Nick Cifuentes

Over the past year, social networks have the ruled the air when it comes to marketing in a digital world. Facebook & Twitter, as we have discussed before, are becoming the beacons for most marketing programs as they decide to push forward into the world of social media marketing.  However, many forget where this idea of Web 2.0 all started, before Facebook, MySpace, and the Twitter’s of the world became everyday expressions.

Blogs. Remember those? The blogosphere, it still boasts hundreds of millions of online journals and participants, but in recent years, it’s fallen on “tough times”, so to speak. Many marketers are using social networks and microblogs to help grow their brand’s perception online, and for certain brands, it makes sense.

But despite the slow erosion of blog integration within some social media programs, it still has the staying power in the corporate world. In a recent study done by eMarketer, it estimated that just over one in three companies have a public-facing blog used for marketing, and will be rising to nearly 43% by 2010.

Marketers are noticing that blogs have the highest value of any social media in driving site traffic, lead generations, brand awareness, sales, and also improving customer service. Another interesting survey from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research has found that there is a much lower usage in blogs among Fortune 500 companies and much higher adoption among the fastest-growing private companies on the Inc. 500 list.

This is an interesting statistic, as it mostly calls out to the idea of barriers that exist within large organizations. Fortune 500 companies are filled with obstacles such as legal and regulatory constraints that more than often exist in the environment. Smaller, private companies have less restraints and can better position themselves to exist in the embracing of blogging.

Where do you stand on the topic, to blog or not to blog?

An interesting and very poignant Nike ad surfaced Wednesday, featuring Tiger Woods standing in front of camera, with his deceased father, Earl Woods, speaking in the background. The ad is edgy, and is a move that calls out his person problems, well-timed the night before the Master’s started.

The ad first aired on ESPN and the Golf Channel Wednesday night.

The ad has been called “creepy” , “brilliant” , “bizarre” , and “uncomfortable” in one breath, and certainly a dedication to Tiger, who Nike is still standing by.

For the better part of 2009, Twitter and Facebook have been stealing the spotlight when it comes to discussions regarding social media “movers and shakers”. This is understandable as both have truly stepped on the gas in terms of increasing user base and improving functionality both in-house and externally through third party application development. Furthermore, both companies continue to dedicate significant time and research towards making their services useful for businesses, as we see new organizations join these networks daily and each with unique goals and strategies for doing so.

However, Flickr is a photo and video sharing social media channel that is also experiencing rapid growth and integration within many avenues of online business development and marketing, currently hosting more than 4 billion images, up from 3billion in November of 2008. With that said, Flickr should be researched and considered for use by many entrepreneurs as it too plays a large role within your company’s potential to benefit via social media outlets.

While there are a multitude of both personal and professional reasons to utilize Flickr, business owners should focus on implementing this platform to increase their level of personal interaction with current clients, build further awareness of their corporate brand, and perform strategic outreach campaigns to potential interested parties that would otherwise be unaware of their products or services.

Below are some simple starting points that will hopefully start your creative juices flowing as to how you can tailor the use of Flickr to your own company’s needs and strategies.

Flickr Facts for You & Your Company

• Flickr is an online web service and social community for sharing photos and video. As of October 2009, it claims to host more than 4 billion images, up from 3 billion in November of 2008.
• Flickr allows for user interaction, commenting, categorizing of albums, and building of contact lists (like followers or friends, if you will).
• Flickr allows users to sign up for a Pro-Account, which provides unlimited uploading of pictures and videos for $25/year.
• Flickr Groups are used to enhance social sharing based on location, events, affinity groups, etc. This is a large asset for businesses to further reach potential clients and customers based on interests.
• Within Flickr, users can create online Photo Contests to increase user interaction and visibility to the channel.
• Flickr provides a very resourceful analytics program that allows you to track your photo traffic and views by very detailed metrics.
• Ties in very well with other social media channels to cross update and draw traffic back to the channel.
• Very effective tagging, batching, editing and grouping functionality with Organizr.

How Can You & Your Company Utilize Flickr?

• Share all photos and videos from both in-house and user submitted material to act as a live-time online photo album.
• Utilize the highly effective keyword tagging features to get your company’s material visible to SEO searches, as well as internal searches from Flickr users.
• Join many Flickr affinity groups to gather interest from those who may not be familiar with your company’s products, services, location or values.
• Photo contests and special promotions can be designed and executed with Flickr as the vehicle used to facilitate these activities.
• Connect Flickr to current website, Facebook Fan Page, corporate blog, etc. to smoothly cross post content among all of of your company’s online assets.
• Flickr has great API and Widget based functionality that allows you and your technical staff to utilize Flickr functionality within your current online assets, displaying your public Flickr content in ways that work best for your brand, purpose or intended delivery to your audience.
• Learn more about your community and the values, activities, events and experiences your users or fellow businesses take part in.

A very important thing to keep in mind regarding your use of Flickr for business is this - do NOT oversell. This is highly frowned upon by the Flickr team and, more often than not, those companies who practice this have their account deleted from the site altogether. Flickr has constructed a very helpful, light-hearted and colloquial set of guidelines that will ensure you are fully aware of what the Do’s & Don’ts are for using this service.

Entrepreneurs must understand that Flickr is not a billboard, rather it is an online photo sharing community, a virtual scrapbook if you will, for you to further connect with those who you wish to gain a more robust idea of who you are and what you value as a business.

So, take a tour and explore the various features and uploading tools available. Search for groups that would be of interest to you or your market. Ask questions and share your thoughts here by commenting below. As you research its versatility and role within the world of social media, it could spark creative and helpful thoughts as to how Flickr can be useful to your company and overall brand identity.

Guest post by Business Development Consultant, Guy Mitrano (@guybby) Mitrano is a Gen-Y entrepreneur, and CEO of Burlington Boatyard, LLC & business consultant with strong awareness of the needs, strategies, & goals of fellow young entrepreneurs and start up companies.

Blogs. 

As an Internet strategist - my life daily is consumed with social media feeds, blog alerts, feedburner stats, google alert updates, monitoring, strategizing, execution - all of these overused terms and time consuming tactics certainly take a toll on you.  

But one thing I do often, as I do for all my clients, is research - taking notice of the growing digital space around me - thinking of ideas to implement innovative strategies among the community and with my clients.  

One of those key strategies that are a must in today’s Internet spectrum is a blog.  A blog is key in driving not only traffic, but interest to your brand, product, or company.  Blogs help you appear authoritative in your industry - allowing you to give views on the latest events in your trade, offer reviews, insights, and so on.  

This expands into relationship building tools, as you are able to speak more freely and in a more informal and personable style, as compared to how you direct the voice on your main website.  Through the blog channel, they are more likely to trust you, and then all the more likely to visit your main website and then click your links and possibly purchase your product.   

It also offers insight for your customers, and allows them to leave comments and ’speak’ to you on a key level. In addition, blogs are extremely search engine friendly - through thousands of possible keywords and fresh, updated content on a regular basis - blogs are simply great facets to have on your website today.  Your simply misguided if you think otherwise.

*Read More for a detailed blog breakdown of the popular clothing line Free People.

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