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                As the public transitions more towards social media online, businesses are naturally following suit. Consumers today are overloaded with information, some that they are not asking for, and businesses have learned to shift their marketing strategies. It’s no longer about marketing to attract clients, but an inbound technique that hopes a consumer finds the business and they choose to work with them. The times are changing rapidly and more than ever businesses are finding social media marketing works. The question then is which social media outlet is best for my business. We will look at the two larger social media websites; Facebook and LinkedIn, and talk about the benefits of both in relation to a business marketing strategy.

                The first thing to understand is that all social media outlets have their own culture. LinkedIn began in the fall of 2002 and established itself as a way to connect businesses with other businesses, while Facebook began under another name, Facemash, in late 2003 as a way to socially interact. Both are rapidly evolving and transforming themselves to stay ahead and both have benefits from a business standpoint. If you and your company are more on the formal side, LinkedIn might be a good fit as they tend to be more on the structured end of the business culture. Facebook, on the other hand, having started as a social interaction website has begun to allow businesses through fan pages or business pages and has a more casual tone. If you go to work in a suit and tie LinkedIn could be a great fit, whereas if you head into work in shorts and flip flops Facebook might be more familiar.

                You’ll also need to understand where your audience is. If your business is more B2B (business to business) then LinkedIn makes sense, whereas B2C (business to customer) might do better on a Facebook platform. Age is another consideration. Facebook tends to draw the younger generations, up to age 34, while LinkedIn has more over the age of 35. Education might be another factor depending on your business and those who have attended graduate school tend to navigate over to LinkedIn. The last category that might influence your decision is the affluence of these markets. It might be no surprise with LinkedIn having more college graduates to have the greater influence of over $100k.

                Your business is capable of tailoring its social media marketing strategies to account for several statistics. Even small businesses are able to maximize the effectiveness of marketing social media outlets if they focus on their desired audiences and maintain their connections. Social media is not a place to drop an advertisement, leave and hope it works. This will take time and persistence to gather the end result you want.