Most used Social Media Platform for business?

[dschulhof]

I am keen to see what social media platform is used mainly for business marketing. Please tick your main social media toll that you use to market your business.

 

[amac]

I do all but have found LinkedIn most useful - I sell software to sole-traders and small businesses. Typically, they themselves or their employees are LinkedIn users and it helps to be able to market to their professional side as opposed to their social side.

 

[stuartmcminigal]

For business marketing I have gone with LinkedIn, but close second would have been Facebook. Surprised there is nobody for facebook.

 

[Ali-v-8]

For business Linkedin in is the most recognised social media platform - But is this poll asking the right question?

Or should he be asking -
Best social media platform to advertise your business?
Best Social media platform for B2B?
Best social media Platform for branding?

Platform choice is determined by the required end result.

 

[stuartmcminigal]

For business Linkedin in is the most recognised social media platform - But is this poll asking the right question?

Or should he be asking -
Best social media platform to advertise your business?
Best Social media platform for B2B?
Best social media Platform for branding?

Platform choice is determined by the required end result.

Agreed. Far too general.

Or best Best Social Media platform social E-Commerce Business? - This wouldn't be LinkedIn

 

[fisicx]

I am keen to see what social media platform is used mainly for business marketing.

Depends on the business.

If you are selling celebrity stuff to teenagers then Facebook might be the place to go. If you are selling financial services then maybe linkedin. If you are selling cheap socks then probably none of then are any use.

Maybe you could answer the question: which SM platform brings in the most business for you?

 

[anjali_talking]

I am using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+......... I have a social community site and so using these sites for promotion.

 

[harriet1008]

For increment of traffic i am using Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc..

 

[dschulhof]

For business Linkedin in is the most recognised social media platform - But is this poll asking the right question?

Or should he be asking -
Best social media platform to advertise your business?
Best Social media platform for B2B?
Best social media Platform for branding?

Platform choice is determined by the required end result.

Hello All, I kept the question general to create the exact discussion that has formed. I was asked this exact question at an event and it is extremely hard to answer for some but others can answer instantly. All depends on industry and nature of the business.

 

[jonrod]

Depends on which social media is best for your business..

 

[PeachySEO]

For me it's a toss up between linkedin and twitter. Facebook's useful for everyone and I've had success with instagram for an online shop that sold high end cameras. But I think pinterest is a waste of time.

 

[amac]

I'm in the B2B space and prefer LinkedIn to others. It actually allows me to get leads and reach professionals - my target customers - versus consumers on the other networks.

 

[OlegLola]

Of course LinkedIn is the most recognizable and frequently used for B2B. But you asked not only about social networks, there are some other social media like blogging, forums etc.

 

[mikbarne]

The reason why some people can't instantly answer which is their most-used social media platform for business is because most people use them all, and depending on how you measure "use" (number of messages? total message size?) is likely to alter the answer. People might have a clearer answer if asked which is most *successful* for them: though I would hope most would say "that depends on what I'm trying to achieve at any given time".

A social media system typically allows people to collaborate: either to a limited extent, by commenting on, rating or sharing something that someone else has written, or in a more comprehensive manner by joining in on the development of some text, image, or video. Any website, or software, which provides a minimum of collaboration could be called a social media system.

A social networking system helps people to maintain a database of their contacts, both strong and weak, and to mine that contact database for more than just names and telephone numbers.

LinkedIn is brilliant because, initially at least, they focused on being a social networking system. To avoid being sidelined they had to also develop forums and other things aimed more at collaboration: but at heart it is still a great contacts database.

Facebook, IMHO, is great because lots of people are on it - making it a great database of people - but its role is a little vague to me. What is it designed to help people collaborate on? Not businessy things. This is also true for other more standard social media platforms, the differences really come down to user interfaces. Twitter really stands out because it does something unique: it doesn't really try to be anything other than a way of publishing very short messages for the whole world to read. So people use it a lot, even for "business", but because of the noise level on Twitter it's not always very effective.

Anyhow, I'm waffling now. For those who are interested I've just published a book, "An Infinite Number of Monkeys", which covers this very topic.

For what it's worth, I think LinkedIn is the most valuable of all the social tools, for business, and I think email is the most valuable of all the social tools (despite its uninspiring interface) for everything. Despite all the hype, the present crop of social media platforms haven't managed to solve the information problem.