Category Archives: flickr

SOCIAL PHOTO: 11 groovy ways Flickr can be used by local government

There’s four billion reasons why Flickr is brilliant.

Four billion? That’s the number of images uploaded to it over the past five years.

Best bit? You don’t have to be David Bailey to get something out of it. You could be Bill Bailey.

What is Flickr? It’s a photo sharing website. You join as an individual. You upload pictures. You can add them to groups. You can comment on pictures too.

There are tens of thousands of groups on a bewildering range of subjects. Football? Check. Walking? Buses? Cricket scoreboards?  Clouds? They all have dedicated groups. There’s even one for Gregg’s shop fronts, believe it or not.

There are also geographical Flickr groups based on areas like the Black Country, Walsall or London.

Why bother with Flickr? Because a picture says 1,000 words. Besides, it’s a brilliant way to capture, celebrate and collaborate.

It’s a cinderella social media platform without a Stephen Fry to champion it. But there is a growing and exciting number of uses for it.

So what are the barriers for people to use it?

Like any platform, there are obstacles. None are insummountable.

There’s the usual cultural issues for an organisation using web 2.0. People can talk to you. You can talk back. You may have blocking issues too.

There may also be concern over images. Surely there’s room for dodgy pictures? Actually, not really. The Flickr community is a hugely civilised place. Your first uploads get checked over before they are seen. People comment constructively.

Isn’t it just for good photographers? No. Amateurs thrive here. Snap away.

How about copyright? Copyright is with the photographer. Even if you’ve commissioned it. Don’t upload someone else’s shots without their permission.

Eleven uses of Flickr in local government

1. Be a dissemenator – Stock photography – Newcastle  use it as a way of allowing stock photography to be disseminated. With photographers’ permission. Like Calderdale Council’s countryside team.

2. Be a campaigner – Create a Flickr group for a campaign – Willenhall, Aldridge and Darlaston  in Bloom, for example.

3. Be a way to open-up museums – Create a Flickr group for a museum exhibition. Look at Walsall Museums.

4. Be an enabler – Set-up a Flickr meet. It’s a brilliant way to connect and collaborate.  Here’s my blog on this event from  a council perspective and from a Flickr photographer’s perspective from the excellent Steph Jennings and also Lee Jordan.

Here’s some shots from the Walsall Council House Flickr meet (see left) which saw the Flickr group invited into the Council House.

5. Be a Flickr Twitterer – Link to pictures via Twitter. Pictures are always more popular than straight forward links. They brighten up your stream.

6. Be a marketeer – Use Flickr pics for marketing. Leaflets can be brightened up with Flickr shots – with permission.

7. Be a Flickr webbie – Use Flickr on the council website. Like BCCDIY or Lichfield District Council, Brighton & Hove Council or the Walsall Council header.

8. Be a civic pride builder – Create a Flickr group for an area, like Sandwell Council did.

9. Be a picture tart – Post council Flickr pictures to different groups. Shot of the town hall? Put it in the Town Hall Flickr group.

10. Be a stock photography user – the Creative Commons is a licence that allows the use of shots with certain conditions. There is a category that allows for not for profit use, for example.

11. Be a digital divide bridger – favourite walks or a way to celebrate heritage is an excellent way to encourage people to log on.

There’s eleven. That’s for starters…

Steph Jennings from the Walsall Flickr group and the Lighthouse Media Centre in Wolverhampton made some excellent points at Hyperlocal Govcamp West Midlands on how Walsall Council used images on their website.

This YouTube clip helps explain it:

This blog is based on a session at localgovcamp Yorkshire and Humberside in York (#lgcyh) which also had input from @janetedavis, @allyhook and @barnsley55.

Much kudos to the Walsall Flickr group and to the inspirational @essitam and @reelgonekid.

Creative commons: Smiling blonde girl Pink Sherbert Photography.

Flickr screenshot from the Walsall Flickr group pool.

Other pics by Dan Slee.

PIC PICKY: If a picture tells 1,000 words why are bloggers so rubbish at using them?

