Flickr For Business

The photo sharing website Flickr.com can be a great tool for your business. By mid-2011 Yahoo!-owned Flickr reported having 51 million members. While that membership pales compared to that of Facebook, it still is a sizable population to which you can market your business. Plus, using Flickr for business offers some pretty neat ways to save money, especially if you have a website. (And if you don't have a website, what are you waiting for?)

All you need to get onto Flickr is a Yahoo ID. Get one of those at yahoo.com and then you can start using the site. Here are some tips on using Flickr to help your business:

Develop a profile

Get a Flickr screen name that matches your business name or website URL. All the photos that you post will show this name or URL and advertise your business. Create a profile for your screen name that is a marketing tool. Don't make it a sales pitch but rather an opportunity to provide information about your company.

Promote your products

Put photos of your products or which depict your services on the site. They will all contain your screen name which points viewers to your website or Flickr company profile. Create descriptions and tags strategically to draw the demographic you are trying to reach to advertise your product or service. People browsing the site may come across your photos and product or company information and you've just reached them for free.

Publicize your company

Involved in a charity or community service effort? Put up photos of your staff in action performing the activity and gain some positive exposure through people finding your photos. Use the photo descriptions to tell what your company did. Leave the hard sell out--just describe what your company did.

Network via Flickr communities

Using the communities in Flickr to network can get people interested in viewing your photos and learning about your company. In this way using Flickr for business is just like other social networking sites and the more you put into interacting with other site members the more you will get out of it.

Save website costs by using images

If you have a website, you should be using images with your articles or posts. However, to avoid violating copyright laws, you should be ensuring that you only use images for which you have commercial use rights. Image rights can be pricey but there is a huge inventory of images on Flickr which you can use commercially for free. Just search in the Creative Commons section of Flickr and be sure you credit the image owner in the manner that they request and in accordance with the site's Creative Commons license.

Exposure for your website

Use Flickr as a way to get backlinks to your website. If you utilize another Flickr users Creative Commons photo, post a blurb on their profile notifying them you are using their photo and include a link to your page. This is a good way to thank and recognize the photographer and also often the user will leave your note there, creating a backlink for you.

Treat Flickr like another social network with benefits

Using Flickr for business can save you money on image content and most importantly reach prospective customers at no cost. Just be careful not to spam the site's users with overbearing or inappropriate marketing or to post on too many profiles or photos. If you balance your marketing with a normal community presence you will find the site can be another tool in the toolbox to help your business.

James Duncan is Chief Editor at openthebusiness.com. There you can find more articles of interest to new business owners and those working to grow their existing companies. Get articles, tips and free e-reports to help make your business more successful today.