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As a photographer your time to devote toward social media may be limited. Most photographers I know have commented that they wish they had an extra hour (or 10) in their day to catch up on editing photos, updating their web page, or _______(insert 1 of a zillion things you are busy with). So why devote time toward social media if you can’t measure the effect it has on your business? In this post we’ll help you measure the value of your time and interactions so that you can make better decisions about how to market your photography business.

Time is one of your most valuable assets
Time will help establish a benchmark for measuring the return on investment of your social media efforts. How much time do you spend on social media and what do you value that time at? If we assume you devote an average of 5 hours a week on social media (20 hours a month, 240 hours a year) and your hourly rate is $25 your social media marketing efforts may be costing you at least $6,000 a year. This seemingly “free” form of advertising is not free. So lets be strategic and start measuring social media.

How do you measure social media?
Part of why it’s hard to measure the value of social media is that there is no universal unit of measure across the different platforms. If I may be so bold, I’d advocate that until some universal unit of measurement exists (share your thoughts) the only way to measure the value of social media is to value your input of time, research, and advertising funds for each social media platform and compare this to your possible return from other forms of traditional marketing.

Value of time invested + Investment in education/research + Cost of paid advertising and social media tools= The monetary cost of your social media marketing

Facebook offers some of the most insightful analytics tools of all of the social media platforms. Still the challenge is to understand what each insight actually tells you. Two insights that I have found helpful are “unique users by frequency” (clarifies within a specific time period how often each unique users engaged with your page) and the “friends of friends” (gives you total possible reach of your page). These are stats that any good media channel should be able to give you about their readership or viewership. Compare what your social media investment is to the coverage you could receive from other channels for a comparable investment.

Another valuable insight you can gather from all social platforms is the cost of social referral. By using Google Analytics you can see the amount of unique visitors you receive through each link you put up. Sum the amount of time, research, and advertising you invested in a specific landing page and divide this by the amount of unique visitors you received for each link to value your cost per referral. How much is it really costing you to get people to view your unique content?

Hopefully by now you have a better idea of how to make sense of what your Social Media results are telling you. Remember that unless you quantify your investment of time, research, advertising options and available funding, you won’t be able to accurately assess the true gain/or loss on your social media efforts.

Stay tuned next week as we focus on Instagram as part of your social media presence.  If you haven’t already, join the conversation and let us know what is working for you at resolve@livebooks.com. For the latest news from liveBooks, and for added information and access to tools that will help you grow your photography business, stay connected to liveBooks through Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.