If you think Flickr is merely a place to post photos from your last holiday, then you are missing out the internet marketing opportunities presented by this popular sharing site.
The Power Of Flickr
With an account at Flickr you can reach more than just registered users. The content posted there can appear in blended search results, meaning that yours will get some fantastic exposure.
In fact, the integration of Flickr photos in conjunction with Yahoo and Google – the two top search engines worldwide, gives your content a strong chance of reaching the top of search results for keyword-tagged photo content. And with Flickr’s extreme popularity with users in the US, the UK, and Australia, this exposure is truly global.
Yet another benefit is that links created on Flickr are dofollow, giving them strong, top-rated SEO ability. It’s this means of social sharing and a strong sense of global online community that makes Flickr a powerful marketing tool for your business.
How To Use Flickr For Marketing
Of course, you will need to start by creating an account. Use the information listed in your profile to brand your business and include your location for market geo-targeting purposes. You can also create a unique URL for your photos, giving you link juice. Because a free account is limited to 100 MB of bandwidth per month, consider spending the $24.95 annual fee to upgrade to a heftier account with permanent archiving and unlimited sets of pictures.
The next step is uploading images. For marketing purposes, this could be pictures of your products, illustrated applications for them, or something similar. Be sure to tag each with relevant keywords. The more your photo ties in with current, hot topics, the more the keywords in the title, tags, and description will drive traffic. Always include a link back to your website.
Now on to networking. This is mainly achieved through groups. You need to join as many as you can, and participate in the discussion boards. Be sure to comment on other users’ pictures. It can be difficult to gain access to the “inner circle” so be patient and participate often. As you become a trusted member of groups, other members will click through to your profile and then on to your website. After some time you may want to start your own Flickr group. This is a great way to increase exposure on the site and form your own community of interested members.
Finally, you need to drive traffic to your online photos and then to your web pages. An easy way to do this is to embed the images on your site or merely provide a link to the Flickr URL where they are located. If you have a WordPress blog, you can easily accomplish this with a plug-in.
You can also bookmark your photos at sites such as Digg, Delicious, and others. This is a great way to get your visual content to go viral and spread quickly across the internet. Although Flickr will get the majority of traffic, the idea is that interested internet users will click on the link to your website to learn more about you and your company.
If you can get your photo listed on Explore, Flickr’s ranking of the highest rated images, you’ve provided even more exposure for your company and its website. The rank is based on number of click-throughs, comments, and the number of times it is designated as a “favourite”.
Flickr is a very popular sharing site and a very powerful tool to add to your internet marketing program. Get signed up today and start driving traffic and building links to increase your company’s exposure and website SEO.
About Sean Rasmussen
While I do believe in Social Media I still find it hard to believe that some Social Media sites such as Digg can really drive a high level of traffic to your website.
I mean the likelihood that your ‘digg’ will actually have enough votes cast upon it so it isn’t buried by the 10000 or so other links that are posted daily is hard to believe. Possibly for some topics you may get lucky, I guess then its just a matter of having the right niche.
Hi Cemil,
It’s not only the article that comes into play with sites like digg. It will also depend on your personal popularity on social media sites and how big your social network is etc. I have personally achieved 72 front page articles on digg to the present date..so, it’s definitely not impossible
If you only use social media sites to add your articles to, you will get nowhere…you need to become a part of the community and become involved…like anything, you get out what you put in.
Regards – Sean
When I have some appropriate photos I will be joining
Great blog post! I’ll be sharing this one with my photographer hubby!
Hi Sean,
I use Flickr but I definitely don’t use it to its maximum potential. I had no idea you could even do some of these things with Flickr. It didn’t occur to me to set up pictures on Flickr and then drive traffic to the pictures, so that I would get more traffic to my site.
I really need to get involved in the social media community and start participating. There is so much stuff to learn.