LinkedIn or Twitter: One or Both?

Even if you’re familiar with marketing on social media, you may still have questions about which platforms are best for your business. Content marketing is all about providing interesting and valuable content to your customers, so it's important to establish which networking site(s) your customers will be using.

B2B or B2C?

Check out current marketing information online, and you'll likely encounter the acronyms B2B and B2C before too long. B2B means you are selling your product or service “business to business”. B2C is “business to consumer”.

The type of customer you’re trying to sell to will help you choose which marketing platform is best for you. For example, maybe you produce handmade jewelry—you could either sell your product to retailers or individuals. Once you've decided on which group to focus on (and there's no reason why you can't choose both), it may be much easier to engage them on social media, depending on where they like to ‘hang out’.

Which platform to use?

You may be familiar with LinkedIn—often thought of as merely a networking or resume site for professionals—and may have thought it wasn't the right media for you. But considering the site has more than 350 million users, and that LinkedIn has a very good page rank on Google, you may want to look again. Once you've created a profile on LinkedIn, you can easily target just the right people to grow your network of followers, especially if you are in the B2B world.

Twitter, with its 500+ million users—80% of whom read their tweets on a mobile device—, is a perfect platform for B2C — and — B2B marketing. It's a great way to not only provide content to your potential customers, but to receive feedback as well.

So how can you make LinkedIn and Twitter work for you?

As a B2B platform, LinkedIn is more about business/professional relationships. It’s not where you should post about your personal life. Make sure your content keeps that in mind.

You’ll also want to keep your updates current on either site, and make sure it's something your customers need NOW.

Take advantage of the many tools and analytics offered by both sites. LinkedIn is a great way to narrow in on a geographical area, while Twitter can show you where your customers’ interests and opinions lie.

If you're using both platforms, take care to tailor your content to fit your audience. Using the prior handmade jewelry example, you may choose to post on Twitter topics about wedding planning, birthstones, jewelry for different personalities, and how to choose quality jewelry. These topics are great for general interest. On LinkedIn, where you may want to post on topics appealing more to professional interests, you might only share the article about choosing quality jewelry.

Be social!

LinkedIn and Twitter are social media, with an emphasis on social. Be sure to participate by following others, particularly current and potential customers. Share/re-tweet their posts (adding a valuable comment of your own), and before long they may start doing the same for you.

As with many things in life and in business, you’ll get out of LinkedIn and Twitter what you put into them.