LinkedIn or Facebook
Who can market you better in the professional world?

Social media is an evolution of technology that has digitally infused in our daily lives. In today’s world, it offers a robust methodology of communication and networking that has a tremendous impact not only on our daily lives but on our culture, education,  politics, business, and on the world at large. It is quite evident that social media is a game changer in the way how we carry out business in the world today. By far the most popular websites available for business purposes are LinkedIn and Facebook. 

Facebook continually evolves as the most popular and used communication platform to connect with family and friends with 2.32 billion active monthly users (Source: Facebook 1/30/19). Besides socializing, Facebook is being used as a marketing platform by businesses as well. There are over 65 million businesses are currently using Facebook for advertising and marketing purposes.  Looking at the potential of job-market, Facebook opened a new feature called “Job Board” where employers can advertise career openings on their company’s page. To quickly snatch the job- seekers market, Facebook is launching the Job-Board in 40 countries with free of charge listings of the openings. 

LinkedIn, as compared to Facebook has a smaller share on social media, but this platform reigns the business social media.  LinkedIn is the Business to Business (B2B) goldmine where most of the Fortune-500 executives spend their social time. LinkedIn has a membership of whopping 500 million monthly active users who do not post their wedding or vacation pictures, or family videos on their profiles, but they’re looking for content that can change the way they do bus ness, which  is most definitely music to the ears of a B2B marketer. Since its inception in 2002, LinkedIn has been taking off as a great channel for marketers, new grads and professionals in all industries. Consider this as your online resume. One can list his/her resume, job history, core objectives, and skill as well as a recommendation from other related professionals and colleagues.

According to the Market ng Solutions Blog, 61 million LinkedIn users are senior level influencers and 40 million are in decision-making positions (Gallant, 2019). From a job-seeking perspective, the decision-makers, or potential employers you’re trying to reach are using LinkedIn. On the other hand, LinkedIn and Adweek reported 87 million Millennials are on LinkedIn and 11 million of them holding the decision-making positions. This could turn out to be a job-seekers paradise.  It may worth to note that more than 44% of the LinkedIn members are women, so they have an excellent share in the job-seeking market too.

 It is not a secret that LinkedIn is the top professional social networking site with 133 million users in the U.S. alone and reaching 200 countries and territories around the world. As per the Jobvite Recruiter Nation Survey, 87 percent of recruiters use LinkedIn as part of their candidate search (Suder, n.d.)  As a professional or student, it is a popular place to network and look for job opportunities. When asked what was most important about a candidate's profile and how to make the best use of the platform, Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn responded that first and foremost "authenticity" was important. "Be yourself, represent who you are.  It's not just your experiences; this is not a resume... This is a more dynamic approach to representing your experiences, your skills, your objectives, what you know, what you’re interested in within a professional context," Weiner explained. " It's not just about the comprehensiveness; it’s also about the freshness of the information, and the more complete and the fresher, the more recent that that information has been updated, the more opportunities that are going to accrue to our members”.

A LinkedIn professional profile may be quite different than a Facebook page. In the professional world, a LinkedIn profile carries more weight than a Facebook profile.  LinkedIn's clean and organized format highlights qualifications and areas of expertise. With the simple hover of a mouse, a snapshot of the candidate pops up, and the most pertinent information can be quickly gleaned.  In fact, according to LinkedIn, "Users with complete profiles are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities through LinkedIn”. Whereas on Facebook qualifications are not easily identified, and a person's profile may have more about what he ate for lunch last week and less about his work history. Another advantage of LinkedIn is the wide array of candidates who are active on the site; recruiters have a far easier t me searching for candidates.  LinkedIn's advanced search option allows recruiters to search by company, title, qualifications, and keywords. And the candidates’ information, résumés, and qualifications can be reviewed before any contact is made. The overarching advantage is clear: Save Time and interview the right people. Managing connections is the key to exploiting the riches of LinkedIn. Choosing connections that both improve knowledge of the industry and allow contact with a variety of companies and executives will create a social following. Get involved with groups that center on similar interests to find valuable information and additional relationships.

In the end, I would like to state that all social media outlets have virtues, but LinkedIn remains unmatched when it comes to the professional world. Whether it is used to boost a personal professional image or the Web presence of a business, LinkedIn is a well-crafted outlet for information and sharing. Use it to highlight strengths, and watch the benefits pour in.

References:

Admin, . (Artist). (2018). Key Differences Between Facebook & LinkedIn. [Image]. BAER Performance Marketing. Retrieved April 20, 2019, from https://baerpm.com/2018/06/07/differences-facebook-linkedin/