As the busiest travel season draws to a close, you might be wondering what to do with all those photos you took this summer. You did take photos didn’t you?

The Fear of Sharing Photos Online

One of the issues folks are often afraid of when sharing their photos on Picasaweb or Flickr is:

“Won’t someone steal my pictures if I post them on the Web?”

The short answer is, “Yes, Hopefully.

Creative Commons to the Rescue

When you post images to your photo library on Flickr or PicasaWeb the default setting is to copyright your images. This means others cannot legally use your photos anywhere without your permission. Some people make the mistake of watermarking their photos with their Web site in the hopes of keeping others from using the photos for their own purposes.

However, the real goal should be to get your pictures seen by as many eyes as possible….. why else would you bother to put them on the Web, but to get them seen.

Creative Commons licensing is a Web standard for marking your images and giving permission to others to distribute and show your photos in more places than just your blog, website or photo library.

There are six different types of CC licenses.

The default setting Creative Commons is attribution, meaning that you give permission for your photos to be shared by others as long as they give proper credit to you by linking to the original source of the image. That way, you get credit for the photo and hopefully even a click through to your site from someone who views your photo elsewhere.

Licensers can also choose restrictions to use. The most commonly used restrictions are:

• denying the use of your photos for commercial purposes.
• restricting the users right to alter the original photo.

The Benefits of CC over Watermarking

• Watermarking compromises the beauty of your photos.
• Watermarking prevents your photos from being seen by others, while Creative Commons encourages the distribution of your photos.

Creative Commons on Picasaweb

When you upload or edit your photos look for the copyright icon at the lower right of the screen. There you can edit the CC settings of each image.

The easiest way to manage your CC settings is by changing your account default settings and applying the license you wish to use by clicking on the Settings link.

Flickr Creative Commons Settings

Each photo can have Creative Commons attributes in Flickr as well.

Setting the Default Setting for your Flickr account is found in the hyperlink in the second paragraph on the settings page for any individual image.

Getting Great Photos if you forgot to do it yourself

Sometimes your guests take great photos! Ask some of your ideal guests to share their photos with you, perhaps even have a photo contest. Just make sure to request that your guests properly license their photos for Creative Commons use, and be sure to use the license properly by giving credit and linking to the original source of any photos you use.

If you are still stuck, see this post on finding Creative Commons photos for use on your Website or blog.

The Clever Sheep demonstrates more creative commons wisdom with this short video that describes an easy way to find images to enhance your blog posts.

Putting your best photos on the Web at social sharing sites like Flickr, Picasa, Facebook and Panoramio can lead to increased sales if done correctly. Here are my top tips for using these sites.

1. Decide on the keyword combinations that you want your images to show up in search results for. I keep a printed list of keyword combinations near the computer. Image libraries are a great way to drop little kernels into the long tail of search. For each photo set focus on one three-four keyword combination. Here are a few keyword tools to try: Google Sets, MSN clustering tool, Searchradar, Keyword Map.
2. Only upload your Best photos! and make all your photos public. Remember, your photos are being delivered as a result to a search…. so deliver great photos that inspire folks about your offer. (See tip #10 to meet photographers who can help you get more great photos.)
3. Name each folder or set for one keyword combination and upload images that fit with the keyword set. Make your title of each set of photos a bold promise with a compelling headline.
4. Use the bulk tools to tag your photos with the chosen keyword phrase.
5. In the description text (called captions in picasa) for each photo, put some well-written text that describes your tourism offering, putting your selected keyword phrases within this text in a natural sounding sort of way. Be sure your business name and most importantly your web site URL find their way into your descriptions. Type your Web site url like this within each photo description: “http://www.yourwebsite.com”. Both Flickr and Picasa will make them a hyperlink to your site automatically.
6. Be creative with the title for each photo, but again, use keywords if relevant. If your photo shows up in search results, this will be the title of the listing. Take the time to write compelling photo titles.
7. Put yourself on the map and as accurately as possible pinpoint the locations your photos are taken. Take the time to Geotag your photos as part of the upload process. Photos that are tagged in Panoramio are now being shown on Google’s Map search results.
8. If you are concerned about people stealing your photos, get over it. Your photos retain their copyright when sharing on these sites, unless you give the rights away by choosing a Creative Commons license. If you are still obsessing about the possible theft of your photos, consider watermarking your image with your Web site domain with the free tool at http://www.picmarkr.com
9. Invite your ideal guests to visit the photo libraries you create and ask them to comment or write testimonials there. Make it a point of asking guests where they share their vacation photos online and write testimonials and comments on their photo libraries. This can become part of your Customer Relationship Management practice. Flickr also provides a form email and space for adding email invites people to join you on Flickr. Remember, these tools are how many people share their vacation experiences with family and friends. Your authentic appreciative comments on their photos will be appreciated by others who see them.
10. Get social with photos. Look for others who are sharing photos on your chosen service. (Oh, and there’s nothing wrong with uploading the same photos in multiple photo sharing services.) On Flickr, join groups that are sharing photos by subject (ie: yoga), location (ie: Algonquin Park), and photo themes (bliss). Like anything social, it takes time to get in with the crowd. If you really enjoy photos and want to improve as a photographer, browse others photos, leave comments, and learn from others. Search for photographers which include your business or region name and become friends. And, invite your guests to share their photos on your Facebook Fan page.

