Anytime B2B is mentioned, it is referring to specifically the business to business exchange of products, services, or information between businesses. This is different than business between business and customers. Another term often used for B2B is e-Biz.
If we are going to ask the question which network holds more value for B2B, Facebook or LinkedIn, there origins and development will show us which holds more value for B2B.
Mark Zuckerberg shares in his own blog in 2010,” I founded Facebook on the idea that people want to share and connect with people in their lives, but to do this everyone needs complete control over who they share with at all times.
This idea has been the core of Facebook since day one. When I built the first version of Facebook, almost nobody I knew wanted a public page on the internet. That seemed scary. But as long as they could make their page private, they felt safe sharing with their friends online. Control was key. With Facebook, for the first time, people had the tools they needed to...That's how Facebook became the world's biggest community online. We made it easy for people to feel comfortable sharing things about their real lives.
We've added many new tools since then: sharing photos, creating groups, commenting on and liking your friends' posts and recently even listening to music or watching videos together. With each new tool, we've added new privacy controls to ensure that you continue to have complete control over who sees everything you share. Because of these tools and controls, most people share many more things today than they did a few years ago.”
Zuckerberg’s goal was to establish a community that would be social in cyberspace. This was his main goal. But lets take a look at how LinkedIn has developed into as a network.
In the article The 3 Social Media Networks That Are Best For B2B Marketing By Douglas Burdett, he explains, “If you only use one social media network, make it this one. LinkedIn currently has 260 million users in 200 countries (and in 20 languages). The greatest benefit of LinkedIn is its ability to make contacts and build relationships. And the key to a successful presence on LinkedIn is providing valuable support and information to your connections and Groups.
LinkedIn also enables executives and companies to build their brands and establish thought leadership. LinkedIn Groups is where most of this happens. There are over one million LinkedIn groups, some with a very narrow industry focus, including your own. The best networking happens in the context of comments and status engagement.
From a marketing standpoint, LinkedIn allows you to run advertising that can be extremely targeted by location, industry, title, company and other demographics. On a company level, LinkedIn has recently enhanced your ability to showcase your firm via company pages feature. This is a smart place to introduce your company, share your content and boost traffic back to your website.
But the most appealing feature of LinkedIn, especially in B2B sales, is the ability to find out most everything on a professional level about a target prospect. And, you can determine if there’s an opportunity for a warm introduction through one of your connections. At that point, you will want to take the conversation from LinkedIn to an offline, person-to-person interaction.”
Burdett makes it clear that LinkedIn development has and continues to expand around building brands and building business relationships. LinkedIn as a network functions purely in this professional arena. Jasmine Sandler in her article Which Social Network is Best for B2B Marketing? “Hands down, LinkedIn is the best social network for B2B marketing. LinkedIn is the only real B2B social network that was developed purely to develop direct B2B sales relationships for B2B marketers.
The other social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube – all should be in the toolbox of any serious B2B marketer. But if you're on limited time and resources and looking to greatly increase your bottom line, you should invest wholly in LinkedIn.”
LinkedIn is clearly the network that holds more value for B2B. Facebook was a building block to networks like Twitter, Google+ and YouTube among others. I don’t think it will lose it’s clear advantage, but only extend it in the future.
Burdett, Douglas/The 3 Social Media Network That Are Best For B2B Marketing/ Business2Community/10/1/2014
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