Out of the Fog Marketing

Flickr is fast-becoming a popular online marketing tool, especially for companies hoping to make a bigger impact using social media marketing. It allows companies to be creative and take advantage of marketing opportunities that are often overlooked in favor of costly online marketing tools. For those that are willing to take advantage of it, Flickr will create marketing opportunities where few exist.

Flickr is a web site community owned by Yahoo! But beyond just being another social networking site, Flickr offers its users free photo sharing and a host of related services. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, Flickr is the fastest-growing photo sharing site on the web, and the 7th most trafficked social media site overall, giving it some marketing clout for companies looking to expand in this shaky economy.

Given that Flickr is a photo sharing site, the companies that have found it to be most effectively have a visual element to their business, or a product and/or service to sell. Nikon has served as the benchmark for a company marketing with Flickr by using it as an extension of their Nikon School and their Nikon Digital Learning Center website. Their Nikon’s Digital Learning Center on Flickr is an “online resource (that) provides Flickr members with tutorials, practical photography tips and advice from Nikon photo professionals to assist them in taking photos.” By using Flickr Nikon has been able to generate 8,527 members, 23,440 photos, and 669 discussions, all for free using Flickr.

There are other large and small companies alike using Flickr to creatively market their business ranging from companies as dissimilar as 7-11 using Flickr to market their Simpson’s Kwik-E-Mart campaign pictures to Purina dog food catering to dog lovers. There is even a Facebook Flickr application so that companies can link their social media sites together. A number of opportunities exist for brands to engage in Flickr but they seem to break into three basic categories:

1. Spreading content
Unique visual content like 7-11’s Kwik-E-Mart photos that have received over 800,000 views after being distributed around the web from using Flickr.

2. Hosting online competitions
Flickr allows companies to create image-based competitions without the cost of creating their own infrastructure for the project.

3. Creating a community while providing customer support
Flickr can serve as a venue for fans to give insight to products and provide feedback while connecting with other company fans. This can be effective for technology marketing such as software vendors who want to show solutions or promote new products using screenshots.

When used effectively, Flickr has definitely shown that it has marketing potential for companies. Flickr can show any company, large or small, how to visually engage their customers using free social media, while creating an online community to disseminate their company message over the web.

Labels: ann arbor marketing, marketing technology, social media