LinkedIn and Facebook: Are you using social networks for business?

From LinkedIn to Flickr to mySpace to Facebook (and these are just some of the most widely used sites) it seems like everyone’s joining social networks. Whether you focus on one, or you sign up for them all, they can be a valuable tool for meeting people and making connections on the Internet. Up until recently, LinkedIn was the social network of choice for companies trying to drum up new business, or recruiters looking to headhunt top prospects. LinkedIn is still very widely used, and definitely useful, but it’s now having to share it’s user base with Facebook.

Facebook seems to be the social network site du jour, everyone from my colleagues, to my high school acquaintances, to my mom is on Facebook (and no, I’m not kidding). But is Facebook a valuable tool for generating business leads? It depends, while many people who have been loyal LinkedIn users are now making the switch to Facebook, others are maintaining a separation – using LinkedIn for business and Facebook for personal networking. LinkedIn is a business networking site, but Facebook will let you reach the masses, so really it’s up to you.

One of the biggest issues with social networking sites, is that you only get out what you put into them, and unfortunately that can end up meaning a fair bit of time. While I would still recommend signing up and creating a profile on the sites you are interested in, I would caution that you might find yourself still at the computer hours later, eyes glazed over wondering where the time went. If you do sign up for any type of social network, try to turn off most of the pre-set notifications and only visit the site at set times during the day – check them like you check your email, in managed doses. Like turning off your new email notifications in Outlook, this will help you to only check your social networking sites when you have time, rather than racing off to find out who “poked you” (Facebook’s words, not mine) every time you get a new notification.

Silicon.com has this to say in it’s Social Networking Cheat Sheet:

Social networks have potential to be used to drum up new business – as a way of linking suppliers with clients in a global marketplace, say. That’s the idea behind a social network called Insight in the pipeline from Reuters. Another network, called the Wireless Industry Partnership, launched last year with a similar idea but specifically focused on wireless technologies. Then there’s virtual world-based social networks such as Second Life, which have their own currency and offer a variety of in-world money-making and networking opportunities.

An obvious corporate use for social networks is as a tool for building a sense of community within an organisation – linking up staff across the business by giving them a shared space to communicate and collaborate. For example Cisco has 1,500 employees using Facebook which means they don’t need internal tools to provide community.

 

Find out more about why social networking is important by watching the Common Craft video: Social Networking in Plain English and check out Wikipedia’s extensive list of social networks.