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Are you using Flickr to promote your business?

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Do you know what Flickr is? To put it simply, Flickr is a photo management application that is dedicated to fulfilling their two goals:

  1.  They want to help people share their photos with others who matter to them, like friends, family, business contacts. There’s nothing like a photo to bring people scattered all over the world together.
  2.  The people behind Flickr are crazy about creating new ways of organizing photos and video and making it easy for users to organize and store their precious digital memories. As a user, you can allow all your contacts and friends to comment on your photos and even reorganize them.

While those two applications are very useful, Flickr is way more than a simple photo storage facility, it’s actually a powerful tool for small businesses to reach customers and to promote their products or services.

To make Flickr accessible to anyone, they have a free account that allows you to upload 100MB of photos and two videos a month.  There is also a Pro account, with more tools.  If you choose a paid Pro account, $24.95 currently for a year, you get unlimited uploads, collections and storage, ad-free browsing and account stats.

Flickr is essentially an easy social networking application that can be specifically used to promote and grow your business.

If you add Flickr to your business, you will benefit from increased search engine indexing. Google and Bing consider Flickr as a major component in the social aspects of searches. For you, that means better Search Engine Optimization (SEO). When your photos start collecting more “Likes,” and are more frequent in search queries, your business will naturally get more exposure.

Quick Tip: Make sure you properly tag and describe your images.

You can create brand awareness with Flickr by uploading images and allowing your viewers to share and reuse them. This is ideal for bloggers –  we all need images, right?  As your photos are on the Internet, your brand is getting recognition. Any small business can see the value of that!

It is common knowledge that connecting to some of the powerful social networking sites can be a nightmare. Not so with Flickr. When you upload your public photos on Flickr, real time updates are sent to Facebook, Twitter and the Yahoo! homepage, Mail and Pulse. You can post directly on your blog from Flickr by setting up a connection to your blogging service. There is a great Flickr to WordPress plugin here – link it brings images into your dashboard.

A quick Google search will show you more plugins for WordPress that enable you to have Flickr albums and galleries as part of your blog.

In today’s marketing world, a simple photo posting site has become a quiet, but powerful marketing social site.  Is it part of your marketing mix?

Lilach

Lilach

Founder at Socialable Ltd
Lilach Bullock is passionate about getting tangible results using social media. Listed in Forbes as one of the top 20 women social media power influencers. She's the co-author of "Images that Influence" (Number One in its category on Amazon). Lilach is consulted by journalists and regularly quoted in newspapers on social media related matters, including (Forbes, Social Media Today, Prima Magazine, The Sunday Times and BBC Radio 5 Live ). A keynote speaker at business and marketing seminars. If you want excellent results, more business and better visibility you can can subscribe to Socialable newsletter here.
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by Lilach | Type: Standard
Filed Under: Social Media Marketing

69 Responses to Are you using Flickr to promote your business?

  1. Donna Merrill says:
    February 9, 2012 at 8:17 pm

    Hmmm Lilach, You have my wheels spinning by this post. I’ve not yet used Flickr but it is one of those things I want to get around to do. They way you explained it on this post makes it work well with WordPress. I’m always attaching photos and videos. I have to give this one a try!
    Thanks for the info I really appreciate it.
    Donna
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  2. Ryan Johnson says:
    February 9, 2012 at 11:44 pm

    Lilach, very informative. I didn’t realize the power of Flicker and the options it is capable of. Especially with SEO and being able to link to your blog is great. Definetly will be setting up an account. Thanks.
    Ryan Johnson recently posted..How To Write A Blog Post With SEO Part IMy Profile

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  3. Lori McNee says:
    February 9, 2012 at 11:52 pm

    Hi Lilach,
    As a visual artist, Flickr has been on my radar – I just need more hours in the day. This post might give me the motivation that I have needed to get my Flickr account looking great.
    Thanks so much!
    Lori
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  4. Nathalie Villeneuve says:
    February 10, 2012 at 1:16 am

    Hello Lilach, I am not using this tool but it sure looks interesting. I think that the more ways we can have our pictures and videos organized, the more efficient we can be at sharing them. As you said, there is a real value in using great photos and video to highlight a post or simply to share in social media platforms. I noticed that your pictures are always so relevant to your blog posts and it makes a big difference. It becomes more entertaining plus this shows that you took the time to research the pictures you wanted to use so the message is even more powerful…Thanks Lilach
    Nathalie Villeneuve recently posted..Two Frogs Story & The Slight EdgeMy Profile
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    • Lilach says:
      February 19, 2012 at 8:21 pm