Here are some helpful pdf documents from Tourism Keys with step by step instructions for uploading your photos correctly.

One more place to share video. The good news is, you can repost all that content you’ve up’d to Youtube and other video sharing site (if you are a PRO member and your video is less than 90 seconds). Bad news, it’ll take a bit of time to get that done – and who knows how popular these short videos will be. However, one more needle in the haystack so to speak, but I like Gizmodo’s description – they’re really just long photos, and with that in mind, PRO members may need to think differently about the kind of content that will work here.
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2008/04/09/video-on-flickr-2/

oh, and don’t forget Adobe… goodness they are busy rocketing off new apps like crazy.
Following up on online version of Photoshop comes Adobe TV video viewer.
Flash video can be viewed in 1080p, 720p or 480i resolutions. The iTunes style player allows users to subscribe to television shows and other content and automatically receive new episodes when they are available. More than a few big name companies are making their content available there.

Adobe TV also offers “expert instruction and original series programming” about Adobe products. Channels are targeted at Photographers, Designers, Video Professionals, and Developers. Over 200 videos are available to start.

No joke, I was chatting with my twin brother yesterday… he’s a bit geeky too, but he actually lives in the city, hundreds of miles away. You might be interested to know that he too is involved in educating people on how to use these emerging technologies on the Internet.

Not so coincidentally, last week, we both made blog posts on the exact same topic – Creative Commons licensed works on Flickr… no joke. Some kind of Mind-Meld.

Anyway, he made a pretty nice little video to showcase how to go about getting free Creative Commons photos on flickr for Teachers. The one thing to note for business use, you’ll want to check the box for Commercial Use under Licenses.

On Flickr Advanced Search, check the box for Creative Commons – Commercially licenced photos and search to your heart’s delight…. You are sure to find some great photos to get you started…. of course it is best to track down and plan your own great photos, but there is nothing wrong with using these….

TechCruch reports today that we are days away from Video being shared on Yahoo’s Flickr Service. That’s right folks, one more place to share your videos. With the gazillions of eyeballs watching online video (10 billion videos viewed each month!) almost any site that promises an opportunity to upload and view video is bound to get hundreds of thousands of new visits each month.

I’ve blogged about tools that add motion and depth to your image libraries and there most image hosting services like Picasa, Flickr and others make it easy to create movement with your images. Below, I’ve pasted some images with snippets of video to share what we were up to yesterday at GMIST Edge of the Wedge in Rocky Harbour, Newfoundland.

Flickr is a great site for posting images, sharing those images in groups that are interested in the type of tourism experiences you offer and expanding your Web presence beyond your Web site. While using your profile description to link back to your site may get you more business leads, Flickr and image sharing sites are more about social networking and using free services to share your images online. Recently, Flickr turned off the benefits of linking your image libraries back to your site, but turning on the rel=nofollow attribute on links from image libraries, Flickr is telling search engines to not include the value of these links in determining Web site relevance. The links will still go through from the images to your Web site, but the image libraries will not help your ranking for relevant search terms – hence, no SEO value from linking these image libraries. Still, I heartily recommend using image libraries as a significant and important way to build your online tourism business.

Learn more about how to use Flickr to grow your business at this fine blog post.

Learn more about the NoFollow attribute and it’s importance in reducing comment spam from google.

I just came across an interesting article highlighting the value of posting your tourism business images to sites like Flickr and Picasa and using Creative Commons licensing. The issue is that although I don’t want anyone stealing my photos, I would indeed like them to use my photos – with permission and with recognition of the source. This sort of distribution of your photos can lead to more web site visits or image library visits by people who come across your photo on other web sites! Read the article on sharing your tourism photos with Creative Commons attributes.