Flickr.com

Let’s take a look at Flickr.com. Flickr is the world’s largest online photo-sharing website. You can create a free account at Flickr.com and post pictures of your area or attraction. If you need additional benefits you can upgrade to a “pro account” for just $25.00 a year, which gives you unlimited storage and a host of other benefits.

When you upload photos to Flickr you can “tag” them, describing what’s in the photo. For this photo of West Baden Springs Resort, I described it using the following tags:

• west baden springs
• indiana
• resort
• architecture
• restored
• historic
• dome
• atrium
• hotel

Now, anyone can visit Flickr and search for photographs that are tagged “dome” and this photo will show up in the search results. Flickr provides you with a great way to showcase the best of what your organization has to offer and you can further your exposure by creating or joining a Flickr group. You can even pull photographs from your “photo stream” onto your website using some tools that Flickr provides (again, for free).

If we’ve piqued your curiosity in Flickr, you can check out the Indiana Office of Tourism Development’s account or our photo-sharing group – Visit Indiana. If you’ve got some photos of Indiana, we’d love for you to join Flickr, then join the Visit Indiana group and submit some of YOUR photos!

Update: Flickr now offers the opportunity to upload 90-second videos in addition to photos. I’ll be very interested to see how the new Flickr Video works out.