One thing you may not know about Flickr is that unless you have a Flickr Pro account, there are restrictions for how many people you can message. A quick $25 takes care of this and is well worth the cost.
Case Study. Client owns a travel portal and uses publicly licensed images of the area from flickr. With a Pro account in hand, our team is able to contact each of the photographers whose photos are being used. An email was sent out giving them a friendly heads up that their photos were being used and inviting them (and their friends) to come leave reviews on the actual shot locations. And the photographers did leave reviews. They also began promoting the content. Or more accurately, they began promoting themselves. They blogged about the San Miguel de Allende and the portal site that used their photos. They linked to it. They sent traffic to it. They became the best promotional army you could ask for because they were feeding into one of the most basic human instincts there is—the need to be more famous and more recognized than the person standing next to you.
The result?
Thirty-five or so links to the main site (and that number goes up every week), to the directory and to other interior pages. All from connected and well-linked travel sites.
Real foot traffic.
A more linkworthy directory thanks to the incorporation of expert photos, thus making it easier for the marketing team to market and build more links to.
It became a success story for how to do something interesting and gain links in a very natural way.
