Each year I participate in a kayak trip that recreated Roger William’s trip from East Providence to Providence. I’ve been on the trip twice and each time I take a ton of photos. I also bring along my GiSTEQ PhotoTrackr Mini. With this device I am able to automatically geotag my photos and keep a breadcrumb of the trip so that I can see exactly where I took my photos.
I make the statement that geotagging will bring you success because for me geotagging has brought my blog some extra traffic. Think about it, you go to Las Vegas to attend a blogging conference, while you are there you take photos at the Bellagio Fountains. Someone who is interested in a trip to Las Vegas goes to Flickr and does an Explore Places search for “Las Vegas, Bellagio” and up comes your photo of the fountains. In your photo description you link to your write up of your Trip to Las Vegas. The person exploring Las Vegas sees your photo and follows the link on your photo to your blog.
Simply adding the location to your photos brings another avenue of search for people to find you. I encourage you to take more photos, geotag them and make sure you link them back to your blog.
another great way to add some geotagging to your life would be to use EveryTrail. This is a free service and app for the iPhone, Droid and other phones. It allows you to track your walks, runs, bikes and other activities. I tried out EveryTrail on my Droid on a walk around the block and it worked great. I took photos all over the place. I could take a photo, tag it and upload it to my trip’s story. By going on a trip and photographing places, writing up a story, tagging everything and having it automatically geotagged is a great way to help other people. Let’s say that you go on a hike to Haleakala in Hawaii. You take a ton of photos of great vistas and flora and fauna. The more photos you take the longer people look at your work. The longer they stay on your work the more likely they are to continue on to your blog where you write up even more about your trip.
Geotagging is yet another way to create inroads to your main outpost, whether it be a blog or facebook page or even a linkedin profile. People often search for places, if you have been places make sure you document that on each of your photos. I personally think that FourSquare should certainly add the ability to take a photo and upload it with each check in. It would be even better if Foursquare partnered with Flickr or Picasa so that the image is geotagged, tagged also with “foursquare”. See how that could even more inroads to that service?
Can you think of other ways geotagging can drive traffic to your outpost?
I really like this idea and never thought about it before. I may be taking a road trip this summer. Awesome way to document it and share it with others. Thanks for the suggestions!
Marjorie,
Definitely geotag those photos from the trip. And then let us see them.
I like your idea that Geotagging can contribute to an increase in blog traffic. Indeed this is something that just might work since people's interest are easily stirred up by pictures.
Jennifer,
As Geotagging gets easier that will certainly become a way for people to find you via locations so much easier.
Be careful with geotagging. I run a property blog (carpetare.wordpress.com). After I enabled wordpress geotagging the traffic dropped. For 3 days traffic from search engine reduced before I disabled geotagging/
I find geotagging very interesting
My recent post The Enchanting Effect of Water Fountains