Flickr on Goji — planned channel

Flickr is not available to connect yet. It is planned, with no committed date. This page covers what the channel will do and whether it is likely to be worth your time.

Who Flickr suits

Flickr is a photography community rather than a marketing channel, and being clear about that saves disappointment. It works well for businesses whose images are genuinely worth looking at — studios, makers, venues, travel, food, architecture — and poorly for anyone treating it as another place to drop promotional graphics. Its audience notices the difference immediately.

Its other real value is durability. Flickr photostreams are indexed, tagged and searchable, and an image posted there remains findable for years rather than scrolling away in an afternoon.

What it will do when it ships

• Post the picture from each article to your photostream.
• Title and tag it from the article, so the image is findable rather than anonymous.
• Skip articles with no picture, since there would be nothing to post.

It is an image channel in the strictest sense: the photograph is the post, and the text supports it.

What is holding it up

Flickr requires an application key for posting on an account's behalf, and obtaining and maintaining that is the outstanding work. Until it is in place the channel cannot be offered.

What you can do now

1. Decide whether Flickr genuinely fits. If your articles carry stock illustrations rather than original photographs, your effort is better spent elsewhere. That is worth saying plainly.
2. Sort out your image licensing. Flickr makes licence choice explicit, and posting images you do not hold the rights to is a real problem there in a way it is not on a feed that forgets by tomorrow.
3. Use meaningful titles and tags on your articles. They become the image's title and tags, and on Flickr those are the discovery mechanism.
4. Check your image sizes. Flickr's audience expects full-resolution photographs; a 600-pixel-wide web graphic looks poor beside them.

What to use meanwhile

If reaching a visual audience is the goal today, Instagram and Pinterest are the closer substitutes — Instagram is available now through your Facebook Page. Flickr's value is archival and search-driven rather than immediate reach, so waiting for it costs you very little.

Why the archive value is the real argument

Most channels here are judged on reach in the first day or two. Flickr is not, and comparing it on those terms will always make it look weak. Its images are indexed and remain searchable indefinitely, so the photograph you post this month can still be found - and credited, and linked - years later.

That matters most for businesses whose work is looked up rather than scrolled past: a venue somebody is considering, a maker whose past commissions are the portfolio, a supplier whose products are researched before they are bought. In those cases a photostream quietly becomes a second shop window that costs nothing to maintain once it is automated.

If none of that describes your business, the honest advice is to skip this channel when it arrives rather than connect it because it is there. A photostream of stock graphics helps nobody, and Flickr's audience is quick to notice.

Common questions

Will it post every article? Only those with an image; the rest are skipped on this channel and publish elsewhere as usual.

Can I choose the album? Album handling will be settled when the channel is built.

Does Flickr drive traffic? Some, through the description and your profile, but treat it as an archive and a shop window rather than a referral source.

Is a Pro account needed? Free accounts have upload limits; whether you need Pro depends on how much you publish.