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Well, I use all three, amongst many other lesser known social media like Naymz and Ecademy, but that’s a blog post for another day. I like each one for different reasons. For the purposes of this blog post, I’ll share with you what I see the differences to be and how I use each one differently. Keep in mind, I’m just an executive coach figuring this stuff out as I go along. I’m no technogeek social media guru!
Here goes:
Twitter:
This is streaming conversation tool that allows you to engage in multiple conversations in real time, anytime. This can be good and bad. I always turn it off during coaching calls, otherwise I’d be distracted! For networking and real-time information-sharing, Twitter can’t be beat. It’s like an ongoing party and you can network your heart out day or night from the comfort of your own computer or cell phone. Great people, great community, and one of my twitterbuddies recently said she thinks of Twitter as her always-available personal Mastermind Group. I love that!
Mindset: Create connections and seek to help and add value in micro-conversations. Relationships aren’t necessarily reciprocal on Twitter. Be a go-giver!
Strategy: Initially, follow tons of people who interest you‚ either other coaches, authors, leadership experts, leaders of companies, or even political or celebrity figures and engage in conversations on Twitter with these folks. That way, all their followers will see your stream of conversation and can choose to follow you if the topics interest them.
Pitfall to avoid: Don’t get on Twitter to just sell your services or promote your products.
LinkedIn:
This is the first social networking vehicle I ever engaged in, but I use it the least of the three mentioned here. It’s a great place to collect professional contacts, to demonstrate your knowledge or subject matter expertise in the answers, and to build community of similar interests using the questions feature. The best part of LinkedIn is the groups. There are a lot of great coaching groups on there that I learn a lot from and enjoy connecting there with colleagues. Most folks outside of coaching use LinkedIn for recruiting and job-seeking, but there are still applications for us coaches.
Mindset: Keep it professional, use your profile for marketing and branding, and engage in answers to questions that demonstrate your value-add.
Strategy: Join lots of groups that interest you and engage in discussions in those groups. Become an open-networker and accept every invitation to link to you!
Pitfall to avoid: Don’t invite people to link to you who do not know you well, because if a few people click that they don’t know you in response to your invitation, LinkedIn will block you from inviting more people.
Facebook:
I love this one for the versatility of it. Unlike Twitter, relationships on Facebook must be approved and two-ways. You invite people to be your friend and they invite you to be their friend. You can post blog posts, videos, you can share videos and blogs that are not even yours, you can find long-lost friends and schoolmates, you can share pictures. As a coach, it is great for keeping up with other coaches, past clients, and industry leaders. This is a great marketing vehicle for promoting your coaching activity.
Mindset: Be careful what you post, not only on your Facebook pages, but comments you might write on other people’s walls. Think branding, and be judicious about how much personal stuff to put out there.
Strategy: Engage in conversations (wall-to-wall) posts with industry leaders, because those are visible to everyone in your friend list as well as theirs. Keep all your photos professional and more on the business side than the family side. Set up a Facebook page for your business as well as yourself. If you have a book, set up a Facebook page for your book and get fans.”
Pitfall to avoid: Facebook apps that do not align with your passion or professional image. No need to accept every invitation for an app, event or group that comes your way.
Which do you use? Which do you like best?
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There are 6 Responses so far...
I was going to write my own post on these three tools, and now that I found yours, I will certainly link my post to yours.
I use all three. I have been on linked-in for quite a while, but I am not using it effectively; so far its a strong tool that I use when necessary, but I try to keep adding connections to my network.
I joined Facebook last year, after lots of hesitation (my past experience with things like this was not worth the effort). Certainly Facebook has lifted the bar very high and made radical changes to the way people communicate. It didn’t come all at once, but these guys are evolving smart and fast.
Joining Twitter was very recent, and mostly because I became curious after seeing all the hype about it. It’s not easy to figure out how to make a good use of Twitter, but after reading a few articles on it I decided to buckle up and drive around, start following, and see where it goes – if you have the time certainly. The flood of Tweets is scary!
Thanks Suzi for the nice post.
Nice summary, Suzi, and I agree on the basics all around. The one comment I will add is that I am now, after a couple of years, finding LinkedIn to be very powerful. I have had requests to make connections for jobs and business opportunities, I’ve done great research on companies and people and learned about trends that can sometimes be difficult to unearth any other way (for example, when people at the VP level in Company A change jobs, where’s the place they go next most frequently?). It can help gain insight into company cultures to move towards and away from and gives a sense of where an organization has good retention and reward strategies and when not.
Beyond that, I have ventured into Twitter but found it very difficult to sort the good from the bad – there’s a lot of clutter and a lot of people Tweeting to hear themselves Tweet – but I have learned of some interesting sites and resources there that I don’t know I would have heard about otherwise, so I’m optimistic that it will mature over time as some of the prolific Tweeters find they’re not making any money by Tweeting all day.
And Facebook is now commonly checked as part of standard employment reference checking, no matter what the org level the role is at, so I agree – keep it clean and business-appropriate!!
Great post Suzi! I use all 3. My advice, as far as which is best, is for each coach to follow his/her preferences. I know coaches who love Facebook and coaches who hate it. Same with Twitter, etc. There is no need to do everything, but it is important to have a strategy to leverage social media time and get a good return on investment.
One important note: social networking, web 2.0, or whatever you want to call it, is now almost as important to online success as search engine optimization. Not participating, at all would be a mistake. I wrote a short post about this today at: http://www.schoolofcoachingmastery.com/coaching-blog/bid/20193/Do-Your-Coaching-Clients-Find-You-Via-Google-or-Facebook
I set up a Facebook page for my coaching practice but am relatively new to FB. How do I set up a Facebook communication between myself (coach) and my client that ensures that I do not have access to my client’s friends and our correspondences are private?
Hi, Bob! Great question. The only way that I know of to have a private conversation on Facebook is to use the Chat function. Do not post on their wall or do a wall-to-wall exchange because those are public. You can send them a direct message which I believe is not visible to all. But the only way to not see who their friends are is not to look. If you are connected to someone on Facebook, you and they have access to each other’s friends lists…which is kind of the point of facebook.
Julia, Karen, and Rabih-
Great comments! Thank you!! Yes, it really is a new world. Web2.0 is no longer just for the tech geeks. Remember when the world went from fax machines to e-mail? Well the speed and connectivity of social media is the new frontier, and as coaches we need to embrace this new reality.
Hi Suzi! I use all 3 as well. Linkedin the least perhaps. I build relationships with people on twitter and then take it to the next level by connecting with a few on facebook. Some people will add most of their twitter friends on FB but I wait till I’ve established rapport with someone who I know I want to have in my community.
Twitter is great for real time conversations, sharing links, inspiration and support. And facebook is about deepening those friendships and letting them into my life a bit more. They’re the 2 I’m on all day. Yeah, gotta watch that little addiction…
I use Linkedin to connect with people I know or have just met in a tad more formal way. Haven’t maxed it’s potential but I do have my blog link set up to import the feed.
Thanks for the summarizing! Tia @TiaSparkles