Have you considered ways to leverage Flickr, the popular photo sharing site, for your small business or Internet marketing blog? If you haven’t, there are several ways business bloggers might use the site, which is goldmine worth mining a couple different ways. Here’s how:

1. Blog Post Images. There’s a staggering amount of quality photography and graphic design images, and the owners of many of these works welcome bloggers and others to publish it, free of charge. Many bloggers find these images a refreshing change over formulaic stock photo, which you generally must pay to use. Another benefit is that the Google Images bots tend to index Flickr images in a post, potentially giving your site extra SEO juice.

To discover free images, use Flickr’s search box, entering “Attribution-NonCommercial License” + YOUR KEYWORD. You’ll likely see numerous images the owner doesn’t mind anyone copying, distributing or displaying – as long as you give them credit wherever you use it. The creator of the work will appreciate your linking to their Flickr photo stream, too.

2. Build Blog Traffic Using Flickr. There are a couple of ways to do this, depending on how much time you want to put into it.

• Create a profile and upload images relative to your products, services or business activities. Join related groups and get your images seen by those who share your interest. Put a link to your site on your profile page, but Flickr prohibits putting links to commercial sites under your various individual photos. You can, however, tag all of your images with your name, blog’s title, and SEO search terms that Google and other search engines will index.
• Start a photo group relative to your products, services or niche. You can join Flickr for free, or you can pay $24 per year for a Pro Account. With a Pro Account, you can create a group and build a community of likeminded Flickr photographers. If you do this, Flickr would allow your URL to appear on your group’s front page. Many museums, newspaper publishers, artists, artisans, and social groups do this and attract plenty of click-through traffic. Share the best, related works on your site.

3. Brand-build with Photo Merchandise. Once you’ve uploaded your photos on Flickr, you can use their partner services to showcase your brand and images on different items. Order prints, canvases, photo books, business cards or postcards. Click the shopping cart link to use Snapfish, which will create coffee mugs, t-shirts, canvas bags and more. You might use these to promote your business, online and offline. Your images immortalized might make great contest prizes or gifts for preferred customers.