Social Media is the buzz word in marketing nowadays, and services like Twitter have gone mainstream. But should photographers use Twitter as a marketing tool?

Let's start by acknowledging that social media services like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are real phenomena when it comes to business marketing. Everyone from accountants to plumbers are finding new audiences and paying customers by leveraging social media. As far as photography goes, I've picked up paying jobs by simply having a presence on Facebook and posting new photos on a semi-regular basis. The easy flow of information (text, pictures, video) through these networks acts as connective tissue for new businesses.

Twitter claims to have 25 million active users, and like any social network, you have to explicitly "follow/friend" users -- this "opt-in" makes this inbound marketing so much more powerful than the unsolicited e-mail or postcard of yesteryear.

But even given the size of the "addressable population" and the strong connectedness, should photographers use Twitter?

There are two key components to determine to answer this question:
1. What are your goals?
2. What do your analytics say?

GOOOOOOOOOOAL!
Goals are a funny thing. When we think of Twitter or Facebook, it's too easy to be seduced by the number of followers or friends. What are you -- in junior high school? This isn't a popularity contest. Numbers are meaningless if we don't have a goal. It's like saying you have 10 best friends, but none of them will meet you for a drink.

A lot of photographers will tweet with no business goal in mind. If you're trying to sell photos or photographic services, what is the value in regurgitating links to other websites? Or trying to be the wittiest person online?

I fully understand that you don't want to come across as a schill or schmuck, so there needs to be a balance of self-promotion. But when you are in self-promotion mode, why the heck are you sending people to a blog post or gallery of images with no discernible "point of conversion?"

• If you want to get hired, then you need to 1) make it clear that you're available for hire, and 2) make it easy to contact you.
• If you're looking to sell images, then your website needs to have e-commerce.
• If you're looking to audience build, then don't "dead end" your content. Point people to other content on your site, or allow them to sign up for newsletters and RSS feeds.

You need a goal because with out it, we can't answer the "return on investment" question which is central to understanding whether it's worth it to tweet.

THE ANALYTICS TIE-IN
You'd be hard pressed to be a Twitter pro without knowing of the URL-shortening service bit.ly. Although services like tinyurl preceded it, bit.ly's success is due in part to it's ability to provide tracking statistics like how many people clicked on that link.

At a bare minimum, you'll want to know this because you can never tell how many people actually see your tweet. There's no "pageview" equivalent in Twitter.

But once again, knowing a click-through rate (CTR) isn't really that helpful if we can't tie in a goal. Let's say you publish your favorite images as prints for the holidays on your website. Then you post the link on Twitter, Facebook, and your blog. Even if you know that Twitter sent you 100 visits and Facebook sent you 60 visits, I'd argue that it's not enough information to say that Twitter is a better marketing tool.

Why? Because you might get 100 visits from Twitter but only 1 sale. Whereas Facebook might send you 60 visits with 4 sales. Quality of traffic is much more important than quantity of traffic, and you can't make this determination without tying in analytics.

GO CAMPAIGNING
Google Analytics has a concept of "campaigns." It's an easy way to add tracking variables to any link to your website that you post online. When people click on the link, your Google Analytics will use cookies to track their activity. If you have a "goal" set up in Google Analytics (e.g. an e-commerce sales funnel), you can now determine:

• the number of visitors that came to your website from Twitter
• how that traffic compared by various site usage metrics (e.g. time on site, page views, etc)
• what percentage of those visitors completed a sale

At PhotoShelter, we use this all the time. When we have a discount code for example, we'll use the Google URL Builder to add campaign codes. Then we'll use bit.ly to shorten the URL and then post it on Twitter.

Now we can see specifically how our general and specific Twitter activity ties into our bottom line.

THE FINAL WORD
Participating in social networks can be fun, so if you're having fun, tweet to your heart's content. But for a lot of you, time and resources are probably always squeezed and that's why I'm advocating an analytical way to determine whether tweeting is worth it.

By the way, follow us on Twitter @photoshelter.