Just How Useful are Facebook and LinkedIn?

Now that ADL310 has given us nearly a week to test out Facebook and LinkedIn, I’ve come to some conclusions about how each site can help me reach my professional, personal and business goals.

Here’s a breakdown of each of those topics:

Facebook: Friend or Foe?

I have to admit that I’m feeling a little bit of social media overload with all of the tweeting, blogging, profile creation, and status updates we’ve had to do in the past few weeks. Add to that my work-related Facebook commitments and the blog that I’ll be helping to create (thanks to @Courtside4 for the idea!), and you can see why my head is spinning.

In terms of Facebook specifically, I’ve had a profile on the site since 2006. In the past few years I’ve gone from being an active contributor to a passive viewer, and I’ve debated removing my profile on a number of occasions.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy seeing what my friends and family are up to, but I do find that there is a lot of unnecessary noise and ads in my newsfeed that seems to increase with each passing year. I also find it difficult not to view Facebook as another form of ‘work,’ especially considering it is a part of my professional responsibilities.

While I think that Facebook is a great marketing tool that should be taken advantage of, I also wonder how many people feel as increasingly disinterested in the site as I do. Considering I know a decent number of people who have disabled their accounts in the past year, I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way.

Examples of Effective Facebook Marketing

When I was setting up my course Facebook page, I had some difficulty finding other pages that are specifically focused on post-secondary student recruitment. Of course there are many post-secondary institution (PSI) specific pages created by a given university to promote their own recruitment activities, but that’s not really the case when it comes to non-PSI pages. I went a little further afield to find examples of effective and engaging Facebook pages, and they are detailed below: