Do you approach all Social Media Platforms in the same way? Do you automatically post the same content to various sites? Do you know that LinkedIn and Twitter need to be approached differently?
I posed the question on LinkedIn and Twitter and was amazed about how many responses I received and the differences in viewpoints. There many differences, but I thought I would highlight five differences that business owners should be aware of.
Formality
On LinkedIn, you are always in business mode and on Twitter, you are a person who does business. When you use LinkedIn, think of it as wearing a suit and tie. What would you say in a board room or a presentation to a new prospect? Everything is about business. Twitter is like going to a familiar networking event where you know a lot of people. You are aware that you are a business person, but you show your human side, you connect with people on a personal and emotional level. So it is good to bring up the weather, family and sports because you want to find people who are like you. It is about social dialogue.
Nobody on LinkedIn wants to hear what you are eating, whereas, people on Twitter love talking about food. In fact, my tweet on macaroni cheese recently, had far more interaction and engagement than anything else I had spoken about that day. Yet, all the people I was interacting with were business people.
- Action Point: Do not feed your Tweets into LinkedIn automatically unless every single one of your Tweets is about business. If every single one of your Tweets is business, then is Twitter the right place for you?
Professionalism vs. Likeability
LinkedIn is all about professionalism. You show this through providing your experience and skills for anyone to read. You connecting with other business people and show your expertise by answering questions relevant to your industry. Everything is available in one place.
Twitter is all about letting people see who you are so that they know, like and trust you. Your personality comes out in less than 140 characters. People get a flavour of not only of your expertise, but also how you interact with other people. You let people sample before they buy. For people to get a full picture, they need to go off site to your website or your blog. People get an impression of what you are like over time.
- Action Point: Make sure your profile is 100% filled in on LinkedIn, you may only get one chance for someone to look at your expertise. On Twitter, remember that you are a business person and what you say also reflects on your business. Do not Tweet drunk!
Expansion vs. Brevity
Twitter allows you to say things in 140 characters or less. This leads to abbreviations and jargon and shortened links. The benefit of it is that people can be very succinct and witty in a sentence. I chuckle away to myself reading some tweets. The disadvantage is that it is easy to be misunderstood and it is not long enough to expand on what you mean. To get into detail, you need to produce a blog article, get someone to call you or email further information. LinkedIn allows you to elaborate on points and it is easy to expand on what you mean sending messages, but there is an art to the short form. I have had essays as responses to some of the questions I asked in groups.
- Action Point: Craft your Tweets so they get your message across clearly. On LinkedIn, remember, just because you have the space to expand doesn’t mean that you should be verbose.
Continuity vs. Immediacy:
Although Tweets are permanently searchable, they are only visible for a moment in time; it is hard to track back to conversations if you have a busy stream. They need to be repeated to allow for their short lifespan. LinkedIn status updates, group discussion and internal messaging makes it easier to elaborate and it can be easily referred back to. An illustration of this is I asked the same question on Twitter and LinkedIn. After about an hour nobody answered the Twitter question, yet I am still getting answer on the LinkedIn question twenty- four hours later. I have all the answers to all the questions I have asked on LinkedIn.
- Action Point: For immediate feedback Twitter is brilliant, but for longevity LinkedIn wins. However, don’t underestimate how long people will remember a funny or punchy tweet!
Relationship building
Twitter makes contacting anyone very accessible. You can build up relationships very quickly and if you are being authentic, those relationships will build into real life conversations and working relationships. LinkedIn is more formal, you have to know the person to connect with them, be a member of the same group or ask someone for an introduction. On Twitter you can follow anyone you want. The one advantage LinkedIn has over Twitter is that you can own your contact database; you can download it and keep it.
- Action point: Both sites are good for building relationship, but you won’t build any if you are not proactive about following or connecting with people in the first place and then starting a dialogue with them.
I would love to have your comments about these differences. Do you agree or disagree with me?
Nicky Kriel
Nicky Kriel is a Social Media Coach & Trainer inspiring, educating and empowering Business Owners to use Social Media more strategically. She is also the author of How to Twitter for Business Success. For more information visit http://www.nickykriel.com or to find out about her courses that she runs in Guildford visit http://www.nickykriel.com/courses
Follow Me:
Great post Nicky. Thanks for these tips – all put across very clearly. I like your Action points at the end of each section.
Thank you Shona,
Found your advice about what I should write about for my blog articles very useful, when you said just write about what you have told me.
Nicky,
Fabulous post! I’d like to add one more comment about linking your Twitter feed to your LinkedIn profile. Many long-time LinkedIn users remember the time before Twitter was linked to LinkedIn with fondness. In fact, most “oldtimers” on LinkedIn HATE the Twitter feed.