      Thanks Nathalie:) I’m pleased you enjoy my pictures on my blog posts. I try to take the time to find ones that are as relevant and different as possible. I think it adds to the post and have received many comments just from using an amusing cartoon that grabbed someone’s attention:)
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  5. Mark Harbert says:
    February 10, 2012 at 1:56 am

    Lilach, great post! I never really realized that Flickr was that useful, I am going to check this out and see how I can implement it. Thanks for the post my friend! :-)

    Mark Harbert
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  6. Val Heisey says:
    February 10, 2012 at 3:30 am

    I have a Flickr account from years ago, and didn’t realize it could be used as a business tool. Thanks for this post, Lilach. Now I will go check out my Flickr account again. Love the idea of getting more images for my blog.
    Val Heisey recently posted..Easy ways to generate qualified leadsMy Profile
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  7. Terry Petrovick says:
    February 10, 2012 at 3:42 am

    Great info as always Lilach. I have used Flickr some but it looks like I am not using it anywhere to the power that it offers…thanks! I have some ideas now…
    Terry Petrovick recently posted..How to Have Persistence in a Home Based BusinessMy Profile
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  8. Chante Epps says:
    February 10, 2012 at 3:45 am

    Lilach this is a very informative post on the benefits of using Flickr as a way to get more visibility for your brand. I have an account with them, however I must admit I haven’t really dug into utilizing it the way that I should. I had no idea that using Flickr helps with SEO, thanks for sharing!

    -Chante

    Reply
  9. Srinivas Reddy says:
    February 10, 2012 at 7:21 am

    Another wonderful idea, Lilach. I like the fact that resources like Flickr are more than just data storage; they are social connection tools. Indeed, nothing transcends language and cultures as does a good picture. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then people everywhere connecting with a picture and sharing it makes it even more powerful.

    All that said, I do have some concerns about copyright issues concerning pictures that I didn’t take but have found online. Nothing that can’t be answered, but I want to look into that before I jump in.

    Cheers!
    Srinivas Reddy recently posted..How To Strike Out On Your OwnMy Profile
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    • Lilach says:
      February 19, 2012 at 8:29 pm

      Thanks Srinivas, absolutely:)

      You’re right to be concerned about the copyright issues and I must admit when reusing photos/images I always check what they are first and if in doubt I’ve emailed someone to ask for their permission too:)
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  10. Herbert says:
    February 10, 2012 at 8:00 am

    I had an account of Flickr but never used it much. I uploaded a few images but that was just it. Since I am not promoting any product on my blog, I guess the only use for my flickr account is for uploading my photos.

    Thanks Lilach
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  11. Lynda Cromar says:
    February 10, 2012 at 5:27 pm

    Wow Lilah thanks for that, I have used other services but you are right they can be difficult and painful to use. I love having easy and painless ways, and I do use video and images daily in my blog!
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  12. Andy Nathan says:
    February 10, 2012 at 6:46 pm

    Lilah,

    Flickr is probably one of those social networks that I have just never spent the time to use for traffic. It is cool to see how to get the traffic with the right approach, however. Thanks for the info!

    Andy
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  13. patricia says:
    February 10, 2012 at 8:20 pm

    Thank you Lilach for this useful info.
    I have used Flickr for my images may be 3 or 4 times and dropped it because I was not finding images I liked in the free option where we could choose with no commercial reasons.
    Where do we go specifically to be sure we do not break Flicker’s rules?
    I’d love to learn after I read your article!

    Thanks!
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    • Lilach says:
      February 19, 2012 at 8:52 pm

      Thanks Patricia:) You could always try approaching photographers too and ask them for their permission…

      Flicker is a great way to source photos but also you need to be using your own etc for the SEO to come into play:)
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  14. Preston Schumacher says:
    February 11, 2012 at 12:01 am

    Very cool Lilach.

    I have never thought of using Flickr to get more exposure on my business.

    Now that I think about it, it makes total sense.

    People love sharing and using images online and when people share your stuff it gets you more “brownie points” from Google.

