There are a ton of social media tools available to users and businesses. But lately I find myself pushing businesses towards Twitter and Facebook only. I could write a long post of why but I’m more of a bullet thinker:
- Critical Mass Twitter and Facebook have millions and millions of users. Some if not most of your potential customers are there.
- Adoption Most companies have begun to accept and use these tools. See your favorite news media outlet CNN woodtv wzzm foxnews BBC etc.
- Functionality These sites make it easy and addicting to use. They are successful at bringing in and keep users glued to their tools.
So what’s wrong with all the others? Or what’s the bullet list of benefits/problems with the others. Linkedin for example is huge, perhaps larger than Twitter. My list follows but please understand some or most of these problems can be overcome with the right strategy… perhaps I need to devote more time explaining a good business strategy on these.
Linkedin
- The Bad
- No good place for businesses
- No good way to search
- No good way for businesses to connect with users
- No place for content generation from a business
- The Good
- Tons of users
- Business Focused
- Professional (opposite side of spectrum from Myspace)
YouTube/Vimeo
- The Bad
- Too many people?
- Too much noise.
- Tough for businesses to create strategic videos
- Businesses need camera, concepts storyboarding etc
- The Good
- Aids in Search Engines Rankings
- Easier to connect with potential customers on heart level
- Great way to re-purpose content from traditional media
Bloging
- The Bad
- Businesses find it tough to keep generating content
- Tough to generate dialog on a new blog
- Not for bringing in new customers
- The Good
- Perfect target/resource for SEO efforts
- Great for customer retention/Brand positioning
- Feeds all other forms of Social Media
Delicious
- The Bad
- Businesses have a limited number of websites to link to
- Businesses don’t have the time to surf and find the sites worth linking to
- The Good
- This could be used to show customers what great info is available to them online
- Another venue for customers to see how your business is the authority in the market
Digg, Stumble Upon, and Reddit
- The Bad
- Tougher to build a network
- Need to support other websites/businesses on order to be considered viable
- The Good
- Can drive a large volume of traffic to site/blog
- Large, well documented communities and processes
Bebo
- The Bad
- Not enough users in the states
- Small user base compared to Facebook (similar tool functions)
- The Good
- Popular in Europe
- Similar in functionality to Facebook
- If users left Facebook this might be where they’ll go
Myspace
- The Bad
- Users leaving or left for Facebook
- Terrible visuals
- Too much noise to get message across
- The Good
- Sorry, I got nothing
Yelp
- The Bad
- Not able to have dialog
- Currently focused on larger metro areas
- Tough to spend more than a couple days with it
- The Good
- Great for localized businesses
- Great for Search Engine Results
- Great for having your Brand evangelists recommend you
Ning
- The Bad
- Self focused
- Lacks integration with other sites
- The Good
- Customer retention not acquisition
- Good for an existing community
FriendFeed
- The Bad
- Critical Mass of acceptance has not been reached yet
- This is an aggregater the content is created on other tools
- The Good
- Comments and dialog do exist here (content created elsewhere)
- Could be the next up and coming thing, as it offers a nice way to tie all of your feeds into one place.
These tools all have their place and it’s be best for your business to have a presence at a minimum on these. The exercise of doing this post has brought me to some interesting business applications for these tools. I need to go call a couple of clients.
Related Posts: (automatically generated)
Spread the word: Tweet this article!
13 Responses to “Why Just Twitter and Facebook?”
Trackbacks (incoming links from blogs)
- Citizenshirt (Citizenshirt)
- nokdeez (Nicholas Datema)
- lukerumley (Luke Rumley)
- jjteam (Jess McMahon)
Leave a Reply
(* is required)Additional comments powered by BackType
March 12th, 2009 at 9:52 am
It’s always nice to see an opinion that parallels one’s own.
Still a relative newbie, I haven’t lost my objectivity and I agree that the Twitter-Facebook combo appears to be today’s perfect left-hook/right-jab. As I explore my options for my non-profit educational client (small, private school with static growth and rising costs), I’m also pushing to add a blog or two to the mix, for the very reason you mentioned – the opportunity to apply SEO and drive more traffic to the school’s website. While I have established a partial relationship with StumbleUpon, I still haven’t felt any real power from it.
LinkedIn is a great business tool but it’s virtually an island, although I have recently been linking from it into Twitter and Facebook. There are active social influence marketing groups on LinkedIn and I’ve picked up valuable information there that I’ve been unable to find while trolling Twitter – social media demographics data, for example. Then again, LinkedIn’s sense of isolation from the rest of my SM touchpoints is good – it’s a place where I can be all business, all the time.
