Craft and Photography Flickr Group

The Crafty Bloggers Flickr Group

Silent forest
Silent Forest, by Paul Bailey - Artist and contributer to the Craft Blog UK Flickr Pool

As I'm sure many of you will already know, Flickr is a fantastic tool for sharing your images of the art and crafts you have created, it is a huge and vastly popular site, millions of members and interesting groups to get involved in.  If you haven't ever explored it go now and then when you realise you have just lost 2hrs looking at all the amazing images come back and read the rest of the post -  Flickr.com


Great, your back! Today I want to spread the word about the Craft Blog UK Flickr group, this isn't an introduction as it's not a brand new group, more of a comeback! Also towards the end of this post I have added a few tips for using flickr to network and promote your blog and crafts, despite the 'no-follow' tag!

If you are a Flickr user please join and add your images - you can post 2 per day and the images get shared over to the CBuk facebook page too.  I want to create a place to celebrate fantastic craft photography as well as fantastic craft. Not just a gallery but eventually a place to find and share photo tips too!

Craft Blog UK. Get yours at bighugelabs.com

As you can see we have a few hundered members posting already. In the discussions area I have recently added links to blogging tutorials and I'm in the process of creating a thread for photography tips links and also a definitive list of other great handmade and crafts flickr groups to add your images to. (I'm a listaholic!)

With flickr you can network with other artists and generally increase public awareness of your blog and any associated online shops.  NB. Be wary of direct advertising, there are strict rules about selling and advertising through flickr.

Great work! Seen at

I've added a comment code, so you can simply copy and paste it to let people know where you have seen their image.  (The code is available on the main group page - just ask if you need help finding or using it)  Using this comment code helps the group to grow as people see the link and people love to receive comments and will often comment right back, I like to write a little line about the image before posting the cbuk badge. Many groups have special threads for people who have received a certain number of 'awards' like these, this is something I may look to add, it's yet another way of more people seeing your work.


Flickr is not an seo tool! (well not directly anyway) but it can be used to spread the word about your blog and crafts!

Another Summer Wanderings embroidery
Another Summer Wanderings embroidery - Gracies Garden - Artist and contributer to the Craft Blog UK Flickr Pool

SEO, or search engine optimisation is a process of increasing your position in search engine results pages by carefully designing and writing your web pages as well as working to increase relevant links back to your site from other websites.

I wrote an article for the Folksy blog recently all about using existing networks to launch your social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter. It describes how your contacts can help to sow the seeds needed to grow your online networks leading to increased traffic to your site and a vicarious boost in your search engine rankings. The same principles I discussed with relation to the folksy forums apply with Flickr - but there is a distinct difference.

Linking back to your blog

Flickr uses the no-follow tag for all links except those that link to flickr.  What this means is that google is told to ignore the fact that it's linking to a site. Even though flickr is a huge and important page it will not give you that important link juice back to your site with respect to googles search engine results pages.So posting a link to your blog on a really relevant photo from another flickr user will not help in terms of your seo, if it's relevant and not spammy it may well help you to gain a fe new readers.

Top 10 tips for promoting your blog through Flickr
  1. Add your blog link to each and every image
  2. Make the link relevant to the image, link directly to a post rather than your home page
  3. Don't spam other flickr users or groups, keep it relevant if you want to share a link
  4. Tag contacts in your images that you think will enjoy the image and the associated blog post
  5. Tweet and Facebook the link to the image
  6. Add the image to lots of groups (10 is the max for non pro members) - see my list of crafting and blogging groups in the CBuk Discussion area.
  7. Write a snippet or summary of your post in the descriptions of your image or tell us the story behind them and let people know they can find out more about the image and artist on your blog.
  8. Use lot of tags - it helps your image to be found and possibly 'explored' on Flickr.
  9. Geotag your photos - people may be searching for local artists!
  10. The most important part is to take great shots of your crafts! Use flickr to learn from others and ask questions about how they achieved a certain look.

Networking with other craft bloggers will see your work shared to a larger audience over time, crafters are always looking for content for their blog and the majority will link back to you!  If you don't want people to do this, check your settings and simply write a note in your descriptions to ask people to message you if they want to use your images for a post, you can then decide if you want your image associated with that website.

Back soon with more :)
x Hilary

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