How do you identify the best social network for you? Does the one size fits all rule apply? Unfortunate as it is, the above rule doesn’t apply to the world of social networks. A social network that may sound perfect for business may indeed be a recipe for disaster for another business. Your competitors are all over the place so should you copy them and try to be omnipresent on all social networks? Would it help if you were present on all social networks?
How do you decide which social networks is right for you and your business? Here are some exclusive tips on the considerations before you take the plunge on any social network.
Best Social Network for Your Business Needs
The most important criterion to select a social network is to evaluate it against your business’ current and future needs. For example, if you want to have a social presence mainly to connect with partners, resellers and want to develop purely professional relationships, LinkedIn is perhaps the best place to start. On the contrary, if you want to reach out to customers and deal in the B2C segment, Twitter and Facebook are right for you.
Further, if you want to frequently do product demos, How-Tos etc, it’s a good idea to setup a dedicate YouTube channel for your business.
Learning Curve of the Best Social Network
Despite the explosive growth of Internet, not everybody is technology-savvy. I recommend Twitter as the start platform for businesses that are wary of the learning curve. Once you get the hang of things, extending your presence to Facebook and other social networks would seem like a logical extension.
Privacy and the Best Social Network
Facebook may be the world’s leading social network with nearly 600 million users but its privacy measures still leave a lot to be desired. If you are wary of privacy and would rather keep it short and simple, Twitter might be the perfect social network for your needs.
Content
If you frequently need to push out content updates to your customers, I’d recommend maintaining an active blog and then syncing it up with your Facebook and Twitter accounts. There are many multi-faceted tools such as ping.fm which allow you to sync multiple social networks together so you need not put in manual efforts to update your presence on these individually.
Customization
I’ve come across a number of businesses which believe customization and white labelling their presence on social networks is a huge challenge. They want their Facebook pages and Twitter profile to look exactly similar to their website in order to maintain a consistent look and feel. In that sense, Facebook is perhaps’ your best bet as it offers a lot of flexibility in designing your business pages.
The more, the merrier?
It’s more about quality than quantity when it comes to using social networks for your business. However, I do not mean that you should restrict yourself to a solitary social network. It’s important to have a social media strategy in place which will allow to you leverage the best of each social network.
My advice is – start with a single social network that seems best-suited for your needs and then expand your presence to other networks in due course of time.
Which social network is right for you? How do you determine the “best social network suited for your needs? Please share your success story with us by leaving a comment below this post.
hi Douglas, thanks for this interesting topic.
I’ve build a lot of professional relationships with twitter. And what’s more, with twitter lists, I’m able to gather likeminded pro’s on a list and share that list via an application like paper.li It works great cause these lists get a lot of followers who value this content.I also like to advice people to let the type of content you’re sharing define the distribution channel. Are you writing product reviews, business coaching articles, how to’s on social media, news stories, your personal opinion, etc…
And also think about differences between photo, video or text sharing.
What are your thoughts on this?
The greatest gift the social web as given us @JuanFelix:disqus is the amalgamation of likeminded individuals and professionals to a common purpose of education and enlightenment to what we offer to humanity and the market place. Looking at the current social platforms that are available, anyone could greatly benefit if she/he defines what their needs are and if the platform of choice meets that need. It’s sad to see a number of individuals see these social platforms as trading places.
It’s important to understand the fact that we are now engaging virtually does not takeout the rule of engagement anywhere. A horrific communicator anywhere is a horrific communicator everywhere. It doesn’t matter if they are behind the computer or face-to-face.
As we define our distribution channel, we must pay attention as well to the definition of our brand on these social networking platforms. Every tweet, message, digg, post, etc. is a branding message. We may choose the messages we send but the recipients of those messages decide what our brands represent. We do have a role in our brand definition though, by putting ourselves in the shoes of those that receive our messages and by asking, “if I’m the one receiving these messages from me, would I want to receive more messages from me and ultimately do business with me?” If the answer from that inner conversion is no, then our strategy must change to something more receptive by our market place.
Great reply @smedio:disqus Which reminds me of a comment I made recently and still stands IMO.
Your great insightful article reminds me of the book Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout.
If I may quote a piece of my post about Brand Positioning:
“Positioning is about getting inside the minds of your customers or prospects.
It is not about the perception you have in your mind when you think about your
company’s position. It’s about the perception of your customers.
What image do you have?
What values do your customers attribute to you?