Striking pictures leap from a page and grab the reader by the throat.

They demand attention, illustrate a point and reel a reader in.

So why the ruddy heck are so many blogs laid out pictureless like telephone directories?

Am I being unrealistic? Maybe. I’ve worked in the media for more than a decade and I’m used to thinking text plus pictures. Not everyone is wired that way. Fair enough.

But I’m a reader too and you know yourself something that looks rubbish has a stronger chance of getting overlooked.

Yes, through blogging you swiftly publish content.  Being able to chuck stuff up is a strength.

But please, remember that a dowdy looking page may not ever get read.

Look at Linda Jones, or Jayne Howarth or Lee Jordan.

They’re  a good marriage of words and pictures. You’re drawn into them.

FIVE things to do to add pictures…

1. Use your own pictures. It’s surprising what good images you have. Particularly if you are David Bailey.

2. Use Creative Commons pictures Flickr.com  is a brilliant resource but it’s also a community so remember to be polite. If you are looking for a shot of a farm gate search ‘Farm + gate + creative commons.’ You’ll get some interesting results. Creative commons gives you permission to use a pic so long as you observe certain conventions.

3. Free to use stock image websites. Help yourself so long as you sign in. You’ll have to pay for the best ones. Not so best are usually free.

4. Use the ‘blog this’ button on Flickr. Many pictures you can add straight to your blog by following a set of instructions but be careful. The pic comes at the same size everytime and appears in the top right hand corner. It also publishes straight away which means you could have some surprised people scratching their head at their RSS feed of an empty page with a  picture floating there unless you add pre-written content pronto.

5. Don’t steal. Yes, it’s tempting just to save to desktop but it’s better not to.

Picture credits:

Elephant in the room – David Blackwell

Field – Dan Slee

GREEN DIGITAL: How parks and countryside can use social media…

If William Wordsworth was alive today he’d be using Twitter.

Not the old stick-in-the-mud he became but the young man fired by revolution.

 

Why? Because he celebrated the English countryside through the media of the day.

How we think of the landscape was shaped by Wordsworth. Before him, mountains were frightful places. After? Beautiful. And Willie cashed in with an 1810 Guide to the Lakes that was the iphone app of its day.

Exploring how our countryside team could use social media made me trawl through some examples.

Whoever said places work can really well on social media were bang on. That’s especially true of parks and countryside. So how is social media being used by to promote the countryside? There’s some really good ideas in patches out there but nothing fundamentally game changing that makes you sit up and write verse. That says to me that there is plenty of potential.

Photography should be at the heart of what the public sector does with countryside and parks. Why? Because a picture tells a 1,000 words. Because they can bring a splash of green into someone’s front room or phone at one click. Criminally, many sites should be promoting the countryside relegate images to a postage stamp picture.

Here are 10 interesting uses:

1. The British Countryside Flickr group has more than 4,000 members and some amazing images. It’s a place where enthusiastic amateur photographers can share pictures and ideas.

2. Peak District National Park chief executive Jim Dixon leads from the front. He blogs about his job at www.jimdixon.wordpress.com and tweets through @peakchief. It’s a good mix of retweeting interesting content and puts a human face on an organisation.

3. Foursquare, Walsall Council added a landmark in a park as a location. The Pit Head sculpture in Walsall Wood was added to encourage people to visit and check-in. You can also make good use of ‘tips’ by adding advice.

4. On Twitter, @uknationalparks represents 15 UK national parks run a traditional Twitter feed with press releases, RTs and some conversation. With 2,000 followers it’s on 145 lists.

5. But you don’t have to be in a national park to do a goods job. In Wolverhampton, @wolvesparkies have a brilliantly engagingly conversational Twitter stream. There is passion, wit and information that make most councils seem the RSS press release machine that they are.

6. National Trust have an excellent Facebook profile. You may get the impression that members are 65 and own a Land Rover. That doesn’t come across here. They observe one of the golden rules of social media. Use the language of the platform. It’s laid back and it’ll tell you when events are planned.

