Opinion: Facebook, Twitter or Google +? Which Social Networking Website Works Best For Business?

With the advent of the internet information age, there is not a more important platform for business nowadays than the internet. That fact has been well known ever since the world wide web emerged, however starting a few years ago, social networking sites exploded in popularity, with the majority of the population engaging in at least one of these major sites. In order to increase your presence online, the next logical step is to reach out to potential customers in the form of a social media personality. With the myriad of different social networking sites available, it can become confusing as the which one(s) are the best to garner the widest range of customers. This article will review the top social networking sites and how they can be put to good use by you.

Twitter emerged a few years ago and shocked people around the world. How useful can a simple, character-limited interface be for business? The answer is, very. Twitter is the quickest growing web 2.0 marketing website to date. While it is not as expansive or as customizable as Facebook, Twitter’s simplicity and ability to instantaneously post something make it comparable in force. Twitter asks one simple question, “What are you doing?” and it is this question that allows companies to post new products, ideas, and promotions. In fact, this question has become so successful that other media platforms have begun using it in their own pages. Twitter also recently remodeled their company profile pages, so that you can include your own header, logo, and slogan for instant reconcilability. However, due to the ways that customers view Twitter, often using a Twitter viewing client such as HootSuite or Seesmic, the profile pages are not easily accessible.

(Courtesy of marcopako )

Facebook is another great social media network for businesses. There are about 400 million Facebook users, with up to 50% of them actively logging in on a daily basis. This opens up a huge customer base for you. It is simple and easy to set up a page for your business, but the page requires a regular logging in to check for customer inquiries and service issues. Because of this, Facebook may not be the best option for a B2B business as it is all about customer-business interaction. Facebook does allow for a much more customizable interface, with abilities to create pages with blogs, video uploading, promotions, contests, and information pages, even ecommerce functionality. A con on Facebook is that unless you are a well-known brand, you may need to buy ads through Facebook to get more “Likes” on your page. Facebook also places a limit on the number of friends – 5,000 friends and you must create a fan page.

(Courtesy of Bruce Clay, Inc)

Google Plus is another up and coming social media platform. While it is still new to the scene, it was formulated with businesses in mind from the very beginning. Google+ pages are also easy to create and maintain. Right now, due to its novelty, Google+’s options are somewhat limited. However, it is a sure thing to bet that with time, Google will add more functions to its social media platform in the form of ecommerce functionality. There are nowhere near as many users of Google+ as there are of Facebook and Twitter yet, but this is sure to change as people start to look at and expand to new platforms, and as Google adds more innovative features.

The question all comes down to what social media platform you should use. Ideally, the answer is all three. Each platform differs in ways that lack in its counterparts, so that the sum is ultimately better than the parts. High speed internet providers in my area use what’s best in terms of where the people are at. Most high speed internet providers in my area advertise on Twitter and Facebook rather than Google Plus.