Flickr is the second most highly trafficked photo-sharing website on the Internet, second only to Facebook. Here are a few smart ways to leverage this high-traffic website to market your business:
Put Your Website in Your User Name
Make your user name your web domain. For example, your domain might be MyDomain.com. That makes it very clear to people who you are and where they can learn more about you. Since your user name is clearly featured, you will get a lot of copy and paste traffic if you get traffic to your images.
Tag and Describe Every Picture
Pictures that are properly tagged with good descriptions are much more likely to show up in search results, both from Google and from Flickr. You will also be more likely to get linked to when people clearly know what is going on in an image. It can get tedious, but it is an essential part of using Flickr for marketing. If you want your images to rank and get linked to, tag and write descriptions for every image.
Get a Pro Account
For just $25 a year, you can get a nice pro logo next to your name and have the 200-photo limit removed. Being a pro member shows people that you are serious about marketing on Flickr.
Leverage Groups and Community
Flickr has a very active community, centered primarily around groups. These are interest groups around a wide range of topics, where people share images with one another. For example, a group around car modification might have users from all over the world who share photos of their cars. There are photo groups for all kinds of topics. Look to see if there are groups related to your market. If so, make sure you are there sharing photos and promoting your business.
Promote Reuse
A lot of people don’t allow others to reuse their images, which could severely limit the amount of traffic you get to your pictures. Instead, make it clear that people are more than welcome to reuse your images. When they do, you could ask them to link back to your website, or you can just put a small, translucent watermark on the image. Make it small so it is not distracting, but so that anyone who is interested in finding you can do so through the watermark.
These are a few key tips for marketing on Flickr. Most importantly, tag and describe every picture. Get a pro account. Consider using your domain as your user name. Use the power of groups to get your photos out there and encourage others to share and distribute them.