Week 1 Which Social Media Platforms - Personal Use and Business

Week 1 

Which social media platforms seem geared towards personal use and which one seems to work better for business?

While I’m not much of a social media user, I use the more recognized and popular platforms.

Facebook, an online social networking service is geared towards personal use. I like my privacy so I created an incognito profile to keep up to date with family and friends. I check it daily to find out what’s happening with my short, selective list of followers. I enjoy viewing their photos, posts, comments, videos, etc. I’m more of a voyeur than a participant. I receive reminders of their birthdays and learn more about their personalities, likes, and dislikes. I also get a glimpse of their lives, the ups and downs, their routines, and daily experiences. I also keep track of them. Depending on the frequency of one’s post, I can guess when something is wrong. When they return within a few days, I’ll read a post of what happened. If they’re off too long, I will contact them directly. Always fun and interesting reading everyone’s posts. Keeps me in touch and current with my favorite people’s lives.

The Statista link below supports my answer.

Why Men and Women Use Facebook? August – September 2013 Survey by Statista

As far as a social media platform for business, I pick LinkedIn, considered one of the largest professional network with at least 300 million strong. My employer has a LinkedIn account that was created by our Human Resources rep on the east coast. She mainly uses it for recruiting purposes to find candidates for our open positions and posting job openings. HR also considers it as a background check. It gives them a brief summary on a candidate’s character, professional experience, and provides references as well as their skills set. As our company grew, management realized due its popularity and professional, trustworthy reputation, LinkedIn would help expand our exposure to a wider audience worldwide. I added product information, history, and company background information. Our business development team also utilizes it to add milestone news, press releases, white papers, tradeshow information, and community involvement events. We’ll soon re-brand our company due to a merger. LinkedIn will be a valuable tool to spread the word globally and gauge its viewers with their analytics feature.

Out of curiosity, I searched for more business social media platforms and found this social networking sites link. For those in business you may find this link useful and beneficial.