One of the questions I’ve posed to SM pros concerns the value of another tool, BackType. I’d like my non-profit to feel good about any buzz it generates with its sweat equity in social media/social influence marketing, and I believe that BackType may be a good tool for tracking it. Any thoughts?
March 12th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Twitter is so live and real time – as it looks like Facebook will soon be too. LinkedIn keeps a good professional business appearance but as you mentioned lacks a certain connectivity. I started out on Ryze Business Network which is also limited but had lots of active groups – it’s also quite international but seldom gets mentioned.
March 13th, 2009 at 12:08 am
Bob,
I don’t know that I’d say twitter/facebook is the perfect eft hook right hook. I’d go so far as to say you are not realizing the full potential of twitter if you don’t have a blog to drive traffic to.
I’d be interested if you care to share what linkedin groups are active and that you were able to glean good info from. Send me an email or respond publicly here.
I’m gonna spend some time with backtype… it might have potential, thanks for pointing that one out. (You could at least add a profile picture and link to your comments here!)
Dan,
I imagine you have a depth of real networking skills in real life. How do they apply to these tools?
March 13th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
There have been three social media/marketing groups active on LinkedIn of late; I joined one, Social Media Marketing Group and already posted an article on Scaleable Intimacy, which was originally a Twitter posting by WeAreSocial.
Over the past two weeks I have tweeted regarding the demographics of Twitter yet despite following and being followed by several SM gurus, could raise nothing. Twitter itself balked. I posted the same query to the group on LinkedIn and had a response – and a good one – in 8 hours.
I can forward any and all of this info to you via regular email.
March 19th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
I chuckled a bit when I looked at the pros and cons of Myspace. You have nothing good to say for Myspace, and I have to agree with that. That site is nothing but advertisements in your face, and a lot of fake profiles of people who claim they love you. It’s good to use as many social networking websites as possible, but if you are short on time, using Twitter and Facebook only will do the trick.
March 19th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
“…you are not realizing the full potential of twitter if you don’t have a blog to drive traffic to.”
I’ve been white boarding the role of one or two blogs and how they might help influence web site visits, and then looking at the role of at least two dedicated Twitter accounts (1 brand only, one person-behind-the-brand) that would help keep the blogs warm.
The associated Facebook page is growing, slowly, but the lack of activity at the moment makes it seem island-like.
I HAVE found two national sites, search and clearinghouse type sites, which will be co-linked with the web page (they’ll profile us, drive searches our way, and I’ve been posting there actively) and I believe I can extract some good content from them for the blogs.
The white board looks like an accident scene right now, but it’s getting better.
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Kai Lo, yeah I never liked myspace, and while I hate to admit it I did at one time have a login there, tho I never attempted to create a page/profile as I just wanted to view some others’ pages. I think Twitter and Facebook along with a blog are becoming standard fare for entry into social media, I am constantly pushed to get into social bookmarking (outside of delicious) and flickr/youtube. I still haven’t found the right client fit for these yet.
Bob, is it a digital white board? Do I get to see it?
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Sorry, Paul, it’s an old school whiteboard for now, although I’m playing with a free download of “Lovely Charts,” which may allow me to do a semi-cool whiteboard that I could send you. I’ll have to something moderately impressive for my presentation I suppose. Lovely Charts also lets one do site wire framing.
I’ve just finished coaching my second season of Science Olympiad at at small, local, parochial elementary school. That means I spent 45 minutes one night a week and an occasional two hour Saturday (pizza!) with Junior High kids, mostly girls. Instant research pool for social networking, I thought. Come to find out, few are involved in MySpace or Facebook – parental control. They’re not all that interested, as they all have sleek keyboard phones and text at speed, constantly. Their call on the two sites? They’ll be on Facebook in high school, where it’s easily #1. MySpace? Trash, they said. Not a representative sampling of American middle school kids, I suppose. None of them knew a thing about Twitter, although they were intrigued, seeing it as a cross between FB and texting. One of my seventh graders found her way there though, and is following me – early trial kid.
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:06 pm
now if only you had this app/plugin he’d be able to see your comments too: http://twitter.com/namtrok/status/1379325320
Interesting, I watch (more than just follow!) A couple of college students and see how they use twitter as their sms platform. Why send txt msgs to eachother (privately) when the whole world can see how “hot the girl in chem 203″ is.
Goes to show, we’re the same offline and online eh? just in a new “Mall”