Just do it!
Get on with your ‘social media’ interaction and get ‘your message’ out there! One of the #1 impediments to doing just that is getting hung up on the questions of ‘what medium should I use’ – ‘do I have the right camera’ – ‘is that picture “good enough”, etc. Just getting your message out there is far more important than getting caught in the weeds of having just the right format ‘to start’. Start now and all that stuff will work itself out along the way.
Flickr Ban
Flickr is a photo sharing site. A social site. It has recently banned certain accounts for “commercial use”, primarily retailers posting pictures of their products as an additional extension of their marketing and awareness online.
http://www.clickz.com/3632015
Photos, Photos, Photos…
Photos are a great way to show your business off at various angles: the business, the people, the food, the product, the location, and again, the people! Very few local and small businesses focus on getting photos up in as many places as possible. Here is why you should:
1. Tagging – searchability
2. Access – people get a look and ‘feel’ for your product and business
3. Personality – viewers get a sense of what you are about
4. Interaction – there are plenty of sites where people can post comments regarding your photos.
5. People want to see your products. Pictures are worth a thousand words, and if done right, a lot more than that in marketing dollars if done right.
Where to post?
1. Flickr
2. Facebook
3. Picasa
4. Yahoo, Google and MSN local profiles
5. Your own blog (Posterous, Tumblr, Word Press, Blogger)
If you don’t have photos, spend a few hundred (suggestion: up to $500) for a professional to take a hundred + shots, or / and have your ‘crew’ and yourself bring in personal digital cameras and take as many photos as possible.
It’s very much worth it and very much under utilized in the small, local business space.