I believe if you're looking for a cost effective way to promote your assignment photography business - Facebook is a must.

For stock photography work - I don't think so at all. Same applies to Pinterest btw.

As a general rule of thumb, just having your own profiles and posting about your work doesn't do much for you.  Making content that people really like may result in them sharing it on their profiles which is much more useful as it may bring new visitor to your site to check things out. 

Personally I like to go with some subtle, well-placed sharing buttons and have the profiles hanging around but I don't go out of my way to blurt out my every thought and pictures of my lunch on those profiles like some people seem to need to

I don't think a Facebook account is 100% necessary, I find their privacy controls (or lack there of) were making it hard to separate business and personal which is one of the many reasons I dumped it as the start of the year.

It's pretty much down to personal choice, give people the option to share your images but don't annoy them by shoving the options in their face and you should be fine.  Don't stress about spending time sharing if it's not your thing, you're better off using that time to shoot new images if you're going for traffic and sales.

Edit: Ha, Leo beat me and summed it up much more efficiently!

I don't think any of it is necessary. It isn't likely that social media helps your SEO unless you have a significant social presence with a lot of participation. I have a hard time believing you are going to get tons of retweets and Facebook shares for uploading new images.    On the other hand, I write a Disney blog and promote new posts on Facebook. These get "Liked" and "Shared" repeatedly, and it has clearly helped my SEO. Social media helps most when there is something you are promoting which people tend to get excited about.

wordpress has many addons to automate the posting to FB/Twitter/instagram/etc

for anything else, no money is going to come from this activity, only some "exposure" but just as long as you have a lot of followers otherwise it's a waste of time.

ask yourself, why people should "follow" your rants ? you must give them very good reasons to do it.

I happen to be a fan of Facebook. 

First, I don't think I have to mention the importance of watermarking do I?

If you shoot models, post a mini gallery of a recent shoot and tag the models (with their permission - their name is supposed to be anonymous after all).  Their friends will see the feed and you may get new models this way.  You may also get other assignments when their father reposts and his business associate sees what amazing work you do.

Always add something like "copyright Bob Smith, Greenville AB photographer specializing in equine photography" and "Stock photo available for license at www.bobsmithphoto.com" so that they know your name and think of you first as the best horse photographer in AB.

Post your Symbiostock blogs on Facebook, this will take them to your blog to leave comments and increase traffic.

If you are comfortable with it , you can have a "fan freebie" section (they have to "like" your page) to give away a websized waterfall or a different calendar wallpaper with your branding on it every month.

jm might be right - I'm not sure it will significantly increase sales, but it can certainly open up new doors and may lead to other opportunities and new contacts

Quote from: stockphoto-images.com on August 02, 2013, 17:07

One other thing that "forces" me to sign up with FB is that I will be able to implement a FB social login to my Symbiostock site without forcing the buyers to create an account (it has been discussed before here on the forums).

Since we don't know when a non-registered purchase is going to be implemented, I wanted to at least offer a simplified login experience.

how do you do this?

I'm using this plugin: WordPress Social Login

Check my site www.stockphoto-images.com and try to register. When you scroll down you can login via your Twitter account for example.

Let me know if this answers your question.