Poll: Business People Say Twitter More Important Than LinkedIn
A month-long poll conducted on business social network LinkedIn has uncovered some fascinating numbers concerning social media platforms and brand presence. The biggest surprise was that Twitter was deemed more important to brands than LinkedIn, and the poll was performed on LinkedIn. With more than 3,600 respondents so far, each well understood in terms of job titles, company size, age and gender - this is a high-quality data set worth paying attention to. The question asked was simply: "What is the most important new platform for brands to master?" Options were Twitter, Facebook, the iPhone, Digg and LinkedIn.
Some of the conclusions were a real surprise. Others confirmed our suspicions. Read on for charts, bullet points and a few thoughts.
Below are charts breaking out the poll responses from various groups and some text we've written to interpret those charts. It's important to remember the question wasn't "what do you prefer" but rather "what is most important for brands to master." Those are related but different questions.
Just for context, we'll start with a traffic graph.
Key takeaways from the poll:
Overall
- Twitter is #1, leading Facebook by a respectable margin
- The iPhone is considered less important than LinkedIn
- Almost no-one thinks Digg is the most important
- There is no consensus; every platform named (except for Digg) has a group of backers that believes it is most important.
About the respondents
- 3,615 respondents is a very good number
- Only 4% were business owners, 26% managers, 56% non-managers
- 75% were from small businesses
- 26% were marketers, the largest percentage among job functions
- Twice as many men responded as women
- 83% of respondents were between the ages of 25 and 54, only 17% younger or older
Most appreciative of Twitter: Business owners, C-Level or VPs. People at large- or medium-sized companies. People doing business development, marketing or creative work.
Least appreciative of Twitter: Non-managers. People at very large or small businesses. Consultants, Salespeople and Engineers.
Most appreciative of LinkedIn: C-level and non-managers. At small- or medium-sized businesses. Doing consulting or sales.
Least appreciative of LinkedIn: Owners and managers. At large or enterprise companies. In creative or marketing departments.
By Job Title
- Business owners are most likely to put Twitter at the top, non-management people are least likely
- Non-managers are most likely to favor LinkedIn, owners are least likely
- Non-C-level or VP managers are most likely to favor Facebook, owners are least likely
- About 1 out of 5 people in all positions favor the iPhone
By Company Size
- Large businesses are most likely to favor Twitter
- Medium and small businesses are twice as likely to favor LinkedIn
- Small businesses are twice as likely to favor Digg
- Medium-sized businesses are least likely to favor the iPhone
By Job Function
- Marketing, business development and creatives are most likely to favor Twitter
- Consultants and sales are least likely to favor Twitter
- Creatives and marketing are least likely to favor LinkedIn
- Consultants and sales are most likely to favor LinkedIn
- Consultants are most likely to favor iPhone, marketing least likely
- Engineers are far more likely to favor Digg than anyone
- Marketing is most into Facebook, business development the least (prefers Twitter)
By Gender
- Women are much more likely to prefer Twitter
- Men are more likely to favor LinkedIn, iPhone
By Age
- 55+ far more likely 75% than anyone to favor LinkedIn
- 25-54 more likely to favor the iPhone than younger or older people
So what do you think? Surprises? Confirmed beliefs? This looks like good quality data to us so we suspect we'll be thinking about it for a while. Two things are for sure - there's no topping LinkedIn for professional background information, and there's no chance we'd be able to trust a poll like this if it was performed on Twitter!
Thanks to Tom Humbarger for Twittering about this poll; that's how we found it.
You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Rick Turoczy, Sean Ammirati, Lidija Davis and Phil Glockner.
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Twitter is more important than most vegetables.
Adrew, you take that back. That is taking this Twitter thing way too far!
I think the question is what a business is going to use Twitter or LinkedIn for. Twitter is great if your a large business and you want daily, instant consumer reaction. However, for people who follow hundreds or thousands on Twitter, a few Tweets a day from a company may not even be noticed. A good LinkedIn page, however, is almost like a company Web site, with lots of good, detailed info and links.
Keva, that's a good point. On some level this is a strange poll. On another level it's worthwhile to consider in big picture terms which is more important, though.
Woaaahhh Revelation.
Twitter seems to be more important than anything these days. I hope the hype dies down one of these days, but I suspect it wont. I got one a while back, just so it would mirror off of my identi.ca posts, and get to more friends, because the reality of the situation is the majority of my friends do use the service.
