A colleague sent me a question about how to use Flickr in support of his client’s marketing goals. Removing some of the details, here is the question:
She is trying to start up a group in Flickr that is focused on “ABC.” I think she wants to start a photo journal and eventually publish it. She wants my help to drive traffic to the site and build participation. That’s about all I know. I will be able to fill in blanks later after our conversation. Hope this helps. I appreciate any insight you can provide regarding the inner workings of flickr.
Here’s my response to him. First, I’m not an expert on this subject. Second, this is a long post. Ready? OK, so I’m fudging a bit on my answers, but I’m close enough to get some key points across. See, Flickr, is a classic social media site. It includes –
- user profiles for people who post pictures or comments,
- commenting capabilities,
- tagging of content,
- “friend” features and
- group functions.
And it takes work to make it work. In other words, just like any other social media site, it requires purpose, vision, nurturing of relationships, admin, moderation and ongoing and ongoing attention. That said, it can be a wonderful tool to use for accomplishing multiple goals for an individual, business, group or “cause.”
Just some of the things to think about before starting a Flickr group (and this is from my own limited experience with it) –
- There’s the thinking and decisions about tagging photos and creating, if desired, unique tags.
- There’s figuring out admin functions.
- There are group rules and Terms of Service to consider.
- There’s moderation of content, and perhaps comments, tagging accuracy and photo titling.
- There’s inviting in and nurturing relationships of members.
- There’s spam.
And perhaps the biggest of all, there’s inertia. Having a purpose, value and mission behind something doesn’t seem to be enough to get the ball moving anymore. At least not through my eyes. So getting a community of people to participate in a Flickr group — by joining, commenting on photos, adding their own photos, et cetera — can be a challenge.
Probably the easiest route to a robust Flickr group is to have any existing group that has personal and meaningful relationships and then to layer in Flickr as an additional means of connection and expression inside the group. But that’s just a guess.
I actually do have two good friends (Strobist and Ozoni11), both local, who have extremely successful Flickr groups. They both happen to be world-class photographers, so they created a social network inside of a tool (Flickr) where their community members already play.
I have another good friend (Mary Kate Murray, of Oakland Mills), also local, who uses Flickr to support the many cool community activities she does. She actively layers Flickr in along with Socializr, Facebook, blog comments, Twitter and other online media. So Flickr is one component of her tool kit for creating and strengthening community. She *works* it. Each picture gets a comment, and on occasion, a hyper-link.
Your client wants you to help drive traffic to her Flickr group, and I’m certain you can do that. What does she want to happen when people get to her Flickr pictures?
- Comment?
- Join her group?
- Upload photos?
- Repurpose and share them elsewhere? (Creative Commons License needs to be set accordingly)
- Brand herself?
- Sell photos?
- Have people link to another site?
In recommending Flickr as a tool for a client, I think it would be helpful to know how comfortable your client is with Web 2.0 technologies and culture. Sometimes seemingly simple stuff can be a huge hurdle to the uninitiated.
- Is she comfortable uploading files and using light HTML?
- Does she understand Web 2.0 and the concept of tagging?
- Has she created an online profile before?
Social media is not a build-it-and-they-will-come world anymore. Your clients idea sounds relatively sound on the surface. As you know, there’s lots involved in making a site successful once people arrive at it. And much of that success has to do with how the site was set up and what you want people to do when they finally do arrive at it. In social media, it also includes a fair amount of admin and content management and the no-two-ways-about-it time-consuming task of creating, developing and nurturing relationships.
Probably the best thing for you, right now, is to
- Create a Flickr account yourself and join at least one group.
- Post and tag some photos.
- Comment on some photos and explore how commenting is used inside of groups.
- Create a small group.
- And play around.
That’s my two yuan on a Friday afternoon.