My advice, don’t import your Twitter feed to your profile because it just becomes annoying noise. Instead, use the update your status feature judiciously.
Andrea
Hi Andrea, I have a guilty secret. Until recently, I was one of those people. I wrote and article about why people shouldn’t feed Twitter into Facebook and realised by the response, that it was a bug bear on LinkedIn too. Most of my connections on LinkedIn are avid Twitter users, so I thought the noisy feed was normal. I stopped my feed going into Linkedin other than by using the hashtag #in.
Excellent post and you truly resonated with me. I thoroughly 1000 percent agree with the differences. Linked in feels conservative and corporate, it’s like I have to put on my business clothes – you said it perfectly. I will take your advice and not post from Twitter there unless it’s about business. Most of the time it is, but I do post a few inspirational types of quotes which are probably lost on Linked In..Facebook is a combination of both – but I get more “feeling” people on FB. I love Tweetdeck because it gives me an option for each tweet to share there or not. Appreciate this greatly!
Hi Michelle,
Thank you for leaving such a lovely comment.
Thanks for the great info and the Action Points. Social medial feels so confusing to me. Your post reinforces what I thought to be the case.
Hi Ali,
Glad you found it useful. Let me know if you have questions, I can always write a blog article about it.
Thanks for a very useful post. I have some action points to take away with me!
Hi Ching,
Let me know how you get on.
I agree – great post! When using social networking tools, it is important to make sure you use them in a way that doesn’t just suit your audience, but the platform in general. Very helpful breakdown, thank you!
Hi Krissy
It is always lovely to get nice feedback, it means a lot, thank you.
It’s so interesting how on-line (or virtual) life reflects real life. We have to deliver our message to different groups in real life (some more formal than others) and the same is true on-line. The trick is to be aware of the difference. There is so much etiquette to learn. Glad we’ve got you to help us
Heather x
Hi Heather,
Thank you for your lovely comments. I have fallen behind in my reading and commenting at the moment for the blog challenge. So glad you talked me into it!
Hi Nicky, I haven’t started using Linkedin, I however like the search functionality with twitter. Just by doing a search on twitter has helped me come up with ideas and connect with likeminded people.
Great Post! Being a Social Media expert myself, I took away some points and ideas that I haven’t thought about before. Thank you and keep up the good work.
I’d say, Both on Twitter and Linkedin you just have to keep things interesting and Valuable! Wouldn’t suggest any selling on Social Media at all, invite them from the Party (All Social Media Platforms) to your House(Blog/Website) and then and only then sell them. Just imagine going to a party and the whole time telling people about the awesome topper ware you got for sale! People are going to hate you. Just my quick tip.
Hi Roman
I advise people to never directly sell on Social Media, but it doesn’t mean that sales don’t happen. The bulk of the people who attend my social media courses come because they saw it on Twitter. You make a very good point about sales pitches being wrong for SOCIAL media.
Twitter is a space limited conveyance of link data.
Linked In is a powerful networking business tool.
In order to manage high volume SCORE inquiries in federal government contracting, I set up a Google blog as an extension of my volunteer work that blossomed into a web site ($10 a year to buy and convert it from a blog to a domain in my name) containing the basics of entering and succeeding in the venue as well my books and articles on the subject for download via Box Net (also a free application)
The idea was to refer clients to article links at the site to avoid repeating myself over and over to new business clients and still keep myself available through the SCORE web site for specific inquiries and problems.
I linked everything together on “Linked In” and began answering questions at the “Answers” feature there as well as registering at many of the free applications for networking web sites on the Internet to see how that could benefit my work. Twitter, BlogCatalog, Facebook, Widgetbox, Friendfeed, Ning and similar free applications served my site well.
The Adsense Feature added cash flow. Roughly 30% of my clients began coming via Linked In or Linked In related networking.
The result has been heavy traffic, good efficiency in supporting over 4000 score counseling cases over the last 4 years and virtually no expense to me as a volunteer working for a non-profit organization.
I pass this experience on to others in the belief they may benefit from a similar approach.
Nicky, I love the blog entry, esp that you start right off with the difference between LinkedIn & Twitter. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Hi Ed,
Thank you for a lovely comment. There are so many more things I could have added!
Great post Nicky. I too liked your action points.
Funny thing is about your comment on not tweeting drunk is we now have anywhere access, and that little mobile device can play some havoc if your out on the town. So funny but great point.
A Tip: You should probably consider comment threading so you can have more interactive conversation with your commenter, and people can see the flow.
