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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+.

If you have been following our Social Media miniseries you are undoubtedly excited to start executing your new strategy (if you haven’t already).  This week liveBooks is going to help you improve user engagement by looking at two of the variables you can control: what content you share and when you share it.

What types of content should photographers post to social media?

Few other marketing platforms let you reach so many people so quickly and for such a low price point as social media. It is important when you’re starting to use social media that you publish a variety of content to see what sticks best with your audience. As a photographer you’ll have a lot of visual content to share. Research suggests that images promote higher engagement than any other type of post. In addition, you can try sharing information about different causes you support, things you find inspirational or other cool projects you know about.

To improve engagement you can and include Twitter handles, Facebook tags, and other hashtags to your posts. Tagging others can often work as social currency and people are in turn happy to tag and share your stories. Also, you can try focusing your postings around different themes. For example, if you’re expanding your commercial photography business into high fashion you might try devoting your Friday posts to fashion-related themes on your Facebook or Pinterest profile. Maybe you connect with a local fashion blogger and share his/her content on your Facebook page. You can then see what types of content your followers are latching on to.

Remember that social media is SOCIAL! Think of each post that you put up as part of a larger story you are telling about your brand and the other social communities you align with.  Your followers want to share good stories and will reward you when they feel connected to the type of content you’re posting.

I love creative Twitter campaigns because they happen in real-time. These days the more creative you can get about how to engage your audience, the more successful your efforts will be. Here are some great examples that you might be able to draw inspiration from:

• Jeep put together an awesome campaign that creates a huge amount of engagement by encouraging its users to complete a puzzle. Watch this video to see how they did this.
• Artist Greg Burney (@GregBurney) vowed to sketch the first 3000 people that followed him on Twitter and in one month went from 70 to over 5000 new followers.
• Wendy’s created a gameshow on Twitter using the handle @girlbehindsix to promote the open slot they had on their burger menu. Wendy’s would ask viewers to do fun things like snap and tweet pictures of their headphones or engage in other interesting things to create buzz around Wendy’s. The campaign has over 20,000 followers.

As you can see, there are many fun ways to create buzz using Twitter. If you don’t feel like planning a full social media campaign, try to incorporate these tips into your marketing efforts.

• Research suggests that Twitter messages with 100 characters or less have an increased engagement of 17%.  This may not seem like much but every “favorite” or “retweet” further expands your reach.
• If a picture is worth a thousand words, then using Twitter’s new photo embedding function may speak beyond your 140-character limit.  More data will follow in the coming months, but we can assume that photo sharing will continue to increase engagement for Twitter users much like it has for Instagram and mobile Facebook.

When should I post social media content?

So you have all of these ideas to spice up your posts, but when should you be posting to get the most out of your time?  The answer to this depends on what you’re posting. If your message is about an upcoming workshop, consider posting on Sunday or Monday when people are planning out their week. If you have a serious call to action you might consider posting towards the end of the week when people can take time to follow up with your content.  If your clientele is largely working professionals, you might focus your posts around later times in the day when professionals are available and tuned into social media. Be diligent about posting and find the times that work best for your audience.

Stay tuned next week as we help you use tools to monitor 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+.

Last week we looked at getting you started defining your social media strategy. Hopefully by now you’re starting to have a clear idea of why you need social media in the first place. Answering why you need social media by aligning with your larger business goals will get you on your way to having a more valuable and dynamic social media presence. Next, you can determine “who” you’re going to market to and “how” you’re going to connect with them.

Segmenting Your Social Media Market

As a photographer, each of your marketing goals is in someway tied to a market segment. To attract new segments you may want to focus your energies around platforms in which content is very rapidly shared like Pinterest or Twitter. New clients will be roaming across these platforms to quickly find content and information that aligns with their interests. If your goal is to further develop conversations and deepen the relationships with your existing customers, you may consider using networks like LinkedIn or Facebook. Determining who you want to market to will help you determine which platform will be the best to use. Below are three tips to help you do this.