    Lilach, do you think using images hosted on Flickr will give me more SEO juice towards my post?
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    • Lilach says:
      February 19, 2012 at 8:53 pm

      Thanks Preston:) I’m not sure if it will give you more SEO juice, it depends if you backlink it to Flickr… I think if you really are looking for the SEO juice you need to be using your own photo’s and not use it primarily for a sourcing website:)
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  15. Tim Lawler says:
    February 11, 2012 at 12:14 am

    Great post, and I will have to try it out. However, how is it any different than Dropbox? Sounds like it might be a little more social media friendly, but there are other places to get tons of storage for free. Regardless, thanks for the awesome post.

    Tim
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  16. Jamella says:
    February 11, 2012 at 4:59 am

    Hi Lilach,

    What you have described in this post makes perfect sense for bloggers. Count me as one of those who never thought about using Flickr this way. Thanks for sharing this truly informative post.
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  17. David Sharp says:
    February 11, 2012 at 8:28 am

    That’s a great tip Lilach, thanks. uploading photos to my blog is very time consuming and using Flicker could possibly save a lot of time.

    Dave
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  18. Kostas says:
    February 11, 2012 at 3:08 pm

    Hi Lilach,
    Flickr is a great source for finding images, I have used it a lot of times to find images for my blog posts and additionally I shared a few of my images I created and some of them were used repeatedly from other bloggers…
    Kostas recently posted..How To Make Money With WordPressMy Profile
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  19. Micahel says:
    February 11, 2012 at 5:42 pm

    It must be “thinking about using images” day today because all of a sudden I am reading posts and articles about the best ways to use images for building my business. I really like using images, and I rarely put up any post anywhere without at least one. But to be honest, I had never thought of using Flickr as a way of promoting my business online.

    What you describing here is a simple way to add more exposure for your business in a way that adds value to the web as a whole. I have read about so many “tricky” tactics that just make my feel sleazy when I think about using them. It is so nice to read about a way that works for both the business and for the customer and builds your brand at the same time.
    Micahel recently posted..Because My Mom Said SoMy Profile

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    • Lilach says:
      February 19, 2012 at 9:06 pm

      Thanks Micahel:) Yes I too love using images and never post a blog post without one:)

      That’s what I really like about Flickr – it’s a great way to promote your business and source some quality images – win win:)
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  20. Lesa says:
    February 11, 2012 at 7:23 pm

    Maybe I’m just dense, but I really don’t understand how Flickr would help me in my business. I *can* understand how it would help a photographer or an artist, or even someone who makes furniture, but I simply don’t understand how it would help me, a business coach. I do use images on my site, but they are generally images that I pay for — and although I have the right to use them on my site, I DO NOT have the right to allow others to use them for free (in fact, I cannot resell the image as is either). I therefore CANNOT share the vast majority of the images I have on my site. So I really do not understand. But like I said, maybe I’m just dense and don’t get it.
    Lesa recently posted..Search Boxes: Good or Evil?My Profile

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    • Lilach says:
      February 19, 2012 at 9:14 pm

      Hi Lesa – no you’re not being dense:) If you take photo’s or want to create your own images that’s how it can help your business. The more your photo’s are liked the better SEO you’re then get too.

      So for example let’s say you run workshops and take photo’s of your event you could upload them and tag them etc. and it all helps with SEO and promoting your business.
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  21. Alan says:
    February 11, 2012 at 11:38 pm

    Lilach, really interesting post, thank you for explaining the usefulness of Flickr in promoting one’s own social status. It is certainly an overlooked asset for me, as I have been primarily focusing on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, but I will certainly look into how I can best leverage Flickr for my business.

    Keep moving forward.

    Alan
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    • Lilach says:
      February 19, 2012 at 9:16 pm

      Thanks Alan:) I don’t think Flickr can substitute for Facebook/Twitter etc. but it’s a nice addition to add that takes a few minutes and adds to promoting your business:)
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  22. Alan says:
    February 11, 2012 at 11:50 pm

    Lilach, a really interesting post, thank you for explaining the usefulness of Flickr in promoting one’s own social status. It is certainly an overlooked asset for me, as I have been primarily focusing on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, but I will certainly look into how I can best leverage Flickr for my business.

    Keep moving forward.

    Alan
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  23. Josh Humble says:
    February 12, 2012 at 1:48 am

    Thanks for covering this, Lilach. Despite its obscurity, compared to more conversational networks, Flickr offers quite a visual punch, and for brands and photographers, it’s wonderful. Co-managing TKO Graphix’s social media presence and serving as internal photographer, we’ve had GREAT success with Flickr. Our brand is highly visual, and of course, visuals sell, so I would definitely advise businesses consider Flickr in their brand outreach. Tag / title images, share them on other networks, search for new contacts relevant to their brand (and talk with them), and have fun with it. Here’s more evidence of Flickr’s networking power: http://kylelacy.com/over-1-million-dollar-sale-from-flickr/
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  24. Jayne Kopp says:
    February 12, 2012 at 6:19 am

    Hi Lilach, is technology not just crazy great (most times)… it’s really unvelievable the things we can do. Fancy, having a ‘flickr to WordPress’ plugin. I’ll have to check into that.

