WEEK 2: Personal Vs. Business Social Media

Most of the major platforms: facebook, instagram, snapchat, and linkedin, can be used for both personal and business promotion and communication.  When deciding on which platforms to pursue, it's important to consider the brand (lifestyle, professional, entertainment, etc) and the audience (business/ consumer, young/ old, professional/ lifestyle).  Considering these things, I believe that snapchat specifically, has greater viability for personal use or personal brand creation than the other major platforms.  

Snapchat is built on the premise of "snaps," pics or videos, that can be sent to somebody for one view, then disappear.  You can also build a story that can be published for 24 hours, viewed by your selected viewers, or group/ place/ organization, then will disappear.  This aligns more with the day-to-day flow of one's personal life or personal brand and is less inclined towards building a concrete platform that a user can review or glean information or historical data from.

Which ones seem to work better for business?  What makes them seem more suitable to business use?

To build a successful social media platform, it is important to know your business and your audience.  For a professional services business, such as a law firm, a platform like facebook or linkedin, couples a clean, professional layout with an interface that provides a descriptive landing page.  This probably functions better for a company doing B2B (business to business) transactions vs B2C (business to consumer).

A lifestyle brand might have less success on linkedin, as they are essentially trying to build a brand that is seen in the context of everyday life, versus a strictly professional setting.  By using something like Instagram or YouTube, a lifestyle brand can focus on content geared towards it's objective- health, fitness, surfing, or cycling for example.  

Do any seem to work well for both?  How are they used differently?

Again, I think knowing your business and audience are crucial in deciding which platform to focus one's energy on.  It never hurts to create accounts across the board, however, a business should focus its energy on what will be most useful for it's brand.  

Facebook is a good solution for both personal and business.  Facebook's origins are highly personal; the original platform focused on "relationship status," "interested in [insert specific gender], and other personal attributes.  The platform has evolved to providing an effective search engine and platform for various business uses and it now caters to both a personal and professional brand.  Perhaps the most effective users of facebook and social media in general are the people and accounts who have figured out how to professionally market themselves in personable, individually-geared ways.  A great example of this is a facebook ad I've seen a lot recently.  "Sam Ovens" is a business consultant who is marketing his webinars on how to become a successful consultant.  The key to Sam's successful marketing campaign is the awesome lifestyle that he effectively portrays as a result of his professional endeavors.  By showing himself in his Manhattan high-rise, embarking in a private jet, and dapperly dressed, surrounded by beautiful, happy people, Sam has sold his professional services by embodying a lifestyle that a large number of people dream about, seek, and desire.