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Which social media channels do you use for professional purposes? [#ChartoftheDay]

Author's avatar By Alexander Clark 30 Sep, 2016
Essential Essential topic

LinkedIn is not as far ahead of the rest as you might think.

HubSpot has launched their yearly State of Inbound 2016 report, providing us with some great insights into the latest trends and growth of inbound marketing.

This year their report is looking to showcase not just the current state of - but also the future of - Inbound Marketing.

One of the charts that caught my eye is the one below. It can be found on page 115 of the report if you're interested. It highlights the preferred channels of communication marketers and business owners like to use for both personal and professional purposes.

Which social media channels do you use for professional and/or personal purposes?

It is somewhat unsurprising to see LinkedIn as the preferred choice of professional communications. After all, it is a social network intended to help you build and engage with your professional network. Interestingly it appears a lot of us are having personal conversations across it too. Are we trying to disguise our lack of work with the LinkedIn badge? I think so...

In another unsurprising discovery, Facebook is by far the preferred channel of discussion by the majority of us and is used for 92% of personal communications. It also comes in at second for professional discussions at 73%. I think we are starting to see the line between social networking and professional networking is blurring.

Emerging social networks such as Instagram, Snapchat and Vine are still mostly seen as a personal channel, which is hardly surprising given the younger demographic using these.

The biggest surprise in this data is Twitter. It's more often used for professional purposes rather than personal, which came as somewhat of a shock to me.

Do any of these results come as a surprise for you?

Author's avatar

By Alexander Clark

A former member of the Smart Insights team, I’m always on the look out to collaborate with the finest minds in Digital Marketing. Currently working at Silverbean, I have a distinctive interest in all things outreach, content, strategy, and measurement. If you’d like to get in touch, you can do so through my LinkedIn or Twitter accounts. When I’m not planning new campaigns and content, I love playing the Bass Guitar and Drums (not necessarily at the same time) also racking up as many hours as possible on Football Manager and the Rugby pitch.

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