Written on Nov 11th, 2008 by Dave Adams

Posted In: Social Media

Ten Tips To Improve Your Flickr Experience

Flickr, Photography, Technique, Tips

You’ve been using Flickr for a while now, but you don’t seem to get any comments or views on your work. You’ve been busy taking hundreds of great photographs, and you would love it if just one or two people would stop by and tell you they like what you have been doing, but its not happening.

So whats gone wrong? Why do some people seem to get hundreds of comments for every photo they upload to Flickr when you get none?

While I don’t have all the answers, and my Flickr photostream is by no means popular in comparison to the big hitters on Flcikr, I do get steady stream of feedback, which is nice. So here are some tips to help you improve your Flickr experience and perhaps boost your popularity. Most importantly it may get the ball rolling and kick start your participation in the Flickr community.

1. Photo Quality is Critical and Volume Counts

This is the first tip, and its critical. Get this wrong and (99% of the time) no one will take any notice of your photography. You have got to get the basic photography skills right and be uploading only your very best work.

Uploading hundreds of shots of the same thing with only small variations in content mean that people will get bored very quickly. Limit the amount you upload to a small proportion of the photos you take, and make sure you only upload your best. Remember that for anyone who has made you a contact, they will only see the last five photos you uploaded in their contacts list (unless they have opted to only see the last photo uploaded by contacts), so that last photo you send to Flickr is vital. Its got to be the best it can be as that may determine whether a contact checks out your photostream or not.

If you want a place to dump all your photographs, sign up for a second account on Flickr and use that. This will separate your best photography from your average and not clutter up your ‘promoted’ account.

2. Social Interaction (Commenting and Favs) Is Important

Before you get added as a contact by someone, they have to be aware of you existing. To do this, you need to socially interact with the Flickr community. This can be either commenting on other peoples photographs, or marking them as faves as you browse through Flickr. The more you comment, the more visible you become.

As you comment, people will take notice and visit your photostream, especially the owner of the photograph you commented on.

3. Be Interesting

Flickr uses a nifty and secret algorithm to work out what photos are interesting for the current day, and puts them in what is called Flickr Explore. This is a list of the top 500 photographs according to their rules.

While no one really knows what makes up the algorithm, there has been plenty of speculation about how it works and what you can do to ‘play the game’. I’ve had a few photos turn up in Flickr Explore, but I couldn’t tell you how it happened, other than to say it picked on photos that were well tagged, had a few comments, and it occurred during my busier social activities on Flickr itself.

Therefore I suggest you try and participate within Flickr as much as you can, and hopefully this will lead to the Flickr algorithm picking you out. Looking at some of the regular Flickr Explore contributors, they all seem to get hundreds of comments within hours of posting a new photograph, which implies there is a level of importance attached to the amount of comments a photo attracts.

4. Use an Avatar

This is a really simple thing to do, but many people don’t. Go to your Flickr profile and upload an image to use as your avatar (an avatar is the little picture that appears next to your name.) The default Flickr avtar is the little grey smiley face, and if you replace it with something more personal, you become recognisable from your picture alone.

5. Add Commentors as Contacts

As you start to get comments on your photographs, make sure that you visit each commentor and check out their photostream. Those whose photos you like, make sure you mark them as a contact. If they have commented on one of your photos, its likely they will comment on other ones as well.

6. Make use of Titles, Tags and Descriptions

Its critical that you put accurate descriptions and relevant tags on all your uploads to Flickr. While this can be hard work if you are uploading a handful of photos at once (see point 1), Flickr does provide tools to make it easier.

The title is also important, there is nothing more offputting than checking out a photostream to find every photo is called IMG_00032 or DSC_00032 etc. It only takes a few moments to add a proper title to a photograph. It doesn’t need to be witty or clever, just honest.

The better your descriptions and tags, the more likely your photos are to turn up when someone performs a search through Flickr. Just avoid TagDumping, where you put every possible keyword known to man in the tag list, many of which are not relevant.

7. Participate in Groups to Gain Visibility

Flickr thrives on group participation. There are groups for everything, from camera manufacturers to post-processing techniques to photographs of specific things. If you have a particular interest, or photograph a certain subject, find a group for it and submit your photos. This gives you visibility within the groups, and will lead to comments on your photos, so long as you are submitting your best work.

There are even groups designed specifically to give you feedback on your work, although you may need to be thick skinned to participate. Of all the activities I’ve done on Flickr, group participation is the one that has led to the most feedback on my photographs.

8. Follow the Followers

If you find a popular photographer whose work you like, and your taste in subject and post-processing is similar, check out the photostreams of the people who comment on that persons photos. If they are commenting, its means they are interested in the subject, and are likely to respond to your comments on their photostream with recipriocal action.

9. Spread the Flickr Word

If you are really keen to promote your Flickr profile, spread the word about Flickr to everyone you know. Send out links to your Flickr homepage to all your contacts outside of Flickr itself. This will drive traffic to your profile, and those that register are likely to mark you as a contact straight away.

10. Participate in the Flickr Help Forum

Flickr also runs an active Flickr Help forum, which you should also participate in. This can help raise your profile and promote your photostream.

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