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So, if you have to choose between Facebook and LinkedIn, which one should get the nod? Well, both of them. Ultimately, an integrated social media marketing environment with varied content and different tools used to engage different segments of your target market could benefit from both connection platforms. Unfortunately, getting initiatives in both LinkedIn and Facebook off the ground at the same time can be daunting, especially when resources are scarce. The decision to use one platform over the other should be driven by specific marketing objectives and the content behind them.

The primary difference between LinkedIn and Facebook comes down to intent. LinkedIn users tend to develop their profiles to reflect their professional interests and experiences — LinkedIn is a business environment. Facebook, on the other hand, tends to be more social. Connections tend to be friends, photo and video albums emphasize the personal, and there is plenty of functionality available to distract you from whatever should have a claim on your time. Of course, these descriptions aren’t absolute. There is room for the personal on LinkedIn, as there is for the professional on Facebook.

The four primary factors that should drive your decision are:

1. Richness of the user base relative to the profile you’re using to search

2. The content you have and how you want to present it

3. The features you want to use

4. The nature of the engagement you hope to cultivate

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The declaration “We need to do an event” is one of the most damaging sentiments uttered in the IT industry – that is, when it is declared outside of a meeting that involves a goal of creating a comprehensive marketing plan. An ad hoc, reactive event planning approach to marketing has one of the highest costs per touch in the marketing arsenal (when you truly factor in all the human resources it requires to throw and event) and generally sets IT resellers up for a degraded ROI.

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