The internet is an ever-changing source of information and forum for communication. With consumer needs and wants shifting along with it, photography too has had to adapt to the ways of the digital world.
Flickr is Yahoo!’s response to this change. The application allows people from any corner of the globe to upload, store and share images of their travels, talents and memorable moments. So forget all of your scrapbooking costs, the messy clean-ups and large amounts of time spent. Although the art of scrapbooking hasn’t died yet, Flickr is definitely surpassing its utility, and on a global scale. In addition to all its functionality, Flickr is free.
Apart from being a photographer’s storage and filing space, the application is also counted among social networking forums like Facebook and Twitter. It is highly interactive and allows people with similar interests to tell their own stories using photography.
There are six easy steps to acquiring an account and becoming a Flickr fundi:
- Open www.yahoo.com and create an email account, in order to get a Yahoo! identity (ID). Those of you who already have a Yahoo! account, skip to step 2.
- Open www.flickr.com and click “Create Your Account”. Enter your Yahoo! ID and password.
- Once a member, you can upload your first photos,
- Personalise your profile and find friends that already have accounts.
- Start joining groups of interest and add your photos to their photostreams.
- Join the conversation – comment on other people’s photos, write about your own, and participate in interesting discussions.
So how does Flickr benefit my business? Flickr is not always the best option for every business, mostly benefitting those in the service industry. Photos of holidays, museums, and memories give tangibility to those things that cannot be touched or tasted in and of themselves, unlike physical products like chocolates, vehicles or clothes. By seeing other people enjoy a service and reading their comments, both the service organisation and other potential customers get a glimpse of the success of the sale, affording the organisation in particular more immediate consumer feedback and free word-of-mouth advertising.
For instance, while visiting the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town, a family can take images of their experience and add them to the Two Oceans Flickr group, sharing them with family, friends, and others in the group, which can in turn lead to a discussion and spark interest in visiting the Aquarium.
With more than 2-million users and over 3 000 images uploaded per minute, Flickr is proving to be a dynamic forum and great marketing investment which any marketing manager should not be overlooking.
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