LinkedIn Vs Facebook
Many people often wonder what is the difference between a ‘Social Media Platform’ and a ‘Social Network’ and how can I incorporate both in my school’s content strategy? In short, a social media platform is a platform intended for creating and sharing content, whereas a social networking platform is intended for communication between individuals and/or groups of people.
The two most popular social networking platforms that should be a vital part of every school’s content strategy are Facebook and LinkedIn. Seeing as the two platforms share many common features and audiences, people often find themselves questioning which of the two platforms their content should be posted to.
Facebook has a huge user base with over 3 billion monthly active users making it the largest social media platform. LinkedIn has a much smaller user base than Facebook with only 310 million active users. However, this also comes with a more niche audience with users being recruiters, professionals and job seekers whereas Facebook is a platform for all.
The main difference between Facebook and LinkedIn is that LinkedIn should be used as a business platform. Although the recruitment aspect of LinkedIn is a crucial element of the platform, many schools dismiss LinkedIn as merely ‘a recruitment platform.’
On LinkedIn, you should also seek to share important updates that go on behind the scenes of day-to-day school life, such as staff and governor changes, any collaborations with other educational institutions and agencies and thought leadership insights from your leadership team. By sharing such updates to your LinkedIn, your school will appear more engaged in the wider education community, and will in turn be portrayed as a credible and successful establishment.
With LinkedIn being a platform for professionals it is important to maintain a professional image on the network. Focusing on content around your leadership team and important whole-school updates will help enhance your School’s reputation and perception.
LinkedIn has some great functionalities and features that help convey your school’s message. The key functionality is their recruitment tools but other functionalities include groups and events. Groups can be a great tool for connecting with your alumni and the events tool is a great way to advertise alumni events.
Unlike LinkedIn, your Facebook content should be more targeted towards your school community rather than the educational community. With Facebook being the larger platform, you should seek to post a variety of content but focus on advertising school events, day-to-day activities and what members of your school get up to in the wider community.
With Facebook being the largest social media platform, it is loaded with features and functionalities. Like LinkedIn, Facebook also has groups and events but due to the differing audiences, we would strongly recommend your school to utilise them differently. For example, you may have a group for your parent association and create events for your school community such as sports day, school fairs, concerts etc.
One unique feature Facebook has is photo albums which allows you to sort and group your photos together similar to Flickr, which is a great tool to utilise for event photography.
Where Is The Overlap?
Certain types of posts could be posted to either platform, for example, posts concerning alumni, volunteering charity work and school achievements. When posting content under one of these categories, it is important to ask yourself the purpose of what you are posting? If the purpose is to solidify your school’s brand and purpose within the wider educational community, then that post is more suited to LinkedIn. If the purpose of the post is to increase engagement with your school community or to show your prospective audience the virtues and values that make your school a great place for their child to thrive, then Facebook is the best choice of network.
For more information on how to best use both LinkedIn and Facebook and to distinguish what content should be posted on the two, please reach out to our Digital Storytellers at social@interactiveschools.com.