Expanding my Portfolio? Flickr?

Hello,
I am new here, but from the few days I have been in the forums I have gotten a lot of advice that has been really useful for taking better photographs and improving business techniques. I see many professionally photographers that have use a variety of social media techniques to spread the word of their images. I know that your own website is good, but what about sites such as Flickr? I know that now, some sites own your images if you upload them, like Facebook is doing. So if Flickr is good choice, and also if you have any other recommendations such as Twitter or anything please post them because it would be a big help.
Thanks.

In my opinion the most valuable marketing and social media tool is your own website, with your own domain. It gives clients (and potential ones) the confidence that you are well established and organised.

Now, that does not take anything away from social media at all, in fact all of your marketing tools should be working together cohesively to expand your reach and your brand awareness.

Of all the platforms out there, twitter is the easiest to get started, and with tools such as Klout and Hootsuite, it is very easy to maintain.

Ok thanks for the feedback J_O_S_H_U_A. My website is my top priority, but I will also use social media tools to help with advertisement as well. Thanks

I used to use flickr a lot, but I haven't posted anything in a few years. I hated those stupid badges on many of the groups.

I also have a twitter account but I don't use it.

Other than my website, I use my Facebook page and my G+ account to post new work.

I made a Google Plus account today, so now I have flickr, my site, and G+

PhotoMASTERZ wrote in post #16918670
I made a Google Plus account today, so now I have flickr, my site, and G+

If you need to use various mediums for displaying your work keep it consistent, easy to find and look at it from the perspective of the client. Is my images no more than a few clicks away? Are they loading easily? Is there distracting elements on the page that takes away from my images?

All these things can really put people off. Think like the buyer and not the photographer

I've personally never used Flickr before so I don't really understand the chances or ability of random people finding your work and how easy it is for them to share it.

However, I really do like both tumblr and instagram for sharing photos. The idea of "reblogging" with Tumblr and "liking/tagging" on instagram can help you get your work in front of a pretty large audience of people if it is reblogged/liked by people with high number of followers.

At the end of the day though, the photographers that I follow on tumblr and instagram that tend to have a large number of followers (for example: 10k+) are ones that consistently post awe-inspiring works to their social media platform of choice no matter what the actual platform is.

Ok so you have lots of followers on various social media sites. They like looking at your work, but how do you monetize them? Especially if those followers are your competetion, other photographers?

I saw a post by someone in another thread that had used FB advertising that for a very modest outlay ($50 I think) had converted to two bookings, and two other serious enquiries. Also that the demographic of the followers it generated were 80% in the target market of a wedding photog, i.e. 18 - 40 engaged women. That seems like well placed marketing, and an extraordinary high conversion rate for such a small outlay. I'm not sure where the demographic info for the followers came from, if it is truly verifiable that is even better, as you then really know your advertising is hitting the target market. This seems like a much better approach than simply going after huge numbers of followers on your platform of choice.

Alan