Yorkshire Dales by Chantrybee

7. Even more relaxed is the quite new I Love Lake District National Park is quite brilliant. It allows RSS, it blogs and it really encourages interaction. Heck, they even encourage people to post to the wall so they can move shots into albums.

8.  On YouTube, West Sussex County Council have a slick short film on tree wardens that deserves more than 45 views in five months. Or does this show how much take up there is on YouTube?

9. The rather wonderful parksandgardens.ac.uk is an ambitious online tool for images of 6,500 parks and gardens and the people who created and worked in them. @janetedavis flagged this up. It’s a project she worked on and she should be proud of it. There’s a school zone to to connect to young people too and is populated by google map addresses and photographs. Really and truly, council parks and countryside pages should look like this but mostly don’t.

10. Less a government project, or even social media Cumbria Live TV celebrate the landscape they work in utterly brilliantly. Slick and powerful broadcast quality three minute films do more than most to capture the jaw dropping awe of the fells. They self-host some brilliant films on a changing site. Check them out here.

EIGHT things you CAN do aside from write bad poetry about daffodils and shepherds called Michael…

1. A Facebook fan page to celebrate a park or open space. Call it I love Barr Beacon. Yes, the Friends group can use it as a meeting place. But naming it after the place not the organisation leaves the door open to the public too.

2. Give a countryside ranger a Twitter account. Use @hotelalpha9 as an inspiration. Let them update a few times a day with what they’ve been up to. Post mobile phone pictures too.

3. Despite a dearth of amateur good examples there’s potential in short films to promote countryside. You only have to point a camera at something photogenic for people to come over all Lake Poet.

Flowers by Vilseskogen

4. Start a Flickr group to celebrate your patch of countryside. Walsall has 1,000 acres of parks and countryside with amazing views and vistas.

5. Start a blog. WordPress takes minutes to set-up and after messing around only a short time to master. Tell people what you are up to. Whack up a few images. Lovely. For no cost.

6. Make your countryside and parks pages a bit more web 2.0. Use mapping to set out a location. Use Flickr images – with permission – to showcase the place.

7. Add your parks and countryside to a geo-location site such as Foursquare. If the future of social media is location, location, location then venues, landmarks and places will score big.

8. Text. With more mobile phones in the UK than people sometimes the humble text message can be overlooked as part of the package of ways to connect with people. Most councils are also text enabled. Create info boards around a park or countryside with numbers to text to recieve info on what they can see. Change it for the seasons to make best use.

Picture credits:

Newlands Valley, Lake District, UK: Dan Slee.

Wordsworth: Creative commons courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.

Yorkshire Dales: Creative commons courtesy of Chantrybee http://www.flickr.com/photos/chantrybee/2911840052/

Flowers: Creative commons courtesy of Vilseskogen http://www.flickr.com/photos/vilseskogen/4182443498/

CASE STUDY: How Walsall museum is cooler than Ben Stiller

In Ben Stiller’s  blockbuster ‘Night at the Musem’ exhibits burst to life when the public aren’t around.

Cowboys and Indians come alive and a giant dinosaur plays fetch with a bone.

Walsall museum stores aren’t quite on a par with Washington DC’s Smithsonian but one thing is the same: You’d be amazed what you can find.

Thousands of items are stored as only a fraction can be put on public display at one time.

So how would social media connect a museum stores with residents? Here’s how. In a way that is way cooler than Ben Stiller.

THE EVENT ITSELF…

One Spring Saturday, photographers of the Walsall Flickr group were given special access all areas to take pictures at Walsall Council’s museum stores.

Street signs, an ARP helmet, and typewriters were just some of the treasure trove.

So were items of the nationally important Hodson Shop collection, a huge collection of working class clothes from the 1920s to the 1950s.

Eight photographers spent more than two hours poring over hundreds of artefacts.

What resulted in an amazing explosion of pictures of often rarely seen treasures. Take a look at some of the shots here.

More than 150 images were posted on Flickr in the days after and more than a dozen positive comments were posted on the group’s discussion board.

PLANNING FOR THE EVENT…

Why bother? Why arrange this?

