If you have a website, you should also have a Flickr account. Flickr is a fantasic social networking site for uploading and sharing pictures. It also provides some great website building tools. Here is my quick list of how you can use Flickr on your company website:
1. Host all those big picture files!
For a lot of small businesses, there just isn’t a lot of room on your server to host all those pictures that you want to share. If I uploaded all my pictures from my last Florida vacation to this server, I’m pretty sure I would fill it to capacity in no time. Flickr is great because it will host all your pictures online for FREE – that is, you are allowed to upload up to 100MB of pics per month for free. That is enough for most people.
2. Host there, Display anywhere!
Now that your photos are sitting safely and snuggly on the Flickr server, you now can “insert” them into your website. The picture below is posted from my Flickr account – it is the scoreboard from the 2009 Monon Bell football game (my favorite sporting event)!
3. Embed Cool Photo Galleries
You can also create cool photo galleries with Flickr. By organizing your pictures into sets, you can export them as sliding picture galleries that you can share on your web page. This aligns with one of the great services that we provide our clients: maximum functionality for minimum cost. Check out this gallery below from the 2009 Monon Bell game that I attended last year:
So as you build your site – think about using some of the features available to you by free social networking sites like Flickr. They can improve the user experience for your web visitors, but they can also save you money in your pocket.
