much more relevant to the business aspect of the company simply due to the professional demographic of LinkedIn.
LINKEDIN ALLOWS FOR MORE ROBUST INTERACTION BETWEEN COMPANIES AND FOLLOWERS. On Facebook, businesses are fairly restricted to fan pages, but LinkedIn offers the ability to build a public community of professionals with LinkedIn Groups in addition to the company page functionality. (Groups will be explained in more detail in Chapter 6.) Having a LinkedIn Group offers distinct advantages over a Facebook Fan Page; content from the outside world, including your website, can be shared directly in LinkedIn Groups with the LinkedIn share button, which can now be easily embedded into websites just as Twitter’s retweet and Facebook’s share buttons are. LinkedIn’s button is the more comprehensive feature, however, because it allows you to simultaneously share website content on your profile as well as directly to LinkedIn Groups.
LINKEDIN OFFERS BETTER PAGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS. Many Facebook Fan Page administrators have problems managing their pages efficiently because settings don’t allow for specific content control. However, LinkedIn has several moderation tools built into the groups that allow for granular detail regarding who can post what. For instance, the process for LinkedIn Group administrators to search through members, see when they joined the group, add them as managers, delete them, or delete and block them is simple. Facebook does not offer this extensive collection of features. In this respect, LinkedIn Groups are at the cutting edge of community management on any major social media site.
PUBLIC ACCESS ALLOWS FOR GREATER ENGAGEMENT WITH INTERESTED PEOPLE AND INCREASED VISIBILITY. Up until recently, Facebook Fan Pages had been the open arena in which people could engage. Previously, the problem with LinkedIn Groups was that they were private worlds; unless you were a member of that group, you couldn’t see inside it. The openness of Facebook Pages and the associated potential SEO benefits attracted companies to create pages and send more advertising revenue to Facebook. However, LinkedIn recently began to allow existing groups to become public and new public-only groups to be created.
It’s worth noting that the largest LinkedIn Group at the time this book was written, Job Openings, Job Leads and Job Connections!,11 had more than 450,000 members, while Facebook’s own page12 had more than 46 million fans. However, the number of LinkedIn Groups (more than 960,00013) was not that far behind that of the 1.3 million+ Facebook Pages.14 As more of the legacy LinkedIn Groups go public, they will flood the search engines with enough content to rival that of Facebook in due time. An increasing number of group discussions will come up in long tail search results, which will drive more traffic to LinkedIn and result in higher membership numbers in groups. Now that Facebook Fan Pages and public LinkedIn Groups offer virtually the same benefits regarding SEO and visibility, there is little reason for companies not to be active on LinkedIn.
GROUP MEMBERS ARE ALLOWED MORE ROOM FOR IN-DEPTH CONVERSATION. The engagement on LinkedIn Groups is significant because there is a lot of room for discussion; users are not confined to small status update boxes such as those used on Facebook. Furthermore, LinkedIn Groups offer daily and weekly digests so that followers can stay on top of discussions through email, a feature lacking with Facebook Pages.
The fact that you invested in this book means you already understand the sales and marketing potential of the LinkedIn platform and demographic. In 2011, we are already seeing signs that many marketers, especially those in B2B industries, are starting to realize this. A recent report indicated that B2B marketers use LinkedIn more than Facebook for marketing as well as for socializing.15 There is no question that for an increasing number of companies, LinkedIn is the preferred social media channel for business. LinkedIn’s recent initial public offering will only increase the number of businesses and professionals flocking to and utilizing its platform.
LinkedIn as the Virtual Industry Event of the Year. . . 24/7
Now that we’ve established how LinkedIn can assist you and your company, it’s important to note that utilizing it effectively to develop business for your company in a social networking environment is not an easy task. Traditional Internet marketing methods such as sending out a lot of
invites to key targets and opting them into mailing lists will be met with LinkedIn account restrictions and a plethora of spam reports back to your email provider. But if we think about LinkedIn as a virtual trade show, we can see the types of opportunities available. Instead of waiting for your annual industry trade show or even monthly chamber of commerce meeting, check to see if the people you would connect with in person are active on the LinkedIn platform. This virtual trade show is happening 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it is a truly global event with membership from more than 200 countries. Don’t you want to market your company at this ultimate event?
Case Study: Utilizing LinkedIn Groups Versus Facebook Fang Pages for Business Purposes
While speaking about the difference between LinkedIn and Facebook, I was happy to learn about a B2C company that realized LinkedIn was a good supplement to its Facebook strategy. This company, like many, realized that, while its consumers were on Facebook, its business partners were on LinkedIn―and these potential business partners are open to being “sold to” as long as you provide them value.
BACKGROUND
Kelly Ducey and her husband own the popular and quickly growing Irish Dog Bloody Mary Mix, located in Moline, Illinois. (http://www.drinkirishdog.com) Irish Dog is a gluten-free, secret family recipe that they perfected and made by request for family and friends for years. They discovered there was a wider market for the product, however, so Ducey and her husband went into business 15 months ago, and, in that time, they have sold just over 55,000 bottles and grown from one Hy-Vee food store distributor in Moline to 25 distributors across 17 states. The couple has primarily used progressive and innovative social media marketing efforts to grow the business and pick up new distributors, states, and fans. As part of this strategy, Ducey and her husband have joined groups on LinkedIn and posted newsworthy updates sparking interest from customers and new distributors.
They made a very conscious choice to concentrate their efforts on LinkedIn rather than solely working with Facebook. “In my experience (of) using both Facebook and LinkedIn, people don’t like to be ‘sold’ on Facebook,” Ducey said. “It’s more of a social interaction site where people like to be a part of something.” That is, people on Facebook like to be updated on company happenings, involved in socializing with others who use a particular product, and kept in the loop on events and promotions, but they aren’t interested in a sales pitch. As a more business-oriented site, LinkedIn is the better place for this type of interaction. In addition, LinkedIn allows business owners to target distributors or people in certain markets within the groups. “Facebook limits you to your already-existing fans unless you want to place an ad, which wasn’t right for us,” Ducey said. “Facebook allows us to target our consumers. However, LinkedIn allows us to target the companies and distributors who would be picking up or wholesaling our product to the consumers.”
WHAT HAPPENED
Ducey signed up for several LinkedIn Groups that were specific to her company’s industry or product, such as Beverage Executives USA, Spirits & Liquors, Wine and Spirits Professionals, and F&B Professionals, and posted newsworthy tidbits about Irish Dog. “My initial postings were something like, ‘Quickly growing Bloody Mary company seeking distributors nationwide. Visit www.drinkirishdog.com for more info!’” Ducey said. “I would post and then get several emails from people interested in learning more or wanting to sample or carry our product. I sent out a lot of