Hi George
Thank you for your feedback. Twitter is such a friendly chatty place that sometimes people forget that you need to have some boundaries. I am looking at themes at the moment to sort out the threading issue with comments. It worked with my previous theme!
Good points, Nicky. You organized your thoughts and integrated those of others in a clean way. Thanks for bringing up the #in hash tag. It can be hard for a social media beginner to find, so I was going to share that if you didn’t. It took awhile for me to decide how I was going to use LinkedIn and Twitter, so I poked around, absorbed what I found and made my decisions over time. What you laid out here is in line with my strategy. Too bad you didn’t write this a few years ago. Authenticity is key in any medium these days. And if you do tweet drunk, take a page out of the American Red Cross playbook. Be honest and responsive and the damage won’t be so great.
Hi Rebecca
What a lovely thing to say! I try to help people understand the why and the how of social media without all the jargon. It is all about connect with people, building relationships and communicating. I really appreciate your comment.
Hi Nicky, just read your blog and found it informative re Twitter but no so much re LI, which you depict as a very buttoned-down, all-business community. In my view, there’s actually more opportunity on LI to be social, network and achieve greater visibility over time, provided you remain actively engaged.
Re Twitter’s new home/search page: http://read.bi/hH8viw. The Business Insider link correctly, in my view, characterizes the site as a “media platform.”
Thanks for sparking an interesting discussioin.
Best,
Judy
Let me correct myself, I believe its ok at times to promote, but very very rarely… its a fine line and most dont know it. I really like what your doing, good job Nicky.
Hi again, Nicky, just thought you might be interested in reading my latest “Marketing Yourself” Job Advice Blog, in which I talk about how job hunters are sure to find Twitter’s friendlier new Search homepage extremely helpful:
http://jobadviceblog.com/2011/04/a-friendlier-twitter-for-job-seekers/
Hi Judy,
Popped over to read your blog post and left a comment. There is substantially more that job seekers can be doing with Twitter.
Nicky, great job. I think you hit on many of the finer points of how LinkedIn and Twitter are different. I think we all need to remember though, social networking is NOT one-size-fits all. So what works for me, might not work for you and vice versa. Whichever platform you end up using, remember to be yourself…even if that means sharing what you had for lunch
It all comes down to what I said earlier when you first asked the question…don’t be afraid to be authentic and to share day to day experiences and let your personality shine through. People do business with those we know, like and trust…so you need to be true to who you really are.
Hi Katy
I am so pleased you like it. I had such an assortment of answers from LinkedIn and Twitter that I had to sort them in some easy to understand way. I have been amazed at how many wonderful people I have met through Social Media. Thank you for your comment.
Appreciate your reading and commenting on my blog, Nicky, and look forward to your tackling the subject of how job seekers can use Twitter to best advantage.
Fabulous post. I used FaceBook and Twitter a lot but I’m not much active on LinkedIn. Your post helped me to grasp the concepts and how the networks are different. thank you very much for this great discussion.
This is a really valuable post Nicky and it has given me a wonderful analogy to use in my social media training sessions. It is so important that people represent themselves properly, as doing social media badly can be far worse for your business than not doing it at all.
I always encourage people to get their strategy for using it straight first, and ensure that they remember content should be created with the the audience in mind and not the host.
If you want to be uber efficient in managing your posts then consider using a dashboard like Hootsuite as you can choose which posts appear on which platform instead of relying on automatic feed
I love Twitter itself but I don’t enjoy the Twitter stream I see on LinkedIn. Two connections tweet so often on LinkedIn that I can’t see the other tweets. I don’t want to disconnect from these important connections, but I’d lIke to shut off their tweets. It’s just too much. Is that possible?
Hi Terry
Sorry to take so long to get back to you. If the Twitter feed from your connections are too much for you, you can hide their updates without disconnecting from them. It means that you won’t see any of their updates unless you look at their profile. What you do is hover to the right of one of their updates and click the hide button. It is easy to undo immediately or you can undo it later by going to your setting or from your home page. (Select the “More” tab for updates and choose “Customize”). It is probably worth hiding their updates if it is annoying you. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a way yet to switch of Twitter updates from all connections.
Hope this helps you, let me know.
Nicky
Very interesting article Nicky but I would say all the differences are not in the platform/features but the user and use (and possibly the audience) With all the points above, I make no differentiation. For example, you can be brief on LinkedIn and, with embedding video, audio, images or text, expansive on Twitter
The area might be interesting to me.Thanks!
Good article, appreciate,, the good work,,
Keep rocking nicky,,,
rgds
Maria
Pingback: Module 2 | ePortfolio for Dana Eckl