From my perspective the total misfit of the poll is Digg. It's a great tool, but it's very limited socially or informationally. The competition is to strong to get more than marginal results so it wouldn't be cost effective to use it as a main strategy business wise. I may be missing something. :)
Secondly it's interesting that they chose to add the iphone in with the social media sites. I can't say it really fits and if it does then it should have added the Blackberry.
Most importantly were the headline outcome of the survey. Poll: Business People Say Twitter More Important Than LinkedIn
It's good to see that all three of the social sites were close overall and that if companies went by the poll results they'd want to concentrate on a balance between the highest ranks #1 Twitter, #2 Facebook and #3 Linkedin of course it may be desirable to utilize an iPhone ranked #4 as well as Digg #5 with 3% as your supplementary strategy.
The three social networking sites are each important assets to a business in this day and age since the consumers as well as peers are active participants. Determine what your company goals are and work the three social sites into a cohesive strategy. If done properly it will help promote your brand, create a larger customer base, and support your current customer base as well as increase sales after all that's what business is all about.
Duh. Twitter for brands, LinkedIn for people. Duh.
@mediadude That's pretty much it. Twitter and LinkedIn have completely different purposes. LinkedIn isn't about direct communication, so it can do little to help with a brand. But ask 3,000+ H.R. reps what they think is more important to recruiting talent between Twitter and LinkedIn, and LinkedIn will be the runaway winner.
Kinda agree, but twitter is also for people :-)
http://brisbane.at9t.com/
What should brands MASTER? Seems like an all-comers question to me.
I wonder how much of this is driven by the recent plethora of attention Twitter has had in the press and how much is genuine insight in to how Twitter will really affect business.
Maybe the publicity will make it true. I remain skeptical. But I'm still on Twitter all the time.
Today business cards are among the most important marketing material that every business must have. Do Business
I think there's on thing that needs to be closely considered with this poll. Employees use LinkedIn (there are not a lot of things a company can do with it), Brands/Company's use Twitter (in addition to it's employees).
You will find brands and corporations making use of Twitter, while LinkedIn users focus more on their personal information, connections, etc.
This is to the exception of hiring/recruiting activities of course.
I should say Twitter is more important but Linkedin is more influential. Thanks for result!
Doesn't the word "new" build in bias for Twitter? Of all the platforms Twitter - for most - would be considered new or newer. If you asked what is the most important platform for brands to master for the long term, I wonder if we might actually see Fb in the lead by a substantial margin.
I am somehow amazed at how low Digg scored in terms of importance to a brand.
I think comparing Twitter and Linkedin is actually quite misleading, Linkedin can be much more effective for personal branding..
Andre - I'd argue just the opposite, that Twitter can be much more effective for personal branding. Or that both can be used together.
contact is the most important marketing and much work is done in
The question was "What is the most important new platform for brands to master?" If I already understand the value and benefits of LinkedIn (which is very easy to grasp), then it is logical that Twitter, which is 'new' for most people scores better.
With that in mind, I think it is misleading to conclude that 'business people say Twitter is more important'. I'd say business people are aware they need to pay attention to Twitter for branding!
Really nice post. I have linkedin profile and i also use Twitter. But i think twitter work better then linkedin. You can search jobs, improve business, tips and many more with Twitter. Then why i've gonna use linkedin ?
Twitter vs LinkedIn?! Utterly bizarre comparison when it comes to "importance for the brand".
I love them both, for extraordinarily different reasons. We use Twitter for our own brand (an agency) and for a growing number of our client brands. Who, what and how are brands using LinkedIn for anything remotely close?
It's like saying 'what's more more important for your business --- giving people weekends off, or asking them to sometimes work late?'...
I find LinkedIn about as useful as Monster.com.
Posted by: Jon Gosier
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May 30, 2009 6:17 AM
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With Regards,
Karly Domonyi
Hungary
Aren't you comparing apple-pie to oranges by including iPhone side by side to social-media services? {iPhone, blackberry, smartphones, PC,...} Not-equal-to {twitter, linkedin, digg, facebook}, it is like saying: "What is the most important platform? A particular brand of gadget to allows you to: microblog, socialize with business colleagues, share your bookmarks, socialize with colleege buddies and family, or microblog, socialize with business colleagues, share your bookmarks, socialize with colleege buddies and family?"
From my personal experience, Twitter has been far more useful in generating potential business contacts than LinkedIn. I've never found a person on LinkedIn that I've then gone on to meet in real life where I've met at least 10 in real life that I first established contact with via Twitter. The fact that we'd both seen each other's tweets and even potentially @ replied a couple of times broke the immediate ice that would probably have existed otherwise.
LinkedIn makes it virtually impossible to find useful potential business contacts and then to actually connect with them you have to jump through various hoops when it should be just as simple as Twitter's one button follow request.
The original premise of LinkedIn was that you would have your contacts introduce you to their contacts and in a way it would build trust on both sides, but the fact of the matter is it's an inconvenience to do that. Business people are keen to do business with each other whether or not they have some kind of mutual contact/friend.
Twitter isn't perfect and definitely needs a better way for organising and searching through its member database (something even more powerful than 3rd parties like WeFollow and MrTweet are offering), and perhaps that may become one of their premium add-ons at a later date. I think LinkedIn has missed the boat now even to Facebook which I see harbouring a large pool of my existing business contacts (although I wouldn't go about finding new contacts on there).
Twitter your way to life as mothers little helper to get over the tough days in life. Personally I am only interested in the life of the people around me and not in the life of every Tom, Dick and Harry.
lust4asia - spunjunks
I really liked this article and found it through Twitter by my followers. I have confirmed my thoughts but now have much respect for LinkedIn for publishing such results not to their favors. I will join LinkedIn too.
Niki Wise
Business Consultant
great post here- i too am a CEO whose #1 recommendation for serious business executives is twitter. next is linked-in, then ecademy, then plaxo, then facebook. that's just me- cheers
@JustinRFrench
"Marketing is most into Facebook"... I am curious if Facebook is used for B2B Marketing and how effective it is?
Marshall - thanks for the analysis of the finding. kudos to linkedin for its transparency in publishing the report coming in #3. wonder what the 'berry people feel about being not being included.
Hi Marshall -
Thanks for publishing this and for digging into the results.
The biggest surprise to me is that there's no clear run-away leader here despite the varying degrees of media coverage that the different platforms enjoy at the moment. For the most part, marketers think that all of these platforms are equally important to master, give or take a few percentage points. Twitter is the newest (from a mainstream perspective) and most unknown of the entities at this point, so I'm not too surprised to see them a few points ahead, but clearly people feel that all of these platforms are going to be important elements of how marketers connect with their customers.
We work with a number of brands who find LinkedIn to be a highly effective vehicle for reaching affluent, influential, and successful businesspeople. Third party research from Nielsen indicates the people using LinkedIn are more likely to be a decision maker for their company and have a higher income than the readers of some of the more popular mainstream business sites. Since these professionals are often using LinkedIn to find answers, advice and information to help them make smart business decisions, it's a relevant contextual environment for many marketers.
@Alex Trup - if you're interested, you might want to take a look at some of the LinkedIn success stories that members have shared with us: http://learn.linkedin.com/videos/
Best,
Steve Patrizi
VP, Advertising Sales & Operations
LinkedIn
It follows that both sites are dominated by individuals, as opposed to companies, therefore the results reflect that. Another followup poll could be, how many times a day do you tweet? Without getting into the optimum number of tweets per day, as some do.
Steve, i agree regarding the lack of clear consensus. You know, it never ceases to amaze me how often you LinkedIn folks come back to talking about how much money your users make. In any other context a person who went on and on about how rich their friends are would be thought quite rude. Just sayin'
@Marshall -
Hah, yes - we do mention that often, primarily for two reasons:
1) We aim to help professionals be as successful, productive and effective as possible, and since there's often (but not always) a correlation between professional success and income, we like to believe that a high average HHI is one indication that we're doing our job well :)
2) There are many marketers looking to reach people with high disposable incomes or who are in positions to make big decisions for their companies, but media fragmentation has made finding and reaching those people at scale more difficult then ever, in any medium. So we do like to remind marketers (maybe a tad too often) that we can help them reach that audience effectively and efficiently.
Thanks again for the coverage here Marshall, I'm a fan of RWW.
Cheers,
Steve
Steve Patrizi
VP, Advertising Sales & Operations
LinkedIn
I think twitter has become more important these days then LinkedIn. Actually I take that back, it's become just as important. I see the two services are different tools. LinkedIn gives a ton of details about a person and is a bit more efficient. Twitter is more of a direct chat. The cool thing is that people actually do respond on twitter so it's not like your talking to a brick wall.
