According to a recent study, businesses find Twitter more important than LinkedIn. On the one hand, that’s not really a fair comparison; Twitter is a communications platform, closer to email or IM than social networks such as LinkedIn or Facebook. Still, the study raises an interesting question: Why haven’t social networks made more of an effort to provide value to businesses?
Compare and contrast: The other night, after dinner out in our neighborhood (Fort Greene, Brooklyn), we stopped by an ice cream stand that a local restauranteur had opened around the corner from our apartment. It was fantastic, with natural ingredients and exotic flavors that change daily (I highly recommend the Salted Caramel Pretzel). We chatted with the owner for a few minutes, and he mentioned that he had set up a Twitter feed to broadcast out each day’s flavors. The thing is, it’s not like the guy was some social-media geek jumping on the latest fad; he seemed almost sheepish telling us about it. More likely, in spite of his misgivings, he recognized Twitter as an effective marketing technique to drive repeat business. In other words, Twitter’s benefits are so obvious, even reluctant businesses feel they can’t pass them up.
Meanwhile, my current employer is a hybrid B2B/B2C company that should theoretically be able to use both Facebook and LinkedIn to connect with our users. We have cursory presences on both social networks, but we don’t get much use out of them. (In case you’re wondering, we’re all over Twitter, with numerous feeds and more than 30,000 followers) For awhile, I felt like that was our fault. But then it occurred to me that I really couldn’t think of any companies with whom I regularly interact on those networks. Nor, does it seem, has either one gone out of its way to make itself more useful to companies. In fact, they’re rather difficult for businesses to use effectively. Read the rest of this entry »
