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When you first immerse yourself within the social media game, you are constantly bombarded with information about the heavy-hitters
You are told to focus your efforts on Facebook, Twitter and blogging—build a community, engage in conversation and form relationships—if you want to become a successful social media ninja then you have to tackle the biggest and boldest social sites first.
But what happens next?
Once you’ve found your social groove, and developed quite an active community of followers, it’s time to embrace a well-rounded, more blended social strategy. There are a variety of additional community-inducing platforms that you can weave into your current social media efforts.
One, which we at Astonish Results regard very highly, is Flickr—the photo and video-sharing tool. Over the past 2 years Flickr has certainly been evolving its clout as a social media outlet, although Facebook and Twitter still tend to steal the spotlight. However, despite the competition, Flickr has also experienced rapid growth and integration within various aspects of digital marketing. It currently hosts upwards of 5 billion images and its branding benefits are steadily increasing.
With the array of both personal and professional reasons to use Flickr, it’s important that agency owners focus on implementing this social resource as a means to:
- Enhance the company’s personal interaction with current its clients
- Build greater awareness and visibility of their agency brand
- Humanize their agency and showcase their individuality
- Conduct outreach campaigns and contests; driving potential clients and& increased traffic to your site(s)
Still skeptical? Astonish Results has seen incredible traction from our branded Flickr account. As a company we share an abundance of photos including snapshots from holiday parties, candids of our fearless leaders out on the road, agency visits and more. By promoting the images through our Facebook and Twitter accounts, we not only encourage clients and the surrounding community to comment, but also provide them with an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at Astonish culture. Allowing the consumer to step inside the world of your agency – and view things from a more personalized perspective – is a great asset to your branding and credibility.
So how can you begin to harvest the power of Flickr for your independent insurance agency?
Take a look at some of these helpful hints to get you started:
- Share all photos and videos – both created by your agency as well as any customer-submitted material – this will help build up your Flickr portfolio
- Employ strategic keyword tagging to boost your images’ visibility – this will affect both SEO-inspired searches as well as searches performed by Flickr users within the platform
- Join Flickr user groups to help gather interest and spark conversation from those who may not be as familiar with your agency, your products or services
- Photo contests and unique promotions are a great way to utilize Flickr in regards to building an active social community and maintaining interest in your brand
- Consider connecting Flickr to your current website, Facebook Fan Page, blog, etc. to allow for smooth, seamless ability to cross promote among all of your agency’s online presences
If you’re ready to take your social media efforts to the next level, why not begin with Flickr? With the ability to interact, comment, categorize and build up strategic contact lists, the platform provides you with the perfect opportunity to increase your online presence—all with the simple upload of photos. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Are you active on Flickr? Feel free share best practices with us below, we’d love to hear what you’re doing!
May 29, 2011 at 10:53 am
I agree – Flickr is great! … sad when I noticed, your flickr link doesn’t work (icon at the top, takes to an error page) Would love to connect on Flickr!
June 2, 2011 at 4:14 pm
Hi Nicole! Glad you agree, Flickr is a great tool that can really take your social strategy to the next level! And you’re right, the icon posted is only linking back to the post, I’ve tried to update it, but for now if you scroll below to the link “our branded Flickr account” that works! Looking forward to connecting!