While many social media sites like Facebook and Twitter offer both business and personal users the ability to connect and share their lives, some social media sites remain strictly dedicated to business. Is there value in this? If most people are Twittering or Facebooking and blurring the boundary between business and personal life, do business networking sites still have value?

We believe they do. Sites like LinkedIn.com, Xing.com, and Ecademy.com are social networking sites specifically designed around business users. They are important, not only for the Gen-Xers who need to keep that wall between business and personal life but they offer opportunities that Facebook and Twitter may not. However, they also come with their own challenges.

Social networking sites (and I’m using the term to temporarily exclude business networking sites) are a great way to connect with prospects and customers "in" their lives. You friend them, you Tweet to them, and in that way your brand is exposed to them from time to time. However, there is also the risk that these people are not interested at this time to do business with you. (They might in the future, of course, but marketing needs to be done tastefully and carefully to make sure that it doesn’t overwhelm and annoy).

Business networking sites are sites where people expect to do business. In some ways they may be farther down the line of the sales process than someone on Twitter or Facebook.

Additionally, if you are a business whose end users are consumers (B2C), you are more likely to find customers on Twitter and Facebook. If you are a business whose end users are businesses (B2B), you are more likely to find customers on business networking sites. With the growing popularity of Twitter, this might change, but it’s a decent rule of thumb for right now.

Those are the opportunities. There is a challenge: You won’t find yourself on business networking sites as often as the social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter because business networks are far less "sticky" – you’re not playing Bejeweled or chatting with that long lost cousin.

Here are the three most popular business networking sites out there right now:

LinkedIn.com
This site is the best known of the three and easily the most popular. They were around before social media was a word and they took their time to get caught up when it became an important option. Their Q&A function is really quite powerful and the ability to connect (or ask for introductions) is an underutilized mechanism.

Xing.com
This site suffers from a "same as" mentality and it’s a little rough around the edges. However, it has really made some advancements and its strategic partnership with ZoomInfo make it a potential contender.

Ecademy.com
This site came late to the party and has some work to do. It needs to find a number of ways to really separate itself from the pack if it wants to capture attention and generate users.

What do we recommend? Add these sites into your web presence. Since your time is precious and you can’t be visiting social media sites all day long (heck, you have to earn money at some point), create accounts in all 3 to protect your name but make one of them your primary site and work it intensely. If you are a B2B business, consider putting more focus into these sites and less into Facebook (but stay active on Twitter because more and more businesses are signing up).

Business networking sites have a lot of work to do to attract the attention and keep the affections of users, but they can play an important – but targeted – role in your business.

Contemporary VA

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