In the same way that we can use YouTube to serve and promote our video content, we can also do a similar thing using Flickr.com's improved slideshow facility, to serve our image content. If you don't know Flickr, here is a great video to get you up to speed.

Flickr Step By Step

Using Flickr it is possible to upload whole galleries of photographs and images that you can send links to, share and receive comments on.

In my opinion it is one of the few social media groups that actually has something to offer everybody, and should stand the test of time, long after MySpace and FaceBook have faded into the background like CB radio.

Using Flickr for Marketing

Perhaps not as a strong, single, direct marketing strategy, but Flickr can certainly support and develop your image, and help to add a human face to your business or website. It is flexible and easy, with no web design or coding knowledge required, you can create sets, groups and present them in a slideshow like this:-

Click on image to view slideshow

Instead of a gallery of artwork, these images could be about your business, your staff, your products, your local area for tourism or community interests... The tools are all there, so how can you make it work for you?

The slide show above is not mine, but an interesting pool of Banksy images I found on Flickr to use as an example, and to link to it all I did was to navigate to the slideshow and copy the Search Engine Friendly page address from the address bar:-

Then I simply created a bit of a banner image, selected it and clicked the link button, in my Joomla editor and pasted it into the address field.

The result is quite basic, but can be improved and tidied up with the design of the banner/button style, but the delivery is quite sophisticated, and doesn't actually use any of the resources or bandwidth of your own site, so there is no financial impact on your business.

When using Flickr in this way, it's just good manners to also add a link. :) .http://www.flickr.com