Nov
18
Is Linkedin king in the business social networking world?
November 18, 2009 | 4 Comments
The two major social networks aimed at the professional community are Linkedin and Plaxo. Linkedin claims over 50 million users and Plaxo claims to host address books for over 40 million. While researching both Linkedin and Plaxo I came across a lot of content on how to use these better; you know the: complete your profile, network, join groups, brand yourself type of advice. Often the advice is good advice, but this was not what I was after. I wanted to get the low down on how to use these to do business.
First let me tell you a bit about each of these social networks. Plaxo was founded in November 2002 and Linkedin founded in December 2002. Plaxo initially positioned itself as a platform to manage your contact list and later added the more social networking features and premium service. The most recent development is that Plaxo has made their most valuable tool (sync to Outlook) into a premium paid service.
Initially Plaxo got a really bad name for spam, however, it seems they have sorted how you invite contacts and have recovered to some degree from this sentiment, though some stigma still seems to be in the air. From what I can establish Linkedin is the more popular choice between the two and I constantly find articles that suggest Plaxo is a distant second. I did come across something that stated that only 1/3 of Plaxo users were on Linkedin, but can’t find that again and it could be quite old and I have no idea how accurate that is. I haven’t registered on Plaxo and from what I have read it is not on my ‘anytime soon agenda’. Nothing has made me feel I just have to register with Plaxo, however they do have their loyal users.
From what I can tell Linkedin has always marketed itself as a business-orientated networking site. As with Plaxo, Linkedin has added additional features and started a premium service
Both Linkedin and Plaxo can be used to grow your contact network for either business or with the aim of finding a job. I now am going to focus more on Linkedin and ways people are using it as a business tool.
I found this cool page on Linkedin listing some of their success stories. Looking at this list you can see that most success stories revolve around increasing sales, finding new clients, improving a business through advice/answers or landing a dream job.
I have observed some other ways that businesses are using Linkedin. One of the big ways is creating a group, which on it’s own is really easy. Running a group is a different animal and requires time, effort and foresight. Some groups are part of the business (even are the business), they have websites, sell products, host events and regularly send out announcements to their member base. I really like the idea of groups and feel so much can be done with a group if you have a strategy. The hardest part initially is growing the member base (isn’t it always). I have two clients seriously looking at this as part of their marketing strategy and am working with them to formalise a Linkedin group strategy.
Recently, I have had a few invitations to webinars. Now I have no idea how successful these are, as the number of people registering via Linkedin seems small. I have also read a while ago that attendance of webinars is low – perhaps that has changed. I have just started researching webinars for a client so will probably write a post once this series is complete.
Linked also is working for recruitment agencies to head hunt or for companies to advertise an opening to the Linkedin masses. I have had a load of franchise type companies approach me with opportunities to partner or open a franchise. The other type of approaches I have had are MLM trying to recruit me into their network. And then what I call spam. Purely arbitrary approaches about some product or service the person thinks will benefit me (with some of them I wonder how they know this considering their product). So in all this Linkedin is essentially being used for direct marketing.
Linkedin has other uses like research (polls, discussions and answers), a vehicle to provide slide show presentations, project collaboration, meet up with connections while travelling, add your event and share what you are reading. There is no doubt that Linkedin can be used as a tool to promote your business, product or cause.
I tried in vain to find the largest group on LinkedIn. Emarketing, a group I belong to, with close to 185k members shows up as the largest to me. Today, however, I received the weekly announcement where they claim to be “#2″. So who is #1? The second closest group I found was Executive Suite with just over 167k.
If you are considering Plaxo in your basket, then I imagine the strategies you employ would be similar to Linkedin. I am going to keep an eye on these business orientated social networks. They are collaborating with each other. I see Plaxo and Facebook collaborating and recently LinkedIn and Twitter. Maybe we will see the emergence of one or two super social networking groups.
For me Linkedin has certainly proved to be king! (That could be because I am more active there, but I think most would agree).
Lastly I found this interesting article on Measuring the Results of Social Media Participation by Scott Klososky.
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4 Comments so far
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Jim that is awsome. Thanks for the information and kind words.
Christine I will defintely check that out.
Urs, as always, thanks for your great input. I read your article. It has some interesting thoughts. The only thing I wasn’t sure of was whether your client decided against social networking or decided that advice was not right and looked at other ways to approach social networking?
Nice blog post Lee-Ann
This got me thinking and after reflecting for a while I thought that I am not sure if it depends on size when looking at the network.
One probably sets the objectives, joins, executes and then measures if one has accomplished the things one wanted to accomplish with LinkedIn or Plaxo. I use both but Plaxo primarily to keep my address book updated or as Sam calls it for contact management.
In all cases, you can waste plenty of time and maybe the one thing I like more about LinkedIn is that it has groups like this one were like-minded individuals can share insights.
Comparing LinkedIn to Xing is a bit of a different story but I still feel Xing’s group features are not as great as LinkedIn. For instance, I cannot get a daily digest containing all the new content for each group I am a member of on Xing. This is a very nice feature on LinkedIN
On the other hand, Xing members seem to differ a bit as far as participation behavior is concerned. Less likely to push their personal brand but instead valuable content regardless where it comes from.
I have also tried to address this here:
http://commetrics.com/articles/how-to-fail-with-linkedin-let-me-count-the-ways/
I hope this is helpful and thanks for sharing this blog post with us.
Regards
Urs
@ComMetrics
PS. I agree with others that Plaxo is a bit stale, while having groups and discussions like LinkedIn offers adds a lot of value for me.
I checked out Biznik and it is quite good however the free basic account is limited.
Hi Lee-Ann: Thanks for your excellent blog post! I am too a member of the emarketing group (as well as a few others on LinkedIn in the internet marketing space) and find participation in each group to be quite fulfilling. We haven’t used Plaxo for the reasons you mention above (spam stigma) as well as for the fact that most of our current contacts only use LinkedIn. Ultimately, we are marketing our magazine and local workshops but the real value has been in discovering solutions and helping others to get answers to important questions relevant to our space. We’ve been successful at generating traffic to our website but the most satisfying aspect has been people reaching out to us for answers to their questions. In the end, that’s really what we think social networking is all about.
As magazine publishers and educators, our goal has always been to be known as a conduit to unbiased information that helps business owners navigate the complex waters of internet marketing. LinkedIn has effectively helped us locate the most respected thought leaders in our space and has facilitated the delivery of their message to our readers.
Keep up the great work!
Jim Gibson
@OMTMagazine
http://www.facebook.com/Onlinemediatoday