What service or quality do they expect from you?
In other words: what position do you have in their mind?”
“Positioning”, still a great book, don’t you think?
I haven’t read “Positioning” yet but you’ve got me interested in reading it now and I’ve got you to blame @JuanFelix:disqus 🙂
hello @smedio:disqus Great to see I have some influence on you 🙂
I haven’t read “Positioning” yet but you’ve got me interested in reading it now and I’ve got you to blame @JuanFelix:disqus 🙂
I am finding Twitter to be full of people trying to sell soemthing all the time. Where are these twitter conversations that I’ve heard so much about ?
The conversations are out there you just have to follow the right crowd and begin deleting and blocking those that just sell/spam. It’s not difficult to find the true conversationalists on Twitter, you only have to take a brief look on an accounts’ wall and you can see what kind of account you will be adding 🙂 I do feel your pain though. It does take a little time, but that time is worth it in the end.
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@d8b1fbb104c1bb78b4fa6c403c82d547:disqus , just to add to @twitter-38044735:disqus has already said, you only need to look at the first five posts on a person’s wall to get a good sense of the kind of person you’re following. One of the greatest thing about Twitter is, it gives us so much choice to whom we decide to hear their noise or hear their wisdom. You know ol’ saying, “seek and you shall find”. The best way to seek out wisdom and conversationists on Twitter is to use one of its greatest tools, yet under-utilized, the Twitter Search functionality. Search for related terms and keywords and you’ll be presented with a plethora of choices on whom to follow and engage with.
“It’s important to have a social media strategy in place which will allow to you leverage the best of each social network”
You know, I was kinda waiting for this line when I read your post, since I agree as well that’s an essential step.
It’s true that if you spread too thin, nothing good’s gonna come out of it, but it’s also true that if your strategy is solid and it shows you have resources (content, people, time, money) to go online in many networks, by all means go for it.
You’re right on point @maido:disqus The greatest mistake an individual or business could make is to suffer the “next big thing” syndrome. Pursuing every new quasi social network or platform that becomes available. Going into social networking without a strategy is only going to birth disaster. What use is a social presence that’s as stale as the next-day-manna?
I believe that you made some valid points… I follow you on twitter, but not on FB or connected to you on LI, and honestly, I use them all- the big 3, facebook, twitter and linkedin- and all have their points= because if you solely focus on B2B- and not B2C- you will lose because those B2C people are also influencers of the B2B as they usually work for the companies or will have their own companies one day. I have even started my own social network- you just never know where you message is actually getting across- until the phone rings, or the computer screams you got mail!
Thanks for post! It’ so interesting.
Speaking as a brand new 8 week old blogger, I’m actively engaging with people on Twitter and observing people share my content on Facebook. 🙂 I don’t presume to speak for others but I greatly prefer Twitter to Facebook for this start up stage. Of course I have Disqus and Facebook comments enabled on my blog but I have also quietly signed up to Ping.fm and started a Facebook Fan Page and will engage heavily there as well as on my own blog once I’ve managed to build a community. I may dislike Facebook for personal use out of privacy concerns but I must maintain a presence as a publisher/content developer to serve readers. I’m also spending a lot of time on Empire Avenue. Check it out. It’s a fun social networking game.
Speaking as a brand new 8 week old blogger, I’m actively engaging with people on Twitter and observing people share my content on Facebook. 🙂 I don’t presume to speak for others but I greatly prefer Twitter to Facebook for this start up stage. Of course I have Disqus and Facebook comments enabled on my blog but I have also quietly signed up to Ping.fm and started a Facebook Fan Page and will engage heavily there as well as on my own blog once I’ve managed to build a community. I may dislike Facebook for personal use out of privacy concerns but I must maintain a presence as a publisher/content developer to serve readers. I’m also spending a lot of time on Empire Avenue. Check it out. It’s a fun social networking game.
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I only scanned the headlines and that is forcing me to point you at the diffrence between social network(s) and technologies. A social network consists if human beings and is using, besides face to face contact, technology to communicate: telephone, classic media (radio, newspaper, tv, etc) as well as modern- or social media to communicate. The ‘social’ factor hasn’t anything to do with ‘social’ content, but says that the media (channels) are in the hands of the society and the society decides which information is published over the available media.
This is the best social network i have seen on ning
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Here is a post with related information:
http://talkingaboutsocial.com/which-social-media-network-to-use/
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