Where to publish your content, Facebook or LinkedIn?

A trend has became obvious after checking the analytics on my last three blog posts: LinkedIn referrals spend much more time reading my content than my Facebook friends.

In fact, in my case, the numbers are overwhelming.

                        Avg time spent
LinkedIn               2:09
Facebook             0:40

There are many factors that influence these numbers but mainly, the overriding factor is I create content that is much more targeted towards businesses - my LinkedIn contacts, and not my friends that predominantly populate my Facebook account. 

LinkedIn posts are also published on LinkedIn groups as well as to my connections  and available to anyone - non-connections and fellow group members alike. So presumably, anyone that clicks on a link is more likely to be interested in the content  = a more engaged reader and more interested in spending time reading the story. 

Facebook posts on the other hand might only reach a limited amount of my friends due to EdgeRank and not necessarily people interested in marketing and communications-related stories.

Testing the trend

In my last post: wow-should-i-be-pissed? I decided to test this trend. I created a story and headline with a much broader appeal (to both professionals and friends) just to see what would happen.

Once again, LinkedIn contacts spent much more time reading the post – despite its universal and personal appeal. In fact, LinkedIn contacts spent more than 4xs as much time on my last post than my FB friends. Heck, with FB friends like these, who needs…

Interestingly, both channels (and Twiter too) referred nearly identical amounts of viewers to the post. But again, the Linkedin connections spent time reading, while FB friends, I would guess, most-likely scanned it. 

Does this trend stack up for your business?

I thought it would be important to see if this trend is similar for businesses that actively use both channels - companies with successful LinkedIn and Facebook accounts.

Sebastian Gullack, CEO of Atcore – a leading digital marketing strategy company in Denmark, was kind enough to share some recent stats to help me out.

Atcore analytics screen shot

As you can see, the trend is the same for Atcore’s posts, though not as profound as in my case.
LinkedIn referrals spent on average 6 seconds more on posts than FB followers. Interestingly, twitter referrals spent nearly 30 seconds less on the content than the other two channels. (In my case, the difference was even greater) Is content more than 140 characters too challenging/boring? :)

Impressively, look at the number of referrals from FB compared to LinkedIn for Atcore: 1,020 vs 449 vs 927 (twitter). 

In Atcore’s case, Facebook is a much more successful source for sending viewers to their blog than LinkedIn.

This could be because Atcore only posts their stories on a limited number of groups on LinkedIn. Whereas I have 4-5 groups that I regularly share content with, I would guess Atcore is a little more dicreet in their LinkedIn pollenating.

In addition, Atcore mainly posts in Danish whereas mine  are in English -more than 55% of my readers are based in the USA.

Moreover, Atcore has built a loyal audience on Facebook that expects to find their content on the channel.

But again, once readers do get to Atcore’s post, the Facebook referrals spend less time on it. They also view fewer pages on average, 1.75 vs 2.10. My stat ratio was similar.

This once again reaffirms that LinkedIn referrals are, I believe, more interested in what you have to say or in gaining some type of insight that they can apply to their own business.

By nature, most of us post on LinkedIn groups for a reason – to share insight with like-minded professionals. So readers would naturally be more interested in what you are publishing.

OK, but the bottom line. Which network best converts to customers, Facebook or LinkedIn?  

Hubspot was recently asked how conversion rates on the channels stack up. They found that LinkedIn produced the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate.

Of the 3,128 B2B customers HubSpot examined, LinkedIn generated a 2.60% conversion rate. This was four times the 0.67% rate that Twitter generated, and seven times higher than Facebook’s 0.39% rate.

Cover your bases

When it comes down to it, I believe both channels are worth your time for marketing b2b content – as illustrated by Atcore’s and my stats. The more media you are on, the easier you are to find and the more chances of your content getting read.

But as always, it’s important to target your content to where and who your audience is, i.e. are they on FB, LinkedIn… or all.

LinkedIn versus Facebook infographic

Bopdesign, a marketing agency in San Diego, recently created an infographic highlighting some of the plus and minuses between the two channels.

Get the pdf here: http://cdn.bopdesign.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/BOP_Infographic_FINAL_012412.pdf

About Andrew Singer

I provide cost effective communications and inbound marketing services to a wide variety of Danish companies that do business globally. From hi-tech firms like Siemens and TrackMan to more mainstream organizations like Reputation Institute, Carlsberg and the Confederation of Danish Industry, I deliver strategic creative development and English copywriting services.

Check out examples of my work on my website www.andrewsinger.dk or online portfolio.

Wow… should I be pissed?

Back in October 2009, I sent a campaign promotion idea for Tuborg to a creative director I knew in Copenhagen.

When I came up with the campaign, I personally thought it was the most radical, coolest PR campaign ever. One, because it was so good natured, and two, it totally reversed why we create promotions in the first place: to get someone to do something for the brand and in turn, the brand, reward them.

Take a look at a couple of slides from my 2009 power point.

The creative director that I sent it to thought it was “a very good idea :-).”

She passed it on but then it kind of mysteriously died off – legalities… (I was not employed there…).

I never really found out why. And even though the creatives that had seen it (cc'd in emails) asked me to meet with them, those meetings never came about.

2012

Jump to this past month 2012, Robert/Boisen & Like-minded (a different Copenhagen agency) win a 1st place Bees Award! – the world’s #1 social media award – first time ever for a Danish company!

To top that, they were short listed for a Cannes Lion.

What’s their campaign? 

The Generous Store. -  No cash or credit cards, just good deeds 

To reconnect their brand with generosity and inspire people to see the positive effects of being generous Danish chocolate brand Anthon Berg opened the world’s first chocolate store where you couldn’t pay with cash or credit cards, just good deeds. The pop-up store was only open for a day and had people queuing up for one and a half hours to make generous promises towards a friend or loved one on Facebook for a box of chocolate.

Wow, that sounds awfully familiar...

In fact, here's the similarities vs. differences

The same

1. Fundamental (& what is so unique) premise - brand rewards customer for a good deed they do for a 3rd party & not the brand
2. Size of the reward based on the size of the good deed
3. Platform Facebook - (OK - not a hard choice for anyone)
   

Differences

1. Chocolate not Tuborg goodies
2. Retail based

Now, I fully understand that other people could have come up with the same concept. But having lived here in DK for many years, I never heard anyone ever use the term or even words, “good deed.”



In fact, if you look at the text on their website concerning the award: “The Bees Awards is recognized as the worlds 1st international social media marketing awards” – the agency can’t even conjugate is/are or put an apostrophe in “world’s.” Yet they come up with the idea of “good deeds.”

The questions haunting me now are: Am I a big baby? Delusionary or crying over spilt milk?

I knew three years ago when I came up with the idea that it was something special, but being named the world’s best SM campaign and short listed at Cannes is pretty cool.

Only thing is, was it my idea or did they coincidentally come up with the same idea to base their campaign on?

Please provide your feedback – and help a guy sleep a little better.

I really look forward to hearing from you.

About Andrew Singer

I provide cost effective communications and inbound marketing services to a wide variety of Danish companies that do business globally. From hi-tech firms like Siemens and TrackMan to more mainstream organizations like Carlsberg, Coloplast, Novo Nordisk and the Confederation of Danish Industry, I deliver strategic creative development and English copywriting services.

Check out examples of my work on my website www.andrewsinger.dk or online portfolio.