Defining your market segments and “who” to market to:

1. List your top three revenue sources in the last six months and how you currently communicate with them. For example, galleries, online purchases, studio drop-ins etc…
2. List the top three types of customers or groups of people you want to attract. Some of these people may already be in your top three revenue sources.
3. Begin listing similarities and differences between your current and desired customers. You can start by asking questions like: How do they shop? What do they say about my work? What do you want them to say about your work? What marketing efforts are you already using that you can you further leverage?

Remember that social media is an avenue and not a destination. In most cases you want use these platforms to drive people to your website where they can make a transaction. Once you have decided “who” you want to market to you can focus on “how” to get them.

“How” to craft the right messaging for your social media goals:

1. Do a little research: Talk with your clients and find out how they like to use social media. What platforms do they use and why?
2. Keep an eye on the competition: Look at how your competition is using social media. How do they add followers and build their online community? What kind of content do they post?
3. Keep it simple: Based on the time allotment that you developed as a result of our week one post, focus your energies on crafting messages across the platforms that your market uses most. It is much easier to add to your social media mix than downsize and refocus if it becomes too much to maintain.

As we suggested in week 1, start slow and build out your strategy. At the end of each week look at the progress you’ve made toward your larger goals. Has social media helped you get closer to being successful? Document any successes and failures you have along the way and learn from your mistakes. You may find that your goals are changing, and so then will your social media strategy. This is good! The more you can align your social media efforts with your goals as a photographer, the more dynamic you can be at responding and using social media to enhance your business.

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+.

Defining your social media strategy begins with knowing you.  This week we’ll get you on the path to building a useful strategy that aligns with where you want to take your photography business.   If you haven’t done so already, check out my Week 1 post, Social Media for Photographers: Where to Begin, as I’ll build on that information this week and each week throughout this series.

The Photographer’s Social Media Strategy

As often as we see and interact with social media, it’s uncommon for us to think strategically about how we use it.  If you’re like many, you dabble across the different social media platforms and wonder which ones you should be focusing on to get the most return.  This is where many photographers go wrong. Instead of asking, “What social media do I need to be using?” you might instead ask, “Why do I need social media for my business in the first place?” It’s a simple question, and one that’s often overlooked, but even attempting to answer it will help you begin to look at social media as a tool for achieving your larger business goals. And when you begin to do that, you are definitely on the right track.

3 Steps to Help You (Re)frame Your Social Media Strategy

Before you can game plan your social media attack, you must first understand why you’re in the game to begin with.  Try following these three steps to (re)frame your social media strategy.

1. Identify a series of end-goals and set a time frame for achieving them. Keep it simple, but definable. For example, “I want to increase the amount of wedding-related inquiries I have by 15% over the next three months,” or “I want to expand my client base 50 miles beyond what I normally do now.”  List timely goals and prioritize them.

2. Identify what’s limiting you from reaching these goals. Maybe you feel you need to have more people see your work, or you feel like you don’t have enough exposure in public venues.  Be clear about what you think is holding you back. Doing so will help you focus on overcoming such barriers.

3. Identify what you’re currently doing to be successful. As you begin to define your process, and to implement social media strategy, you should start to see some success. Document your methods of achieving that success and build on it. Then continue to try new ideas.

Once you’ve identified your businesses goals and begun to think about ways to achieve them through social media, you can begin to look at specific platforms for achieving success. For example, you might use real-time Twitter updates or Foursquare promotions to encourage people to check out your location. Or, you can use Facebook to build your community and advertise an event. Whatever you come up with, you’ll be much more effective with your social media time by connecting it to real, measurable business goals.

In conclusion, it’s important to recognize social media as a series of tools and not a be-all-end-all marketing solution.  At the end of this exercise you should have a clear idea of what larger goals to focus your social media efforts around.  If you’ve taken the time to define the “why” of your social media strategy, the “who” and “how” will naturally follow. Good luck!

NOTE: Tune in next week for Part II of this post, when I’ll help you segment your social media market and clarify action steps to reach the various segments.

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 and Twitter.