How to Improve Traffic & Enhance Your Brand With Flickr
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:
- 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.
- And with Yahoo! acquiring the image giant in 2005 – it has been optimized with the Yahoo! Image Search tool.
- 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.
- 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.
