Which Social Networking Site Do You Find More Useful (For Business) And Why?

Written by Louise Collier on May 8, 2010 11:25 am

Recently I was asked this question by one of my followers on Twitter and because trying to understand how to use these sites can sometimes be overwhelming, whether you’ve been using them for years or you are a complete newbie to them, I wanted to provide a breakdown of the main three: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and why each one is useful and how you can leverage each one.

Key Points on Social Media:

Social Media is now the number one online activity, beating porn and personal email to the top spot.

Two thirds of the global internet population visit social networks.

Online, including social media, has become the most influential source in helping consumers make purchasing decisions.

Personally I would say that I find Twitter most useful. This isn’t because it is necessarily the most useful social networking site, but because I enjoy using it and because it is the easiest to use, I probably see the most benefits from it because of the time spent on it and the relationships I have built there. With Twitter the thing you spend the most time doing is directly communicating with people. Whereas there is a lot more to Facebook and LinkedIn and therefore there is more to learn and understand to use them effectively.

I think Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn can all be super useful for driving traffic to your blog and finding people to network and connect with. They all have their advantages, so it really depends what you are looking for. I recommend using all three, but at the same time it is sometimes hard keeping up with all of them especially when things are changing so fast within them. However, once you have learned the basics, it does get a lot easier to keep up with any new features.

Twitter

Twitter describes itself as, “a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” It is used by millions of people, and thousands more are signing up every day. Twitter believes that by 2012 it will have 1 billion users.

It’s no secret that I love Twitter. Once you have taken the time to understand how it works, it is really easy to use. It is a lot more basic than Facebook or LinkedIn, but it still gives you the ability to post valuable information, interact with people, build relationships, drive traffic to your blog, and share other people’s content that you like and find relevant.

Twitter gives you the ability to quickly build up a network of people in your niche. You can easily follow people you are interested in, without waiting for a friendship to be approved by the other person, like on most sites, and it’s really good for finding leaders in your industry to follow and learn from.

Your profile section gives you the option to add one website which means that you can drive traffic to your website automatically. As most people do not have a high number of followers, when someone new follows them, they are likely to click on their website link to see what they are about.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has over 60 million users and it also has the highest average household income per user over the top social networking sites.

I think one of the reasons people don’t bother with LinkedIn, or sign up and never finish completing their profile, is because it takes a bit of time to learn how to use it efficiently.

I haven’t been using LinkedIn properly for very long but I have quickly built up lots of connections and I am quickly starting to see it’s power. Having given it a chance, I no longer see it as the stuffy social network that I couldn’t see the value in.

Thanks to LinkedIn expert Lewis Howes I’ve learnt that LinkedIn can be incredible for connecting with high-profile people and you can quickly establish yourself as an expert in your niche with some of the features LinkedIn has built in.

Here are some of the reasons why LinkedIn can be so powerful:

You can have a massive network of millions who can view your profile whilst only being directly connected to a few hundred.

Groups – LinkedIn allows you to create your own groups, these are targeted connections – allows you to potentially become a thought leader of that group’s niche, build your tribe, create leads, drive traffic to your site, allows you to send a free weekly email.

Google Love – LinkedIn usually comes up as one of the top results when we search our own name.

Recommendations – You can get Testimonials from people who have worked with you which provides great social proof and credibility.

Traffic – You can drive traffic to your site through links in your status updates, links on your profile and the Wordpress application that you can add to your profile.

You can build up a database, export your contacts and email them without paying for an autoresponder.

If you spend more of your time on Twitter you can add more followers there by having your link on your profile.

If you run events you can attract a lot of attention via LinkedIn and consequently get a lot more people to attend.

If you want to get serious about LinkedIn I recommend checking out Lewis Howes’ ebook LinkedIn Master Strategies to learn everything you need to know about taking your LinkedIn profile to the next level, helping you build your business, and achieving your professional goals. I didn’t really have a clue about how to use LinkedIn before I came across Lewis on Twitter.

LinkedIn is a powerful platform to help you grow your business and I recommend really taking the time to better understand and use it. It really is too powerful to overlook.

Facebook

If Facebook were a country it would be bigger than the USA and 3rd largest in the world. It added 200 million new users in less than a year, adds half a million users every day and is on target for ½ billion users by December 2010.

5 billion – The number of minutes spent on Facebook each day.

1 billion – The amount of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos etc.) shared each week on Facebook.

25% of all USA internet page views are on Facebook

54% of all USA internet users are now on Facebook

These are no small numbers. Yet, millions more will join this platform in the coming months and years, and the vast majority will be seeking to use Facebook primarily for business purposes.

Here are some big reasons to use Facebook for business:

Facebook is no longer just for college kids. Users are typically older and more mature than on some other sites, and there are more affluent and more educated white collar users.

Finding business contacts – With so many active users, this is where your prospects, your customers, and, of course, your competitors are.

Building relationships – By engaging in conversations with your prospects and customers, you can better adapt your marketing and business services to meet their needs.

Raise your visibility – By posting regular status updates and relevant information, and becoming a thought leader, you can increase visibility and credibility as the expert in your niche.

Targeting your niche – Users volunteer lots of information about themselves that you can readily access. This kind of information would previously have cost fortunes to access.

Google Love – ’Fan Pages’ are indexed for optimal search engine positioning and viewable to the outside world – so someone doesn‘t have to be on Facebook to view them.

Targeted ads – With Facebook Social Ads, you can test out extremely targeted advertising for very low costs.

Last week Facebook made some pretty huge announcements. 8 social plugins were released, namely: Like Button, Activity Feed, Recommendations, Like Box, Login with Faces, Facepile, Comments, & Live Stream. Facebook calls them, “the easiest way to add Facebook to your site.” Pretty soon, every site on the web will be Facebook-integrated. Every brand that uses Facebook, and every Facebook user, will be affected by these changes.

One of these new plugins – the ‘Like’ button, enables visitors to ‘Like’ a post on your blog (if you have the plugin installed). When a visitor to your blog clicks the ‘Like’ button it shows up on their Facebook profile – potentially spreading your content to all of their Facebook friends. It’s a simple yet powerful feature, and one that could prove to be really valuable to marketers.

Now I have to admit Facebook had kind of lost it’s sparkle a bit for me. Maybe because I have been on the platform for so many years, and I’ve found that it has become quite spammy via the email inbox and the constant invites to groups and applications. However, I can’t ignore the power that it has, particularly with these new features, and I’m quite excited about the massive potential this platform has.

Conclusion

I think Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn all have their place in the social media world and they each have many positives, it’s up to you to learn how to utilise them so that you can get the maximum potential out of each of them. You can drive a lot of traffic to your website by leveraging these sites and the best thing is it’s all for free! I advise you to join and leverage all three and give them all a chance. The great thing is you don’t have to spend loads of time on each of them to see the benefits, 10-20 minutes a day on each one can be enough to see the benefits of using social media for business.

What do you think – Do you find one of these sites more useful than the others? Do you spend more time on one particular social media site? Are you happy about the new changes to Facebook, or do you wish these sites didn’t change so much? Let me know by leaving a comment below.