Flickr is a photo sharing site with a vast amount of capabilities and has been around for quite a few years now. It has been hugely successful in helping photographers promote themselves and letting people share their love for photography. But more recently it has also been used by businesses to promote products and services, for example a Jewelry designer posting images of their Jewelry describing each one in detail, then linking to their website where orders can be made. This has been the same for graphic and web designers who want to promote their skills and want a universal platform in which to do so.
Flickr has the ability to tag photos with particular phrases and words so they can appear in searches. Flickr images, depending on the subject also appear very highly in Google image searches although it is not an official form of SEO. You can also ‘Geo-Tag’ items so they can be searched for by location, for example if Chester Zoo wanted to upload pictures of their animals and tag them in the exact location, they could! Having a subscription to Flickr Pro also allows in depth analytical data to show who is searching for your images, how long they looked at them for, what they were looking for in the first place and where those people came from, along with other data it provides a very easy-to-use form of web analysis that anyone can master.
Here is a list of things to do if you want your business to benefit from YouTube:
- Sign up to Flickr, its free but you will need a Yahoo email account first (also free)
- Create a profile, giving details of you and your company; remember to include links to your website and social media outlets.
- Upload! Upload! Upload! The more content the better and make sure to tag it and assign it to ‘sets’ if you are uploading different subject matter.
- Join groups that are related to your product or service, don’t just add photos but contribute to the discussion.
- Start your own group and actively try and promote it. Search Flickr and see if there are other users who might want to join your group.
- Build up your Flickr contacts; invite your clients to join you on Flickr.
- Comment on other photos you find interesting.
- Make sure your photos are optimized with the correct titles, tags and descriptions.
- Do not try and sell your products on Flickr, this is against their code and you may find yourself deleted.
- Once a picture or set is indexed well in Google, add a link back to your website for greater SEO but don’t do this on every photo (see above).
- Try and get a variety of photos on your account to make it interesting, try some photos of staff functions, your workplace or functions you have attended.
Flickr is very easy to use and maintain but as usual why not ask us to do it for you?