Nicholas Cifuentes

When considering social media applications, and those that are effective to not only drive leads, but also generate conversions – you have to consider the magic of Flickr.

Flickr is a social photography website that allows you to upload and share your pictures with friends, family and other registered Flickr users; as well as the general Internet audience.

Similar to Photobucket, Flickr functions as an image host – but its strength lies in the social sharing of the images with a massive community of users. Photographers use Flickr to showcase their art, computer bloggers use it to save on bandwidth and keep their own servers empty by dumping massive photo files on Flickr.

One thing very new, yet very effective, in terms of marketing this social media showcase – is to build traffic to your website using this creative tool.

Let’s look at few things about Flickr:

1. It is the #2 rated photography website in the U.S., UK, and Australia, while holding a near 40 percent market share in the U.S. While Photobucket is still the leader in all three markets, - Flickr’s global presence could still be greater.
2. And with Yahoo! acquiring the image giant in 2005 – it has been optimized with the Yahoo! Image Search tool.
3. Flickr’s photos are listed in the Google, Technorati, personalized and start pages, as well as various other portals, websites and blogs which pull in and display Flickr pictures through RSS feeds.
4. All of these direct sources can be funneled back to your website, and at least make others aware of your brand and/or product.

Flickr – Getting Started

Flickr allows you to create a profile, using a buddy icon, screen name, profile where you can place relevant links and information about yourself or business. And then, you can create your own Flickr address – meaning http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicholascifuentes

Flickr also offers two options when signing up, a free and paid version. The free version allows you a bandwidth limit of 100mb per month. This is reasonable if you don’t’ have too much traffic or photos that are limited sizes – but to be honest; the Pro Account (paid version) is the best way to go. They charge you only $24.95 for the year, but you get an unlimited number of bandwidth, and you are able to upload not only pictures, but video as well. You are also able to setup an unlimited number of photo sets, as compared to only three for the free version.

Tag – You’re It!

Flickr is fantastic, because similar to blog posts, you are able to tag photos with particular keywords and descriptions. This is important for search engine purposes, as well as allowing other Flickr users to find your images.

So let’s say this: I put up a picture of a baby crib with a large background of a detailed room. Now here you could either put in regular placement tags, such as “baby, crib, boys crib, children’s crib, baby furniture, newborn”

Now, you could expand that into a series of tags, and talk about each of the elements within the image.

• Furniture (furniture, boy’s crib, baby crib, blue, yellow)
• Name (Ben Collection)
• Location (Sausalito, California, London)
• Medium (photograph)
• Type of Shot (Magazine shot, photograph, video screen)
• Accessories or items in picture (red sweater, yellow legos, sea painting)
• Your Website (www.serenaandlily.com)

There are three main elements to tagging a picture:

1. Title. When filling out the title area, use descriptive titles and keywords in this area, but keep it relevant to what the photo is. You still have two other areas where you can be very descriptive – so don’t overdue it!
2. Tags. These are the ‘tags’ that show up on the side bar of each photo and it is important to use words that are relevant to the picture you upload. Also, you can add location tags if your business or work is relevant to a certain area.
3. Picture Description. HTML is allowed in the picture description, but be generous with it. If you are blatantly listing generic product descriptions and a link to that item, the Flickr robots will find you and delete your account. So, be creative and just talk about your item – you can link here, but you need to be careful how you do that. And if you are still wondering, your link is in your profile, so chances are, the user, if they are that interested, will make the choice to go find you on their own after viewing your Flickr account.

Networking Flickr to Promote Your Brand

The Flickr community is very approachable and appreciates photography of all kinds. Many of the users interact through Flickr groups, with each of them having their own discussion board and pools of photos. You are able to join these groups, most of the time freely, unless marked as private, and add your photos to the group. This is a great way to gain some exposure for your website and profile. Another way to build upon community building is commenting on photos – which when you start, you will see, has a great effect.

But one thing to watch out for is the activity level within the group. You can easily see the recent activity, member level, and date of last discussion – so make sure you pay attention to that when searching through groups. You can even track their activity by RSS before beginning the interaction – so in case your not sure, just follow and track to see if it works for you.

TIP: Some businesses get creative and create their own Flickr groups, where users can submit photos and join in a discussion – this is great way to promote giveaways and incentives as you build your brand on social media channels. You can promote this through your marketing materials and/or directly on your website.

Creating your own groups is a great way to build a community around your account to help generate more traffic to your main website as your community grows. Two things to consider when doing this – choosing a group name and writing a description.

1. Name Your Group. Pick a name that is effective for your ideals. Consider using something relevant to your brand, and if you wish, use your site name as the title, with some relevant keywords for Flickr’s search purposes.
2. Writing a Description. Write a short introduction to the aim or purpose of the group, and lay down some rules! Don’t worry about length here – you can always change it going forward down the line.

Promote Your Flickr Community – Pictures

Now that you are all setup, let’s go get some traffic! The aim of Flickr is to get traffic to your pictures, in which will in turn create brand identity and awareness – ultimately directing traffic to your website.

There are several ways to promote your images – here are a few:

Display Pictures on Your Website

This could be done by embedding your Flickr photo stream on your website or linking to your Flickr photos. The main benefit is that visitors will see your pictures and decide to use them on their own website.
When someone clicks upon a picture, they will be taken to an individual page which has a link to your description and site address. Wordpress users can use the FlickrRSS or Flickr Photo Album plug-in.

Go Viral Baby with Social Voting Websites

Pictures on Flickr are perfect for social website likes Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit. What you need to do is choose a picture you want to promote and submit it through one of these sites. Be sure to include a link in the description back to your website before you start promoting the picture. The only downside here is that you will cause the user to make two steps to come back to your website – meaning they will go from:

Digg > Flickr > Your Website
*Chances are you still will get a decent amount of referral traffic, and some links, as more people are making their way from your picture to your website.

And with Stumbleupon – you can stumble your photo within Flickr very easily as many users do it daily in the social media website, SU. To drive instant traffic to your pictures, you only need to submit it to StumbleUpon – no need to network it within to get people to stumble your picture – although that does not hurt to do such things.

Befriend Fellow Users

Yes, it is normally the job of an online community manager, but going out, searching out users who have similar interest, and then just simply befriending them can kick-start your photos view instantly.

The only thing I suggest is keep it relevant for who you are searching for – if you sell baby furniture – you are searching for users who are interested in such things or related to babies, mommies, etc…The easiest way to do this is to begin searching groups and find their users and then just do the painful work for adding them to your contact list. There are no rules against this, and you will see if you do this for an hour every other day for two weeks – you will see your community grow on it’s own and people you never thought to add, end up adding you or making your way to your photos, commenting, taking part in your group, etc…

Once you build the house up – everyone makes their way to it – whether you want them to or not.

Overall, Flickr is a fantastic tool for traffic building, and depending on your business – you can do many great things. Flickr creates many applications through their public API and you can integrate photos from your phone, particular photo applications, browsers, etc… These tools allow you to create tag, descriptions, titles, and some even more, at the same time you are uploading – making it almost seamless.

If you have any questions, I am more than happy to assist you – feel free to contact me.

"Only I can tell you how..."