When you think of Facebook, it’s professional benefits probably aren’t the first thing that pop to mind, but who said it can’t be good for your career, as well as for its social aspect? LinkedIn on the other hand was created with the soul purpose of connecting people on a professional level, but could it be rivalled by other networks such as Facebook? The release of the new Facebook at Work will certainly keep them on their toes, but where do they stand in comparison with Facebook’s primary network?

There’s no doubt that Facebook is the bigger of the two with 1.35 billion users, in comparison to LinkedIn’s 332 million, but that doesn’t necessarily give an indication of its value as a professional network. This infographic by the brightonsbm.com gives a direct comparison of the two social media platforms and how they can both be used for work.

Takeaways:

• LinkedIn has gained most of its success from its benefits as a recruitment tool and they make additional profit from their upgraded service called LinkedIn Recruiter, which boasts additional tools and increased access to more profiles than the free version.
• Facebook has a huge 25 million business pages, which is over 6x LinkedIn’s 4 million. It could be argued, however, that LinkedIn have a stricter policy when it comes to false profiles and are therefore better at managing duplicate pages; something that you find a lot of on Facebook.
• The overall click through rates of advertising on the social networks is higher on Facebook with 1.5/1,000 users clicking, in comparison to LinkedIn’s 1/1,000; however pay-per-click advertising tends to be more successful on LinkedIn with 15/100 users clicking on it, compared to 12/100 on Facebook.
• In regards to the social networks being used for recruitment, both platforms displayed their benefits. LinkedIn allows users to showcase their CV and knowledge, which can be very handy for job seekers; however Facebook now also offer apps that you can upload your CV to, levelling the field. Other features the networks possess are LinkedIn’s searching facility based on keywords and skills and Facebook’s recommendations feature.

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