@ADBASE recently published an article called “Will Tweet for Food” about how Twitter can help commercial artists make money, featuring insights from Rosh Sillars (@newmediaphoto), Mati Rose McDonough (@MatiRose), Jessica Swift (@jessicagswift) and me.

Can using Twitter help commercial artists with their bottom line? If you’re read anything I’ve written or said over the years, you’ll probably know that my answer is “yes, as long as…”. In short, “Start with the why. Then figure out the how.”

Here’s my contribution to the ADBASE article Will Tweet for Food written by Tiffany Meyers:

I started tweeting in August 2007. Twitter was different then; this was before its applicability for business development or personal promotion was truly understood. It was fun, loose– a way for me to tap into a community I didn’t see every day. Now, it’s a part of my daily life and business.

You get out of Twitter what you put into it. Photographers are told to “shoot what you want to be shooting,” meaning that your portfolio should show what you want to shoot as much as what you’ve historically shot. Similarly, you should “tweet what you want to get out of tweeting.” If you only tweet about what you eat, then you’ll probably only connect with people who do the same.

I have definitely gotten new business from tweeting, although not from a direct “I tweeted this, and I got this bit of business.” Business comes from the relationships we create and maintain by participating in this kind of public communication. At the end of the day, people are the engines behind businesses, and Twitter is about people connecting to people.

People should also remember that there is no overnight success in social media. It takes a long time for your investments in social media to pay off. We all understand it takes time and experience to be a great photographer: The same goes for social media.

But there’s more than just anecdotes and general advice: want some data about how photographers use social media and how it has impacted their bottom line? Check out the results of the Social Media Photography Survey 2009 run by friend and photographer Jim Goldstein and I in the fall of 2009.