As I said in my post on What is Social Media?, they are not the entirety of social media, but they are considered the big three.

However, they are not aimed at the same audiences, nor do they do the same things. I thought it might be helpful to do a quick post running down the differences among them. To know which one(s) might be right for you, it’s good to know what’s up with each.

LinkedIn is considered the most professional of the three. While LinkedIn Questions and LinkedIn Groups do add some engagement to the site, I don’t consider it primarily an engagement site. What LinkedIn excels at is a way to see into someone’s contact list. Without LinkedIn, you’re guessing at who someone knows. LinkedIn takes the guesswork out of it. The search feature allows you to target a specific individual and discover if you have any links to that person. It uncovers the “six degrees of separation” and is a great tool for finding and meeting specific people. It’s also the best of the three at showing your professional accomplishments and resume.

What LinkedIn does not do very well is allow your message to spread. And that’s where Twitter excels. If you have a good, interesting or funny message, it can spread far beyond your immediate circle of friends and followers. It’s also good for “meeting” new people and staying in touch with them. Do you want to build relationships with someone in another country? Twitter is an excellent place to find those people and establish some common ground.

What about Facebook? It doesn’t have the professional credentials of LinkedIn, nor does it have the potential reach of Twitter. What Facebook does very well is allow you to maintain and deepen existing relationships. And reconnect with people from your past. Yes, it is more social than LinkedIn, but that’s okay. Remember that we want to build relationships with people we know, like and trust. Facebook is the best tool of the three for getting to the liking.

With those characteristics in mind, how do you choose which site(s) to use? Tune in tomorrow where I cover some case studies and show which sites would be optimal.

Tags: social media

This entry was posted on Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 8:06 am and is filed under social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.