How to Use Photos Online

Publishing photos online is one of the quickest and most effective ways to create lots of content about your business and your location.

Local businesses, community members, local media, your guests and visitors to your community are all great sources of inspiring content.

This tutorial shows you how to engage people to achieve lots of photos about your business and your location online. It also explores the best ways to capitalise on this content to drive enquiries back to your business.

Your Guests Photos

Many of your guests will take photos of your business and your location, therefore we encourage you to:

Become interested in photography and find out what your guests are taking photos of in your area
Ask your guests which photography website’s they use, how they share their photos and why
Ask your guests to send you any great shots and explain that you would like to add them to your website, blog, facebook etc (get permission to publish)

Learning about where these photos are being published will help you to understand how your business is being marketed by your guests online.

Your ATDW photos

The Week One tutorial highlighted the need to ensure your photos are up to date and plentiful on your ATDW listing.

Photos on ATDW are distributed to up to 80 websites that present this content in new and innovative ways to promote Australian tourism.

The more quality images you supply, the greater exposure you achieve for your business.

Click here for an article on the BBC website about how to take good photos.

Photo Sharing Websites

Some photo-sharing websites will link your photo back to you the author, your website and your business.

In the case of planbooktravel.com.au, photos are geographically linked to tourism information about your area and published on your location and region pages.

Go to flickr.com to learn more
Go to planbooktravel.com.au/travel-photos to learn more

Photo Albums on Facebook

Facebook allows you to upload entire albums in one go.

These photos are a good source of branding, they generate mass content and exposure.

Login to Facebook, go to photos, my uploads, and add photos. Facebook will prompt you to install some software if you have not done this before
If your guests use Facebook, ask them to share these photos with you on Facebook
Link to photos about your property and your area on your Facebook wall

Re-naming your photos

Make sure the photos have real descriptive names eg: lorne-sunset.jpg verses, say IMG12837.jpg before you upload them to the internet.

Photos with descriptive names stand a greater chance to be added to the Google images catalogue.

Displaying your photos in search engines such as Google images is an easy way to increase traffic back to your business and your website.

Find the photo on your PC
Right Click on the file
Select Rename from the drop down menu
Rename the file so it describes the image. *lowercase, no spaces e.g. lorne-swimming-at-sunset.jpg

Tourism Australia Website

Photos added to Tourism Australia’s ‘Nothing Like Australia’ website are promoted to the World and published on the Tourism Australia website.

To add a photo go to www.nothinglikeaustralia.com.

The images loaded to the site offer some branding opportunities for your location but generally the site is designed to brand Australia as a whole.

There are also daily prize draws to win a camera.

People and Children

If you are using images that contain people, make sure you get a model release form signed. This sets a clear understanding for the intended use of the photos.

Be very considerate when using images containing children and minors especially when they are wearing clothing such as swimwear. Make sure their model release form is signed by their legal guardian.

Examples of model release forms can be found online. Arts Law Australia offer a form which can be purchased here: www.artslaw.com.au

Creative Commons

Creative Commons helps you publish your work online while letting others know exactly what they can and can’t do with your work: www.creativecommons.org

If you select a license that requires publishers to acknowledge you, this will in turn promote your business.

To share your experiences about photography websites and using photos online, join theAustralian Tourism Marketing Group