    Sounds like I should get my tiny mind around it?? do you think?

    Thanks for the great tip.

    Jayne
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  25. Hezi says:
    February 12, 2012 at 12:14 pm

    I had no idea that Flicker is useful in terms of SEO and getting traffic to my site. After your post here, I think that maybe I should check it out :)
    Hezi recently posted..Facebook Marketing – How To Get Leads on Facebook For FreeMy Profile

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  26. Lou Barba says:
    February 12, 2012 at 2:32 pm

    Hi Lilach,

    I did register for Flickr a while back, but never used it for anything, no clue on what to do with it. I didn’t realize there were WordPress plugins for Flickr. I will have to check it out. Thanks for the info.

    Lou
    Lou Barba recently posted..The Man From Where??My Profile
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  27. Tosin says:
    February 12, 2012 at 9:14 pm

    Hi Lilach,

    I must confess that I also do not use flickr as much. There are many social media sites than we can keep up with and the fact that some of them integrate features of other sites makes one not consider being on the different platforms as much.

    But I love the fact you said flickr could make one rank better in the search engines. maybe I should consider it even if it’s only gonna be for the feature.

    Thanks for sharing
    Tosin
    Tosin recently posted..MLM Business Success: How the Internet Has Changed the GameMy Profile
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    • Lilach says:
      February 19, 2012 at 9:27 pm

      Thanks Tosin:) It’s difficult to find the time to use all of the social media sites and can be overwhelming at times. But if you have the time to also create your own images/photos then it’s definitely worth it for the SEO side:)
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  28. Rebecca Reddy says:
    February 13, 2012 at 11:04 am

    Thank you for opening my mind and eyes to another tool. I currently haven’t used any of my personal photographs as images, but now knowing it could be a SEO advantage, I should give it a try!
    ~Becca
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  29. Stacy says:
    February 13, 2012 at 11:13 pm

    Hi Lilach,

    I’ve used Flickr for images on my blog but I have not used it to upload images to build my brand. That is an interesting idea!

    Stacy
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  30. JosephJYoung says:
    February 14, 2012 at 4:23 am

    Hi Lilach,
    Well Flickr wasn’t a part of my strategy, but looks like it is now, LOL! I have it built into my theme but never used it. I do see the power behind the idea. I use this idea via Google images. I label every photo on my blog with keywords or phrases, always have, as well as my squidoo lens. It is a great SEO strategy.
    Okay, you put the Flickr bug in me!

    - Joe
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  31. kunal says:
    February 19, 2012 at 8:15 pm

    very informative… looking forward to be on flickr, because till now we didn’t considered that images can drive that much interest… thanks for sharing the post… :)
    kunal recently posted..Angry Birds Space Version Releasing On March 22My Profile

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  32. FOXY Steph says:
    February 21, 2012 at 11:17 am

    Thank you for this. Good to have your recommendation.
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  33. Amanda says:
    February 28, 2012 at 1:37 pm

    This is the first time I hear about Flickr, so, of course, I have never used it before, but it seems to be quite interesting
    Amanda recently posted..Business WordPress ThemesMy Profile

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  34. Ajnabii says:
    March 2, 2012 at 1:33 pm

    Hi Lilach,

    Another Great post you shared with us, i’m wondering how flickr is usefull to promote a business, really aafter reading your post i’m going to use it :)

    Thanks alot keep writting!
    Ajnabii recently posted..3 Efficient Offline Marketing TacticsMy Profile
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  35. Melissa says:
    March 4, 2012 at 11:52 am

    This is the first time I hear abut such application. If it s really so useful, as you described, then I will definitely check it out

    Reply
  36. Lisa R says:
    May 14, 2013 at 9:18 pm

    While I have had a few photos on Flickr for some time it is only recently that I was taking a closer look on Google analytics and found, to my pleasant surprise, that I was getting fairly healthy trafic for it. Of course I am now looking at how to mazimize this traffic. I am even surprised that many others are doing the same. I should have known.
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