By : Muhammad Dhafi Iskandar

Marketing is a common word and have vital role in business, whether for service or manufacture industry. Nowadays, people use the modern kind of marketing, using the digital marketing concept especially in social media. Currently, there are lots of different social media and each one of it have its own uniqueness which is quite impotant for the effectiveness of marketing activity. In 2018, it is estimated that 2.4 billion people will be user worldwide.1 This numerous number of potential clients are very attractive for business people.

Facebook is a well known social media. Many people used it to share their acitivites, idea and connecting with friends, co-worker, etc. It also have services that aims for premium user such as companies. had surpassed 1 billion monthly active users worldwide.2 Active users are those which have logged in to Facebook during the last 30 days. However, not every business are able to gain full advantage for their marketing activities on it. Most of the people do not read serious article on their newsfeed. One of the reason is that the newsfeed are always updated and people tend to miss it. The case will be different if they targeted people that prefer the ‘not to serious’ information such as photos, status, location, etc in for leisure activities. Based on this type of audience, it would be effective to only targeted for Business to Costumer (B2C) marketing. It will be wise to comprehend the distinctions in the audiences that represent.

LinkedIn is also one of the most popular social media. However, its only aims for businesses and profesionals. The site is available in over 200 countries worldwide in 20 different languages and it allows members to create profiles and make connections with others as a way of establishing professional relationships. Employers also used this social media to advertise their job openings and search for prospective candidates.

1 http://www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users 2 http://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide In turn, job seekers can also search and view the profiles of hiring companies and individuals via existing connections. There are more than 350 million of LinkedIn users in the first quarter of 2015.3

LinkedIn has an altogether different group of onlookers than Facebook, for different outcomes. Facebook has the advantage on their biggest number of users, yet LinkedIn still thrive in several aspects, even though has fewer users. Most of its users are managers and directors that acts as the decision maker and play vital roles on their company. It has an alternate way to deal with data and content and it is entirely different to other social networking platforms. The effective marketing for this social media is Business to Business (B2B) and it consist more on quality of its users over the quantity. One of the reason is because its member could filter and choose the information that they desire to have which leads to higher rate of readable articles. There are certain advantages to LinkedIn that you can never adequately acknowledge with Facebook. LinkedIn offers its members a variety of appealing features. The most popular feature is the ability to share status updates with company followers. Another popular feature is the ability to review company followers.4

It can be useful to use different approach and perspective on digital marketing strategy for both Facebook and LinkedIn. Facebook could be used for sharing and conveying information of company activities such as seminars, leisure, projects, etc with the helps of visual media as well as photos and videos which also could attract potential recruitment while LinkedIn could be used to connect with business associates such as suppliers, wholesalers, potential workers or customers with companies updates on articles, partnership, representative offices, etc.

3 http://www.statista.com/statistics/274050/quarterly-numbers-of--members 4 http://www.statista.com/statistics/264162/features-used-by-linkedin-company-page-owners

Regarding the previous explanation on visual information, the current trends on social media is shifting to visual dominated social media application.

Pinterest is a virtual release board that lets clients offer moving pictures and connections. At the point when shared, the pictures are called "pins" that can be set on topical "sheets" that people alter for any theme. This social media is about curating pictures and it is becoming more and more important in digital marketing.

This social media is one of the quickest developing with more than 70 million users worldwide.5 It is estimated that the gender on is approximately 81 percent female and 19 percent male.6

The way Pinterest users utilize the site makes them charging a hefty premium for ‘promoted pins’, named as its new ad product. Promoted Pins, similiar to ’s Promoted Tweets and Facebook’s Promoted Posts enable businesses to pay in order to show certain Pins at the top of search results and category feeds. One of the key takeaways is that Promoted Pins perform just as well as, and sometimes better than normal Pins. Another reason to be keep in mind when crafting your Pins is that it requires you to publish content that will stay fresh and valuable for months at a time.

5 http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/pinterest-stats 6 http://www.businessinsider.com/pinterest-as-a-brand-platform-2014-11?IR=T& is a social media that based on photograph and short video (visual dominated) along with its explanation and comment section. It used mainly by younger audience and the target audience are almost the same as Facebook. However, people mostly use this social media for photo sharing. The hastag feature allow users to reach audience that seek specific topics on the upload materials. It has more concentrated audience but on the other hand it is also more possible to gain on more flexible audience. For the number of users, based on the statistic at the end of 2014 it has more than 300 million active users worldwide.7 Instagram would be useful to share information and recruit people, with activities along with photos and explanation with the , especially to reach young and creative people.

Both Pinterest and Instagram give brands a chance to connect with individuals using pictures, along with its features that makes a passionate association with your groups of onlookers, representatives, clients, colleagues and suppliers which also gives them more understanding about your business.

Viadeo is a professional social network with more than 60 million members worldwide and available in 8 languages, is used by those who want to:

 Seek out new business opportunities by contacting potential customers, business partners, and suppliers;

 Improve their online visibility and reputation;

 Manage and grow their network of professional contacts.

Viadeo’s members include business owners, entrepreneurs, and managers from a wide range of industry sectors. Every month, more than 1 million new members register on Viadeo, 10 million new connections are made, and over 100 million profiles are viewed.

7 http://www.statista.com/statistics/253577/number-of-monthly-active-instagram-users Viadeo was founded in May 2004 by Dan Serfaty, a graduate of the HEC School of Management in Paris, and Thierry Lunati, a graduate of École centrale Paris with headquartered in Paris and it also has offices in the UK (London), the US (San Francisco), Spain (Madrid and Barcelona), Morocco (Casablanca), Italy (Milan), Russia (Moscow), China (Beijing), India (New Delhi), Mexico (Mexico City), and Senegal (Dakar).

Viadeo tries to compete by using strategy through many acquisitions. In July 2008 Viadeo acquired its Spanish competitor ICTnet which is popular in South America. In early 2009, Viadeo acquired the Indian professional social networks services, ApnaCircle and announced the acquisition of the Canadian contact management website, ‘unyk.com’. It is one of the biggest professional network by membership in France and Francophone Africa, has a significant business in Russia and, most important, is in first place in China after it bought Tianji, a Chinese business-networking site. Viadeo’s co-founder and chief executive, Dan Serfaty, moved to China in 2011, which show on how the importance of the Chinese market to him.

XING is an online business network with around 9 million members in German-speaking countries (D-A-CH area, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, etc.) used by people from over 200 countries more than 200,000 new connections are made every day. Available languages include Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Swedish and Turkish. The platform is operated by XING AG, which was founded in Hamburg, Germany, in 2003, has been publicly listed since 2006, and listed on the TecDAX since September 2011. In December 2010, it acquired amiando AG, a Munich- based company and Europe’s leading provider of online event management and ticketing. Another acquired company is Kununu GmbH, the leading platform for employer reviews in German-speaking countries.

It has features for: Find people, jobs and groups; Mobile access to current contact details; Job recommendations matching your profile and Get the latest news from your industry. Xing also offers personal profiles, groups, discussion forums, event coordination, and other common social community features. However, many of its core functions, such as searching for people with specific qualifications or messaging people to whom one is not already connected, can only be accessed with the premium membership that comes at a monthly fee from 6.35 to 9.95 € depending on the billing interval and the country. By displaying how each member is connected to any other member, it visualizes the small-world phenomenon.

XING has a special Ambassador program for each city or region around the world with a substantial constituency whose tasks are to hold local events that promote the use of social networking as a business tool, letting members introduce business ideas to one another, and get to know each other on a personal level. It also offers the system for closed communities, called as the Enterprise groups with their own access paths and interface designs.