It’s as simple as this: what’s not to like about pictures of Walsall artefacts taken by Walsall people?

Simple as the idea was, three months of planning led to the event itself.

Much praise needs to be given to talented photographer Steph Jennings (@essitam on Twitter) and the forward-thinking Walsall museum curator Jennifer Thomson supported by collections officer Catherine Clarke. Why praise? Because both parties started from different positions and arrived at not just a workable compromise but a groundbreaking piece of work that sets new standards.

REACHING AN AGREEMENT ON  COPYRIGHT CONCERNS…

At the heart of everything was copyright.

Museums traditionally are very careful to guard copyright of their artefacts.

On the flip side, photographers are very careful to guard their copyright too.

In the past, museums have allowed photographers to take shots only in highly controlled circumstances with copyright signed away.

The Walsall approach was different.

The compromise that was brokered was this: photographers retain copyright so long as they accepted that they wouldn’t be able to bring tripods to take saleable pro shots.

That was fine as the Walsall Flickr members didn’t want to sell images.

The group also agreed to limit the size of the shots they uploaded to 1MB and agreed to ask permission before they used the images.

Crucially, what made this process work was the genuine commitment to make the event work by both Steph and the museum team.

The compromise permission form can be found here.

When social media works well it sees a two way discussion. Brilliant things can happen.

An unexpectedly marvellous spin off led to the setting-up of a museum Flickr group to encourage people to submit images.

AN UNEXPECTED SPIN-OFF…

This isn’t just shots of the museum but a place where, as Steph suggested, pics can now be submitted for ‘shadow’ exhibitions. Planning an exhibition on seaside holidays? That shot of Great Aunt Maude paddling at Weston-super-Mare can be submitted and used as part of a revolving powerpoint of similar images. That’s something the whole family can go and see. Excellent.

This isn’t a Walsall Council success story, for my money. This is a Walsall success story. It was the coming together of museum staff, the communications unit and most of all the enthusiasm of the borough’s thriving and talented Flickr group that made this work.

What we found can work here can easily work anywhere.

Hosting a Flickr meet: Five benefits to the museum.

1. Connecting with non-traditional audience.

2. Showcasing exhibits and helping to find an online audience for heritage.

3. Art. Great pictures are just that. Art. What better way to showcase your artefacts?

4. A set of marketing pictures. At Flickr members’ suggestion the group were happy for their images to be used by the musem. Many amateurs are keen to get an audience for their work in return for a link to their Flickr page and a pic credit.

5. Pictures to link to via a Twitter stream.

Attending the Flickr meet: Four benefits to the photographer.

1. Rare behind-the-scenes access.

2. Being able to retain copyright of images.

3. A unique photographic challenge.

4. A chance – if you are happy to – to showcase your work through council marketing.

Thanks to: Jennifer Thomson and Catherine Clarke from Walsall museum. Steph Jennings and the members of the Walsall Flickr group who attended the session.

SOCIAL PICTURES: Case study: A Flickr meet at Walsall Council House

Pic credit:
Plenty stained glass in Walsall Council House
Originally uploaded by Lee Jordan
 

There’s nothing better than seeing social media come alive and create something vivid, exciting and worthwhile.

Take good connections between creative people, an open mind and suddenly all sorts of possibility opens up.

Just such a thing took place at our first Walsall Flickr group meet at Walsall Council House.

If you haven’t come across Flickr take a look. It’s a photo hosting website founded in 2004.

You can search and view pictures and look at dedicated groups ranged around the most arcane places or subjects.

The Lake District group has 3,000 members. One dedicated to clouds alone has 8,000 members.

Five years after it was founded Flickr now has more than four billion images.

People often self organise along geographic lines. For example, the excellent Walsall Flickr group has 70 members with a pool of 5,000 images.

Summertime

These can be everything from corn fields in summertime and famous landmarks to sunrise over the allotment. There’s even one contributor who specialises in shots of old buses taken in Walsall over the past 30 years.

As a council, on Twitter we’d been tweeting links from @walsallcouncil to individual shots in the group’s pool for months. Reaction had been good.

