seems to be the most important part. Tags make it easier for people to find your images when searching for photos on Flickr.
Be sure to add as many tags as possible, but without being dishonest. Tagging a photo of a cow as aviation photography might backfire on you.
Things get especially interesting when people add their own tags to your images, but more on that later.
Second of all, add your photos to Flickr groups. Groups are small communities within Flickr that center around a certain topic, like aviation or zoo animals. Adding your photos to groups ensures that people who are interested in that subject will find your images more effectively. But avoid groups that force you to leave comments on the photos of other users in that group. That just leads to worthless spam... Those "rewards" that you get from other users just mean that that person was forced to leave a comment and your image was just the next best option.
However! During the first 24 hours after uploading the image you don't want to add the photo to more than 5 groups! This is important and will make more sense later.
The Flickr community also likes to return favors. Add as many photos as you can to your favorites, follow people and leave lots and lots of comments. Most people will gladly do the same for you.
You can also add one of your photos to the comment for another photo. Just add the full URL to your photo in the comment field and Flickr will automatically add it to your comment.
Another way to get attention is to simply share your image with others. And the most effective way to do that is the supposedly most influential place on the internet: reddit.
Just go to reddit, search for a big subreddit that your photo fits in really well (there are subreddits for everything) and post it there with a striking title that also describes the image really well. Make sure to post it during the early afternoon and when lots of users are online to get the most amout of views possible.
After you upload your image you can also add a location to it. That way people who look for that location will find your photo as well.
Another great way to get attention is to share your photos on Youtube. It sounds weird but it makes sense, many Youtubers get a lot of attention. And since Youtube now allows links in the comments you can just post the link to your Flicks shots there! Just be subtle about it. Don't just post the link and demand that people check out your shot, just add the photo to your comment as an example for what you said. It also makes sense to only post your shots there when you leave a comment on a video that is actually about photography.
All of this can lead to one thing: If your photo gets a lot of attention it might end up on the Flickr Explore page.
What is Explore? Every day Flickr selects 500 shots from the previous day that it determines to be the most interesting.
Flickr has a special (and patented!) algorithm that determines how interesting a photo is. Number of views, comments and favorites, is the photo added to a location, all of that determines what Flickr calls the "interestingness" of your photo. It also checks how many people have added tags to your image and in how many groups you have shared it. If you shared it in more than 5 groups the interestingness actually decreases because people didn't find it on their own, but rather because you have added the shot to what feels like 2 million groups.
There are more factors to it than that, and generally every photo can end up on the Explore page as long as Flickr determines that your photo is particularly interesting.
So far none of my own photos have been added to that magical place. But that is probably because I just recently started to follow those points above.
Last week I was at about 500 daily total views on my photos. Now I am at about 3000 to 4000, and yesterday it just jumped to 7500 for some reason.
So, I hope this makes it a little easier for you to get more exposure on Flickr. Good luck!
lollazer here.Recently I've been experimenting a little with what the most effective way is to draw attention to your photostream on Flickr.
Taking photos and maybe printing them to hang them up the wall is good and nice, but let's be honest: Getting feedback and attention and maybe even a little praise is extremely satisfying and can be very important for your progression as a photographer.
So, how can you soak up as many of those delicious views and favorites as possible?
First of all, tag your images. This seems to be the most important part. Tags make it easier for people to find your images when searching for photos on Flickr.
Be sure to add as many tags as possible, but without being dishonest. Tagging a photo of a cow as aviation photography might backfire on you.
Things get especially interesting when people add their own tags to your images, but more on that later.
Second of all, add your photos to Flickr groups. Groups are small communities within Flickr that center around a certain topic, like aviation or zoo animals. Adding your photos to groups ensures that people who are interested in that subject will find your images more effectively. But avoid groups that force you to leave comments on the photos of other users in that group. That just leads to worthless spam... Those "rewards" that you get from other users just mean that that person was forced to leave a comment and your image was just the next best option.
However! During the first 24 hours after uploading the image you don't want to add the photo to more than 5 groups! This is important and will make more sense later.
The Flickr community also likes to return favors. Add as many photos as you can to your favorites, follow people and leave lots and lots of comments. Most people will gladly do the same for you.
You can also add one of your photos to the comment for another photo. Just add the full URL to your photo in the comment field and Flickr will automatically add it to your comment.
Another way to get attention is to simply share your image with others. And the most effective way to do that is the supposedly most influential place on the internet: reddit.
Just go to reddit, search for a big subreddit that your photo fits in really well (there are subreddits for everything) and post it there with a striking title that also describes the image really well. Make sure to post it during the early afternoon and when lots of users are online to get the most amout of views possible.
After you upload your image you can also add a location to it. That way people who look for that location will find your photo as well.
Another great way to get attention is to share your photos on Youtube. It sounds weird but it makes sense, many Youtubers get a lot of attention. And since Youtube now allows links in the comments you can just post the link to your Flicks shots there! Just be subtle about it. Don't just post the link and demand that people check out your shot, just add the photo to your comment as an example for what you said. It also makes sense to only post your shots there when you leave a comment on a video that is actually about photography.
All of this can lead to one thing: If your photo gets a lot of attention it might end up on the Flickr Explore page.
What is Explore? Every day Flickr selects 500 shots from the previous day that it determines to be the most interesting.
Flickr has a special (and patented!) algorithm that determines how interesting a photo is. Number of views, comments and favorites, is the photo added to a location, all of that determines what Flickr calls the "interestingness" of your photo. It also checks how many people have added tags to your image and in how many groups you have shared it. If you shared it in more than 5 groups the interestingness actually decreases because people didn't find it on their own, but rather because you have added the shot to what feels like 2 million groups.
There are more factors to it than that, and generally every photo can end up on the Explore page as long as Flickr determines that your photo is particularly interesting.
So far none of my own photos have been added to that magical place. But that is probably because I just recently started to follow those points above.
Last week I was at about 500 daily total views on my photos. Now I am at about 3000 to 4000, and yesterday it just jumped to 7500 for some reason.
So, I hope this makes it a little easier for you to get more exposure on Flickr. Good luck!
However, there is a lot less interaction between members going on there. That has multiple reasons:
First of all, the only place where you have actual conversations is within the group forums. Other community tools are pretty limited, you can't post journals for example. All you can do is upload photos, leave comments on photos and in the group forums, follow users and add their photos to your favorites and you can send messages to users. That's it.
The other thing is that anyone with any kind of camera can upload content to Flickr. That is the main reason why they have so many uploads per day. Because of that it is actually very difficult to get any sort of exposure there. And as a result the community interaction is further reduced.
Here on FA you have artists, commissioners and people who just like to look at art. Because of that there is a ton of interaction between users. But on Flickr everyone can upload stuff and everyone wants to have people look at their work.
So imagine FA, but everyone is an artist and no one leaves any comments. That is how Flickr works :P
Have you checked it and found it great? Do youget paid by hits? Personal achievement?
But also, when your photos get more attention that means people will actually comment on them. And feedback, whether it's good or bad, is always important if you want to improve.