Social networking and social media presence are definitely at the top of mind of many companies these days, large and small companies, new and old. It may seem like this is just the latest technology fad that will pass in a few years, but that depends on your strategy. One of the best questions to answer when thinking about social media marketing strategy is:

Which Social Network is right for you?

Not all of the social networks are created equally, and it is important to decide which networks fit your company. It is important to think about this because it helps you identify the kinds of users you are trying to reach. What is the best medium to reach this particular segment? Here is a breakdown of the major networks, the kinds of users they have and how they are positioned in users’ minds:

Facebook – the grand-daddy of all social networks, this social network has the most visibility and attracts the most viewers (500 million users+). Because of the size and popularity of Facebook, the average user is difficult to nail down demographically. However, because there are a variety of users, this means that there are a large number of sub segments of significant size within the network. People view Facebook as a way to connect with everything they like: friends, family, games, TV Shows, you name it. They view it as a leisure activity and spend a significant amount of time on Facebook. One of the best ways to look at Facebook’s value is through some of the statistics on its website:

• There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)

• Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events

• Average user creates 90 pieces of content each month

• More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month

LinkedIn - this social network’s popularity came in at the heels of Facebook, and positioned itself entirely differently (much to its own benefit). It is still growing at a rate of one million new users per week and currently boasts 100 million global professional users. LinkedIn, though it is smaller than Facebook, has a better way of demonstrating social connection and the power that it holds. It call its users ‘professionals’ and call friends ‘connections’ to establish themselves as a more professionally-based social network. The benefit of leveraging LinkedIn as a network is the demographics of its user base and its positioning as a ‘work-type’ of networking:

• As of January 2011, LinkedIn counts executives from all 2010 Fortune 500 companies as members; its hiring solutions were used by 69 of the Fortune 100 companies as of December 31, 2010

• More than one million companies have LinkedIn Company Pages (formerly known as company profiles)

Twitter – while it is a bit different than the traditional ‘profile’ type social networking sites, Twitter has a power all its own: a constant and immediate updated profile stream directly from users. Twitter subscribes to the theory of ‘followers’ and ‘tweeters’ as the answer to friends and users. There is a duality of Twitters users; some are similar to those of Facebook in that they tweet about anything and everything and some use it as a means of spreading company news. Twitter has substantial usage, weighing in at 175 million registered users. This means that like Facebook, there is enormous potential to increase awareness among smaller sub-segments rather than attempt to standout among the estimated 95 million tweets per day.

We just covered the most prevalent networks currently, but there are literally hundreds of other social networking sites that you can leverage. Wikipedia has a comprehensive list of social networking sites, might be worth checking out.

Our team of social media marketing consultants doesn’t believe that social marketing is on its way out anytime soon, it will likely grow and change with time. But one thing is clear: finding the social network(s) of the best fit is essential to success. One of the best ways that you can leverage these mediums is to develop solid strategy, goals and tracking mechanisms for success. Look for our on-going posts about the strategy behind all of this. Additionally, if the strategy is difficult to wrap your head around, it can be valuable to work with a social media consultant to help you hash-out (or #hash-tag out :)) your social media marketing strategy.