Get On LinkedIn

Mention Facebook and everyone knows what you are talking about. Mention LinkedIn and you still might get some “deer in headlights” looks. Do you remember MySpace? MySpace started more for fun and personal endeavors than as a business tool. During this same era of MySpace, and not long after, the way we advertised continued to drastically change. Businesses realized that consumers were on the Internet and they noticed massive amounts of consumers assembling in the social networking sites.

Facebook came soon after and, of course, with much more functionality than MySpace. Businesses realized that it was much easier to create an account on these social networking sites instead of continuing to pursue the older forms of advertising that were becoming quickly outdated. Smart business owners created a presence on these social websites. In turn, their visibility gained the potential to increase to astounding levels.

Somewhere along the line, the idea for a social networking site with a specific focus on businesses and business connections arose. Think of LinkedIn as a type of professional Facebook site minus all the personal extras. While Facebook has features to allow sharing of family picture postings and galleries of family events, LinkedIn is a powerful networking tool for business owners, entrepreneurs and those seeking employment. LinkedIn has a much higher percentage of consumer trust factor compared to Facebook. Although, this metric alone should by no means should lower one’s opinion of Facebook. There are still many more Facebook users out there than LinkedIn. That is a fact should not be ignored.

Our experience has been that some people are on LinkedIn but not Facebook, or they are on Facebook but not LinkedIn. Our professional opinion is that all business owners should have a presence on both Facebook and LinkedIn. As with all current online trends, having a presence on all the social media forums is the only way to assure you are reaching all the audiences. Regarding search engine optimization (SEO), having presences on several social networking and other websites and placing links on each website to the other does ease navigation. More importantly, it utilizes an important SEO technique called backlinking. Backlinking can greatly increase ranks with the search engines, not to mention heighten credibility with existing and potential clients.