Sales Renewal recently published its Guide to Social Posting, an Infographic which summarizes for businesses the basic elements of social media interactions and highlights their differences on Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. The project came about because even though “comment” and “post” and “like” and “favorite” are commonly used on all these sites, we wanted to understand the differences in where the activities showed up and who could see them. In a companion series of posts, we’ll look at each of these sites one by one.

We began the series by looking at Google+ (read the post if you’d like a refresher.) Next up is LinkedIn.

On LinkedIn, an individual has a Profile, and a business has a Company Page. LinkedIn is the site where you’ll find the biggest differences between what a person and what a company can do.

News Feed on your Home Page = central place for information

• What it includes: Overview of what’s going on in your Network (Connections and Companies you follow)

Connections and Companies you’re following = your network

• How to Connect: Connect to others when you Follow a Company or Connect with a person

Individuals and companies can Share an Update = Your own content (updates, links to blog posts, images)

• For Company Updates, these are seen by people you choose:
  
  • Those following your Company Page, in their News Feed OR
  • A targeted audience

• For Individual Updates, these are seen by people you choose:
  
  • Your Connections OR
  • All LinkedIn members (Public) OR
  • Public + Twitter

As an Individual, you can also:

Share = Someone else’s content

• Seen by:
  
  • Your Connections OR
  • All LinkedIn members (Public) OR
  • Public + Twitter

Like = Use LinkedIn’s “Like” option to “vote” for someone else’s content

• Seen by:
  • Your Connections OR
  • All LinkedIn members (Public) OR
  • Public + Twitter

Comment = Comment on a Connection’s content or a Company update

• Seen by:
  
  • Your Network, if it’s a Comment on a Connection’s update
  • Anybody following the Company page, in their News Feed, if it’s a Comment on a Company Update

Mention = Give a shout-out or recognition

• Where: in a Post, Share or Comment
• How: @[Connection’s Name] or @[Company]
• Seen by: Whoever could see the original Status Update, Share or Comment

A final word: It wasn’t until we started researching for this series of posts that we started to understand the limitations of acting on behalf of a company. Have you found these limitations frustrating, or do you think it helps keep LinkedIn more true to its roots as a person-to-person business network?