Geographic Flickr groups often stage meets at events or landmarks where members will take pictures.

Frustrated by a national trend for police officers to use counter-terrorism to stop photography in the streets Flickr meets are becoming increasingly important.

At Walsall, we have a beautiful Council House that dates to 1905. Its polished wood and plaques make it the ACME of Georgian civic pride.

There is a carved wooden memorial to the Boer War with 100 names and an alabaster First World War plaque with a carved British Tommy.

Stern

There are stern pictures of bewhiskered Mayors gone by hanging from the walls and ornate stone carvings. All things that can make fantastic pictures.

All too often, Council Houses up and down the land can appear remote, closed and intimidating. Let’s not forget they are there to serve and they belong to the people they serve.

The thinking behind the Council House Flickr meet was twofold. First, use social media to connect with people. Second, open up the building to let residents taking pictures of their council and their heritage.

An email, a phonecall and a meeting with organiser and talented amateur photographer and social media enthusiast Lee Jordan showed the group were keen to come to the Council House.

Tentative plans were made for other landmarks. A car park and a Bell Tower – both with panoramic views were singled out as examples.

Permissions for the shoot were sought from the Council hierarchy and a consent form for participants drafted.

Who retained copyright proved one issue. Nerves were calmed when it was discovered we did not want to claim it. Museums with a store of paintings and collections often want to keep this, I understand, and that’s something to work with.

Those who took part had the option of allowing us to use pics for marketing in return for a picture credit.

A slot on a Saturday morning was set and promoted to the Walsall group via their Flickr messageboard.

There was a vibrant thread of 50 messages on the group’s forum and six photographers came along.

Slade

We spent around two hours taking shots in the deserted building. War memorials, Mayoral photographs, the board of honour, the cavernous Town Hall where Slade once played were covered.

The sanctum of the Council Chamber itself was also shot by the group.

Was it a success? Absolutely. More than 100 shots were posted to the Flickr group pool building from the event. There was a suprisingly good standard to the quality. They are not happy snappers. They are seriously good amateurs whose work can compete with some of the best professionals.

We are now looking to build a page on the council website where those who took part’s nominated pics can be hosted. Links will be added back to individual’s Flickr pages to showcase their other work. Everyone is a winner.

So, why did it succeed?

1. Like all good social media projects it connected with people.

2. By taking part in social media the council could start a conversation.

3. Residents could photograph part of their heritage.

4. It opened up a civic building giving special access to Flickr group members.

5. Talented individual’s work could be showcased and taken to a wider audience.

6. Shots taken could be tweeted on the council’s Twitter feed.

7. Selected shots – with permission – could be added to the council’s image library.

8. The council could start a dialogue with residents.

HOW COUNCILS CAN USE FLICKR

1. First join Flickr as an individual. Get to know how it works by playing around with it. Same as any social media platform.

2. Join Flickr as an authority. Start posting pics — but check that the copyright holder is fine with that. Even if you have an array of pictures from freelancers he or she will still retain copyright. Always ask first (see copyright and photography link below).

3. Search Flickr groups for one in your area. (eg Black Country or Walsall).

4. Contact the group admin. See what locations you may have the group may want to set-up a meet at.

5. See what you can do with the pictures that have been taken. An exhibition? A spread of pics on your website? Be creative. Be social. 

LINKS

Flickr.com 

Flickr on wikipedia

The Walsall Flickr group pool (needs Flickr membership to view)

Pictures from the Walsall Council House Flickr meet (needs Flickr membership to view)

Useful things to know about photography and copyright

A take on the Flickr event at Walsall Council House by photographer and digitally connected chap Lee Jordan

MY BLOG OBSESSION HELL: How cake brought people together through Social Media

pic credit: jimbosussexmtb
2008_1206_142512AA
Originally uploaded by www.sussex-mtb.com
 

 

Okay. Quiz time. So when was it I realised I took my blog obsession just a little too far?

Was it a) when supermarket giant J.Sainsbury’s started tweeting us?

