People say: Facebook Vs Twitter Vs LinkedIn. Which is better for business purposes?

Today there are hundreds of social networking sites (Friendster, imeem, Flickr, Myspace, Plaxo, Xanga, the list goes on) that are connecting people with different background, interests, hobbies and professions around the world.

The three major sites that are in the forefront are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  What, you may ask, is the difference between the three?  Which one will be the most beneficial for business?  Depending on you or your company’s goals and objectives, you will hopefully have a clearer perspective of which service best fits your business.

Bellow you may find a sort of an overview of the basic differences between Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

“Facebook is good for brand awareness and building, twitter is a micro blog and can be hard to target your niche and linkedin does a lot more than both facebook and twitter and is taken a lot more seriously.”

“It all depends what you mean by business purposes. Do you mean you want to use a social network to increase revenues, increase subscriptions to an email newsletter etc. In my opinion, each serves different benefits for businesses. Twitter for instance is uniquely positioned as being a popular real-time social network. This means that if you want to promote a product on a limited time period, it would be more suitable to use Twitter to reach an audience quickly.
Facebook on the other hand is more so about the brand awareness. Therefore it would be better suited towards long-term gains in website traffic, RSS subscribers and email newsletter subscriptions. LinkedIn is definitely more suited for connecting business professionals together who may wish to do joint ventures. Again, each network really will only work when you’ve distinguished and set goals on what you want to achieve for your business.”

“A large part of social media effectiveness, especially for business purposes, depends on where your AUDIENCE is. The answer to your question can and will vary drastically, based on the product or service each business offers, their current clientele, potential clientele, and short/long-term goals. I do not believe there is a best; it simply depends. A strong social media strategy will efficiently and effectively make use of more than one (but not too many; two or three is plenty) social media platforms, cross-linking between them and keeping a consistent brand for all of them.

FACEBOOK: It’s hard to argue with 400+ million regular users. Right now, they’ve got the numbers, and their users are engaged. I recommend every professional have a FB.

TWITTER: Growing fast, more useful if you can consistently post new, relevant content, ask relevant questions, and engage Tweeters. Good as well.

LINKEDIN: This platform captures the professional demographic that is not quite seen in such force on Twitter or Facebook. Both of those sites have them, but this site is DEDICATED to it, and there are a lot less frivolous status comments about “what people had for breakfast” and what have you.

As you can see, there are upsides (and downsides) to each one. It all depends on your business, audience, and ultimate purpose.”

“All have their advantages and disadvantages. Starting with LinkedIn it is not possible to use it to build a corporate brand – all interaction has to be personal and promotional activity is not allowed. Any contribution made would have to be purely personal, although there is nothing stopping a person from using clever wording in a forum such as Answers to build brand awareness. Twitter possibly offers the best business capability. It is possible to have an account in the name of the business, and to promote your brand directly. However too much of this and you are likely to lose credibility and followers. With Facebook it is possible to build a business fan page which can act as a centre of attention for people interested in the brand and its activities. In all cases it is best to focus on the needs of your followers in building the brand image – e.g. become the industry expert rather than purely promoting your own products. Social media is a place to demonstrate expertise rather than to advertise.”

“LinkedIn is my preference for business use. Facebook is too social (my teenage daughter is addicted to it, and I think it is really aimed at that market, not for professionals). Twitter – well I just don’t have time to narrate my life, and nobody would be that interested in it anyway!”

What do you think? What concerns do you have about which social networks to join?