Poll: Business People Say Twitter More Important Than LinkedIn

29
May

Poll: Business People Say Twitter More Important Than LinkedIn

author: editor category: ReadWriteWeb

A month-long poll conducted on business social network LinkedIn has uncovered some fascinating numbers concerning social media platforms and brand presence. The biggest surprise was that Twitter was deemed more important to brands than LinkedIn, and the poll was performed on LinkedIn. With more than 3,600 respondents so far, each well understood in terms of job titles, company size, age and gender – this is a high-quality data set worth paying attention to. The question asked was simply: “What is the most important new platform for brands to master?” Options were Twitter, Facebook, the iPhone, Digg and LinkedIn.

Some of the conclusions were a real surprise. Others confirmed our suspicions. Read on for charts, bullet points and a few thoughts.

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Below are charts breaking out the poll responses from various groups and some text we’ve written to interpret those charts. It’s important to remember the question wasn’t “what do you prefer” but rather “what is most important for brands to master.” Those are related but different questions.

Just for context, we’ll start with a traffic graph.

Key takeaways from the poll:

Overall

Twitter is #1, leading Facebook by a respectable margin
The iPhone is considered less important than LinkedIn
Almost no-one thinks Digg is the most important
There is no consensus, every platform named (except for Digg) has a group of backers that believe it is most important.

About the respondents

3,615 respondents is a very good number

Only 4% were business owners, 26% managers, 56% non-managers

75% were from small businesses

26% were marketers, the largest percentage among job functions

Twice as many men responded as women

83% of respondents were between the ages of 25 and 54, only 17% younger or older

Most appreciative of Twitter: Business owners, C-Level or VPs. People at large or medium companies. People doing business development, marketing or creative work.

Least appreciative of Twitter: Non-managers. People at very large or small businesses. Consultants, Salespeople and Engineers.

Most appreciative of LinkedIn: C-level and non-managers. At small or medium sized businesses. Doing consulting or Sales.

Least appreciative of LinkedIn: Owners and managers. At large or enterprise companies. In creative or marketing departments.

By Job Title

Business owners most likely to put Twitter at the top, non management people least likely
Non-managers most likely to favor LInkedIn, owners least likely
Non-C-level or VP managers most likely to favor Facebook, owners least likely
About 1 out of 5 people in all positions favor the iPhone

By Company Size

Large businesses most likely to favor Twitter
Medium and small businesses twice as likely to favor LinkedIn
Small businesses twice as likely to favor Digg
Medium sized businesses least likely to favor the iPhone

By Job Function

LIBrand4 .jpg

Marketing,Business Development and Creatives most likely to favor Twitter
Consultants and Sales least likely to favor Twitter
Creatives and marketing least likely to favor LinkedIn
Consultants and Sales most likely to favor LinkedIn
Consultants most likely to favor iPhone, Marketing least likely
Engineers far more likely to favor Digg than anyone
Marketing most into Facebook, Business Development least (prefer Twitter)

By Gender

Women much more likely to prefer Twitter
Men more likely to favor LinkedIn, iPhone

By Age

55+ far more likely75% than anyone to favor LinkedIn

25-54 more likely to favor the iPhone than younger or older people

So what do you think? Surprises, confirmed beliefs? This looks like good quality data to us so we suspect we’ll be thinking about it for awhile. Two things are for sure – there’s no topping LinkedIn for professional background information, and there’s no chance we’d be able to trust a poll like this if it was performed on Twiter!

Thanks to Tom Humbarger for Twittering about this poll, that’s how we found it.

You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Rick Turoczy, Sean Ammirati, Lidija Davis and Phil Glockner.

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