29 Dec Is Linkedin Catching Up With Facebook?

I am often asked what the benefits are to using Facebook versus LinkedIn in social media strategies.  I usually explain the difference between the two and let that person decide where they should be focusing their efforts.

Recently I read a very interesting blog about the differences in the two social networks.  The blog, published on Social Media Today, made the insightful observation that professionals are using the networks in two different ways. Professionals that are looking to network themselves individually tend to do so on LinkedIn instead of Facebook. LinkedIn was designed to be the professional network.  This observation holds true but the interesting point is that more businesses or companies as a whole, develop a Facebook page.  So, your professional individuals are networking on LinkedIn while their company pages are on Facebook.  It seems that a concentrated effort on just one of the social networks would be more beneficial than the current norm.

On November 1, LinkedIn made a strong attempt to steal those wondering professionals and their business pages from Facebook.  It announced the new enhanced Company pages that would allow others to recommend their business.  Recommending is very similar to the “Like” button on Facebook.

So will these new LinkedIn pages decide the battle?  I have my doubts but LinkedIn is making a strong push.  It recently announced that its Groups would now be public to non-members, which has been a criticism from professionals.  Facebook pages have always been open and more accessible.  Now LinkedIn is joining in on opening groups.

The battle between these two social networks has a lot to do with advertising dollars.  As companies continue to increase their budgets for social media, they are also increasing their online advertising budgets.  These two networks have good advertising models that are yielding promising results for users.  It will be interesting to see if LinkedIn can compete with a giant and if Facebook can become more professional in the eyes of its users.