Was it b) when the excellent @sarahlay designed a superb google map around it?

Or perhaps c) when I loaded my two poorly children and drove to a garden centre just to photograph a piece of cake so I could write a 140 review blog post?

We sat there in the complex’s empty cafe the three of us. Joe, aged five. Libby, one, and me looking every inch the out of touch divorced dad who has no clue of what makes his children tick any more.

I’m not divorced by, the way. I just have a very tolerant wife.

“But Daddy,” said Joseph, aged five. “You don’t like gardening. Mummy says so. Can’t we go to the park? I like the park.

“No, son.” I tell the hopeful faces. “We can’t go to the park.”

“Why, Dad, why?”

“Because, Joe, They don’t sell cake there.”

I write a blog about cake. I’m quite partial to the odd slice but its never ruled my life.

The blog http://mmmmmmcake.wordpress.com/ was founded in August It has received 1,400 hits in eight weeks with almost 60 blog posts. It tweets @mmmmmmcake with 150 followers.

Amazingly, there have been 15 contributors so far from as far afield as Mumbai in India, Nova Scotia in Canada and Brownhills in England. They are people who love cake and enjoy the ridiculousness of pointing a camera at it in a cafe and sharing it with the world.

So why Dan, why?

It began as a wheeze. Make mistakes on your own rather than for your organisation. Besides, I wanted to better get to grips with wordpress.

Why cake? A chance remark on Twitter sparked it.

I introduced a friend new to Twitter. Silence. No followers.

“This is @sarahjpowney. She loves cake.”

Within seconds she had been welcomed on board the Twittersphere with open arms by several people.

“Cake brings people together,” @jaynehowarth enthusiastically tweeted.

She’s absolutely right.

I tweeted a picture of a cake I’d taken in Shropshire. It led to 40 hits on my flickr page in a day.

@brownhillsbob then responded with pics of his own in a kind of sponge and frosted icing arms race.

The penny dropped. This needed a blog to bring things together. From there it’s grown.

But the best bit?

It’s not actually the cake I’ve liked about doing this. It’s the enthusiasm and ideas people are having sparked by cake.

Cake really does bring people together.

The google map by @sarahlay, the Indian contributions by @rbx, the Nova Scotian contributor @halifaxcakes.

There’s a man in Sussex who blogs and photographs cakes with a skill of a baking David Bailey and zeal of a Cuban revolutionary.

All magic.

Then there’s parallel blogs @mmmmmmwine and sweets and chocolate versions by the writer’s children. There’s @mmmmmm_beer by Stuart Harrison (@pezholio) and @mmmmmmcurry by Philip John.

So what lessons to learn?

Any good social media project is listening, collaboration, trial and enthusiasm to be fun.

Having something that people connect with helps. Whatever that may be. Cake or a passion for your estate, model buses or football.

Twitter has been brilliant for this. It taps into the network of social capital. Post the blog. Post the tweet signposting people to it. Marvellous.

Joe’s favourite cake is chocolate, by the way. He’s rarely happier eating it. Me? I’m partial to Mrs Slee’s flapjack.

Birthdays are nature’s way of telling you to eat more cake. So, happy birthday.

And can you send me a quick review?

Thanks to fellow cake blog contributors:

@brownhillsbob, @smartmatt, @stu_arts, George Cunningham, Clare Slee, @rbx, @englishmum, @jaynehowarth @lindasjones, @jimbosussexmtb, @sarahlay @philipjohn, @halifaxcakes, @thetalleygraph, @pezholio, @darrencaveney

And send your reviews to:

@mmmmmmcake daniel.slee1972@googlemail.com

Links:

http://mmmmmmcake.wordpress.com/

http://mmmmmmwine.wordpress.com/

http://mmmmmmcurry.wordpress.com/

http://mmmmmm_beer.wordpress.com/

@mmmmmmsweets
@mmmmmmchocs

http://halifaxcakes.com/

IF A PICTURE SAYS 1,000 WORDS – How pictures can brighten up your Tweets

Originally uploaded by mattmurray74
 

 

Striking pictures can deliver striking stories.