It's telling that "owners' and "C Level" had different opinions. Small biz owners are going to see great value in Twitter. C Level execs will be scratching their heads for a while.
I was starting to use LinkedIn a lot a year ago because of a project I was working on. But then I ran into some rules that were never stated until I was a risk of breaking them. For example, I didn't realize that if people indicated they didn't know you, you could lose access on LinkedIn. I never crossed over that line, but I didn't know there WAS a line until I had a few "don't know you" experiences. One of the people who said he didn't know me was in fact someone I knew and had talked to multiple times at events, but it had been seven years ago since we last met. Evidently I didn't fully explain our connection. Still, the experience left me wary and I pretty much stopped approaching anyone on LinkedIn. Now rather than looking for people I know or would like to know, I am only adding those who approach me or who send out a general request on Twitter or a blog to be added on LinkedIn.
Not being able to network as much as I would have liked, I stopped using LinkedIn, and spent more time with Facebook and Twitter. I still use LinkedIn as an online resume, but for networking it isn't my primary place.
@Steve Patrizi Thanks for that. I'm not completely ruling out LinkedIn as useful for some businesses. I do love LinkedIn's Answers section, but I still think on the whole LinkedIn profiles aren't as engaging as say a conversation over Twitter is. I know you've taken steps to include Twitter blocks in people's profiles and you have the Network Updates, but they're still a bit "me too-ish" and not as good as Facebook's implementation.
I also think the general homepage of LinkedIn when you're logged in is too difficult to actually focus on any one thing - It's very text heavy. Facebook has lots of people's profile pics that immediate catch my attention and I know immediately which news I'm interested in without having to read the person's name. I also love the customisation they've offered for removing people you don't care about from your stream. By comparison my LinkedIn page has lots of news of people who while they may be useful business contacts I'm actually not interested in what they're doing on the network...
My two cents anyway.
You have to keep in mind that every media outlet has been screaming about Twitter for the past couple months, whereas LinkedIn gets virtually no press despite actually having a proven track record of success.
Try as I might, I simply can't see Twitter as anything but a fad. Outside of the hardcore techie demographic, how many people are still going to be receiving 200 random, impersonal text messages per day from celebrities and corporations by Christmas?
May be Twitter is more important that LinkedIn. But Twitter has a problem. It has a structure that can be copied very easy. Facebook already integrated it, Yahoo did a copy for Portugal, and there are already other hundreds of microwebsites copying Twitter. If LinkedIn integrates in his website its own Twitter than I think the title of the article will not be available anymore.
All the best. Great blog! :)
Kinda vague. I think it all depends on what your goals are. I see Liinkedin as a place for career networking. Twitter and facebook are better suited for sales marketing to the consumer public.
Twitter might be more important -- but Twitter's lack of customer service can be potentially devastating to a brand's social media strategy. More here:
http://www.lohad.com/?p=3489
I can tell you first hand that twitter has been much more beneficial to worstpizza.com then linked in!
For me Linkedin is the best and has brought me a lot of consulting work over the years. You have to work at it but linkedin will pay off in the end.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/robertpestello
All the best,
Robert Pestello
This may be a nice little conversation starter but let's not try to dress it up as "high quality" research because that it is not!
I'm all in favour of using an article with dubious analysis to stimulate some debate. The range of comments are very interesting. The quality of the research is abysmal.
I can count on the toes of one hand the number of contracts/leads I've had from LinkedIn. Twiiter does better.
But the best use Twiiter has is customer service. I have reached a major level of frustration using someone's product, scaremed my pain into Twitter, and have had two results. Silence, and a contact from the company or the developer asking how they can help. Guess which products I'm still using.
The first time that happened I got the clue on the importance of twitter.
Title does not reflect the survey question. The survey results are interesting but I would have focused the analysis on Facebook versus Twitter. Overall there are fairly equal but there are notable differences by subgroups. LinkedIn is not typically associated with brand building.
First there should be a segregation between B2C and B2B businesses:
Twitter is for B2C
LinkedIn is for B2B
People/consumers are on Twitter (thanks to Oprah)
- Any subject - any purpose messages.
Businessmen are all on LinkedIn because:
- They are all eager to get a better job.
- The questions and answers are business related.
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