Molly McGinn

Update: Tonya G. Martin’s pilates blog has launched. See it here, at matpilates.wordpress.com

This weekend Michael Dunn with Michael D. Dunn Photography shot some great pictures of Tonya and her downtown pilates studio. We’ll use these photos for her blog, printed marketing materials, and to create a flickr account for her studio.

Why flickr?

Primarily, I wanted to post pilates pictures because I was frustrated by the lack of good shots on flickr. When I did a flickr search to find place holders for the blog template I created for Tonya, I found zilch. Mostly I found pictures of cats doing impossible poses, and people mistakenly tagging yoga poses for pilates.

Plus, by creating an account for Tonya, she’ll join a thriving flickr community and boost her visibility online

Here’s how:

When we create Tonya’s flickr account, we’ll tag pictures with pilates specific information about the poses, and include links to her blog and her studio contact information.

To promote the photographer who took the pictures, we’ll register the pictures “Creative Commons” so that anyone who needs pilates shots, and likes these, can use them. In turn, they have to give Mikey credit for the shots, which, builds his photography business brand.

You can see the kind of community flickr builds just by looking at Mikey’s photo stream. People follow his work and comment on his photography every day. He also shares information, discusses challenges, and solutions, like he did with the picture of Tonya in front of Joseph Pilates.

That’s how community is built online. But it starts first with real people in the real community. You can’t have one with out the other.

Now. Excuse me while I go celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with my Greensboro community.