Ever been approached on LinkedIn in a very unprofessional manner or felt like the social network is not what is used to be? Ever shared the same type of information on the LinkedIn and Facebook accounts of the brands you are handling? It’s high time we show you the main differences between the most successful social media networks at the moment and explain you each other’s strengths and where you should be focusing your energies or not.
Let’s start with the basics. If Facebook started as a socializing and keeping in touch social platform, LinkedIn became famous for its professional approach, helping people grow their professional network, find better jobs and the best information.
LinkedIn is a professional network, which has monetized its connections through its tremendous power as a corporate recruitment platform. According to Forbes, with around 160 million members (mostly professionals in their 30s and older), LinkedIn has become the “virtual rolodex” for business people. Today LinkedIn is going down a path to capture more and more of this business as the company continues to develop richer and richer data tools to help people find jobs, and jobs find people.
LinkedIn’s strength in this market is its “#1 position” as the professional network in the world and its strong data analysis skills and capabilities. LinkedIn users tend to be in their 40s and older, they tend to be white collar professionals, and they tend to be people with college degrees.
When it comes to Facebook though, the entire platform and system is designed to let people “share and communicate.” Its design is based on the principle that people like to communicate with each other, so all its features and capabilities are built around “hyper sharing.” By far, Facebook is really a platform, not an application. While LinkedIn is being run like a data-driven application, Facebook is really a sharing platform from which many companies can build applications.
How Business are Using Facebook and LinkedIn
According to Facebook, over one billion people “like” and comment an average of 3.2 billion times daily. Having a business page and connecting with your customers allow you to participate in these ongoing conversations. From a banding perspective, creating a Facebook business page and actively posting and engaging your customers give you an upper hand for the people who search for businesses in Facebook to prove credibility.
Businesses often use LinkedIn to create company and corporate pages, post job openings, attract talent, start and nurture conversations with customers and prospects, create leads, and promote other social media channels or initiatives. There is advertising on LinkedIn, however the targeting options are not nearly as extensive as Facebook targeting options. However, if you are selling B2B, LinkedIn may have the audience you are looking for, as they are typically more business-minded. Meanwhile, Facebook is much better for a B2C ad campaign.
Knowing Your Audience – the key to success
Both Facebook and LinkedIn have proven to be beneficial social networks, but for different reasons. Ultimately what it comes down to is what your audience interacts with more and what they prefer to use. When you know where your customers spend their time on social media, you can develop your strategy and interact with them in that space.