 
That’s been the case since the first monk in a windswept Northumbrian monastry inscribed Biblical scenes on velum.

Good pictures leap from the page. They do in social media too.

It’s amazing how this can be overlooked. Some Twitter feeds concentrate so heavily on RSS-heavy slabs of text they can have the appearance of a 19th century newspaper. All content. No pictures. Not much in the way of fun.

At a time when most phones take servicable pictures and digital cameras come free with a tank of petrol there really, really is no excuse.

Pictures can work amazingly well on Twitter to liven up your organisation, group or council’s Twitter feed. It can give a few soft edges, give it a human face and make your place a lot greener and more attractive.

FLICKR

But the really big potential engine for all of this is flickr, the online community of amateur photographers.

The most amazing pictures are being taken by amate

Flowers in a Walsall churchyard by Matt Murray

ur photographers armed with enthusaism and a passion for taking good pictures.

HERE’S A FEW POINTERS ON WHAT CAN WORK:

1. The Twitter profile pic.

Marvellous as most corporate logos can be the truth is it was never designed to be shrunk to the size of a Twitter postage stamp. Stick some flowers on. Or a landmark. Go, on. Brighten up people’s lives. We’ve had a statue, flowers from a garden and a horses head from a museum. Mind you, that wasn’t too popular and we had to ditch that.

2. Use your mobile and tweet.

That thing in your pocket. Sunny day? Nice view? School being opened? Take a picture. Share. Enjoy. Connect. You’d tell your friends , so tell your Twitter friends. Go to http://www.twitpic.com and post on Twitter from there. It’s a brilliant, brilliant resource. (Our countryside team have been particularly good at supplying pics.)

3. Find your flickr group

This is where things get really interesting. For all your lofi efforts with your Nokia you’re going to have to work hard to beat an image taken by a craftsman. Or an enthusiastic amateur.

Search flickr for your town or community. Chances are there will be scores of pics. In the Walsall, for example, there’s a thriving community of more than 70 contributors with 4,000 images.

There’s some brilliant, brilliant work. Look out for the Four Seasons garden flickr feed from Walsall with more than 100,000 hits.

The best thing is with flickr there is a real web 2.0 willingness to share and link. People are very happy to have their work showcased.

4. Tweet a flickr pic

Now its time to get interesting. Choose a pic. Cut and paste the URL into a link shortening site. Something like http://www.bit.ly is brilliant. It’ll keep tabs on how many people open and when.

The industry average for click-throughs is about three per cent, say Mashable. For apicture posted to Twitter it can be three times that.

Top tip: countryside shots and sunny pics go down ever so well.

5. Stage a Flickr meet

Contact the organiser of your flickr group – or photographic society – and invite them down. Those war memorials, Mayor’s Parlour curios and rooftops may get a cursory glance if you work in a Council House. They may well be a source of some great pics.

6. Start your own flickr feed.

If you are a group, an organisation or have a stake in an area a flickr feed works. Newcastle City Council, for example, have their own flickr site. It’s a place where good quality pictures can be seen and downloaded. A word of caution of you have a massive back catologue of freelance commissioned shots. Check with them first to see if they are happy for you to do this. Photographers own the copyright of shots they take. Even if you’ve paid them for them. What they’ve most likely given you is a licence to use the images in a certain way. Which leads to…

7. Link to a freelance photographer’s site.

If a freelancer has done work for you they may well be happy for you to direct traffic to their site to view one of the pictures you’ve commissioned. In fact, they’d probably be ecstatic. Everyone wins. Your followers are treated to good images and they get some web traffic. 

Do all this, you’ll connect with people, you’ll take part in amazing conversations, you’ll promote your area and you’ll encourage talent.

If a picture says 1,000 words, why aren’t you using it in 140 characters?

LINKS

@walsallcouncil #PicoftheDay http://bit.ly/3lZnTT

Walsall flickr group http://bit.ly/DoJxg

Countryside in Walsall posted via Twitpic  http://www.twitpic.com/kpcuo

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