The best way to get your name out there is to market yourself, and one of of the best ways to market yourself on the internet costs NOTHING! NADA! Ta dah! That’s right folks using social sites like Flickr costs a big fat ZERO. I am speaking from personal experience and Carrie Sommer, Kristin, and Amy all use Flickr to great effect to contribute to the crafting movement, market their businesses, and invite their readers/customers to get involved with what they do. I can’t tell you how enthusiastic about this kind of marketing not least because it has cut my Google Adwords bill in HALF!!

A lot of this info will apply to most any business or blog on the web all you’ll need is few hours a week and a digi camera.The main thing to remember is when using these sites for marketing purposes is to play nice; that means it’s not a good idea (and it is frowned upon) when users just plain advertise themselves without making any contribution. For instance on my own blog I don’t make any attempt to hide the fact that I use it for marketing purposes, but I hope that by writing tutorials, personal content, highlighting the work of others, and holding some draws on my blog, the marketing for my shop isn’t offensive to my readers. With sites like Flickr it’s the same; it’s good practice to give your readers a bone and make it worth their while to read your content especially if it contains marketing…

**UPDATE** Carrie has very helpfully reiminded me of this important Flickr guideline:
“Don’t use Flickr for commercial purposes. Flickr is for personal use only. If we find you selling products, services, or yourself through your photostream, we will terminate your account. Any other commercial use of Flickr, Flickr technologies (including APIs, FlickrMail, etc), or Flickr accounts must be approved by Flickr. For more information on leveraging Flickr APIs, please see our Services page…”

Today I will look at my favourite social site - Flickr. It is very powerful, slick and it has so much to offer in terms of communicating and marketing. Flickr is much more than storage site for your photos. Here are some groovy marketing things that you can do with Flickr:

• Upload relevant images - and put your web link in the description box like I have with this image. The link is for a tutorial on my other blog that I have written on how to use purse twist locks in the hope that it will encourage readers to give them a try on their bags. In the blog tutorial there are links to my shop where the twist locks can be purchased if they so wish.  In this way the link on my photo doesn’t lead to a product in my shop, so I am not flouting the rules!

My purse twist lock photo in Flickr.

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• Join and create Groups - If you look at the right hand side of my photo you will see that the photo also belongs to different Pools. Pools are photo groups which have been set up by Flickr users to group photos in a manner of their choosing. I have set up 2 pools of my own; the U-Handbag Handmade Bag Pool (which is a pool for anyone to put their handmade bag pics where we can comment on each other’s handy work), and the Amy Butler Bags Pool (which is a pool that I use for the Amy Butler contest that I run every month, and I use the pool to show my customers what other folks have made using Amy’s patterns). If you can’t find pools that are relevant to you, just set up your own, it’s easy! If you click on any of these pools in my twist lock image you will see that my twist lock photo is included in other Pools (groups of photos). This means that my image is potentially being viewed by thousands of folks all around the world (and it doesn’t’ cost me anything)! If your photo and title is useful, relevant, or just offering something nice it has a greater chance of being clicked on and viewed by more folks.

• Comment on other people’s images - Do you see the ‘Add your comment’ box at the bottom of my image? You can also put your own link in that box too. Of course it’s a good idea to stay relevant and be respectful if you are going to do this. For example someone could comment on my twist lock photo by saying “I’ve made a purse with a twist lock too, I’ve blogged about it here http://…………” - which could link to their blog which could then link to a bag shop etc. Therefore, anyone who views my twist lock photo will also view the comments on the photo too.

• Add your links in your personal Flickr profile - like I have in my profile.

• AND WHEN - When you’ve done some or all of the stuff above take the Flickr links to your photos and your groups and place them on your site/your blog and link back because those search engines like them Flickr Urls - YAY! Spend a few hours each on Flickr each week and see your traffic increase, have fun!

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Do you use Flickr? Have you tried any of the above tools, do you you know of anymore Flickr tricks?

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