1/2/2009
Can Flickr Help Your Business?
Flickr is one of the Web’s leading photo sharing Web sites, and is usually thought of as a place for hobbyists to hobnob. However, with an Alexa ranking of 31(ahead of LinkedIn) and thousands of user-organized special interest groups, Flickr should not be overlooked as a platform to build customer relationships and drive traffic to the company website or blog.
Building relationships. Let’s say you’re in the auto repair or car restoration business. Why not sponsor a Flickr group and post before-after pictures? Customers might get a kick out of seeing their cars, and pass along the photos to their friends and family where they can all exchange comments that are linked to the image. With that comes brand recognition, credibilty, and leads.
Driving traffic. Because photos can be tagged, good keyword phrase selection will make your uploads visible to people throughout the Flickr community – and beyond. For instance Zemanta, an automatic photo uploader service for bloggers, pulls photos from Flickr along with other media sites. (The photo for this post came from Flickr via Zemanta.) Flickr uploads can be integrated with Facebook and automatically converted into blog posts. All this visibility and exposure can lead potential new customers to your Flickr Group, and from there to your website.
Flickr could be the next social media secret to be discovered by business. Right now, Flickr has 56 groups listed under “auto restoration”. Some have just a few members; others have hundreds. The Morris Garage Group gives you an idea how one company is using Flickr. They’re off to a good start. Without doubt, thousands of companies in this business could follow the Morris model and build on it. And, as with most social media sites, Flickr involves minimal or no cost to the user. In today’s economy, when marketing dollars must be spent with utmost care, the low cost/high potential value of sites such as Flickr has never been more meaningful.
