Social Media in the Software Development Business

Over the last 6-7 years Social Media became a part of our life. Weather it's Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, G+, Instagram, Pinterest or just older places like Digg everybody is on social media nowadays.

But how important is social media in a software development business?

I'd say results highly depend on the platform.

Here I will discuss things from my personal experience. I am not saying it will be like this for everybody. But there are definitely some trends.

1. Facebook

This platform is clearly oriented to the consumer. It is less business to business. While there are more recent solutions to target businesses in your geography my experience is that Facebook is not the ideal place to acquire new customers for a software development business. People are generally there to socialize / entertain themselves and not to conduct business.

There are two aspects I was able to identify where Facebook can be helpful though:

- social media back links and likes: more recently Google started to take those into account when they organically rank your site

- retaining and re-engaging your current customer base

We are not big on Facebook but we keep consistent with our company's general message across different platforms and so far we have good feed-back.

2. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great business-to-business platform to be on. People are on to do business, to look for jobs, to work on gigs, to refer contracts etc.

Historically we did a lot of business on LinkedIn and there is definitely more to do.

Keep in mind that LinkedIn is generally "slower" in responses than other social media networks. Being a professionals network obviously people don't have a lot of time to be on it but when they are, they are a great audience to send your message to.

So do not get discouraged if you do not see immediate feed-back when posting a picture, a blog or a video: they will come.

LinkedIn is also a great place to build reputation for your company through clients and professional peers referrals and testimonials. As opposed to other social media networks- which are more open- here you have the ability to moderate what is posted about you or your company which is normal for business and a very good way to do things.

There are also many online marketing tools that tie into LinkedIn to build prospects lists, enlarge your networks, gather more testimonials etc. While I tend to stick with the classic tools LinkedIn themselves offer + my standard Constant Contact account, I recently started to look into some of these tools as well.

Projects showcase section is great as well as it allows your company to show product they built.

3. Twitter

Twitter is a good fast tool to recruit software developers.

I've tried many things on Twitter including some paid / ppc advertising but that's about the only thing that worked well for my business.

There are many developers on Twitter and many of them know other people. If you have an immediate project to start interviewing for, it is a great place to attract talent without paying a recruiter.

You can also build some reputation / followers / back-links even though pretty much everything that's posted on Twitter tends to have a short period of life.

4. Instagram

It is not a social media platform suitable for the software development business.

5. Pinterest

It is not a social media platform suitable for the software development business.

6. Google+

I use G+ in conjunction with by blog. In about 8 month I was able to build a list of about 120 subscribers to the blog. It's a start.

G+ is not bad for a business- especially a software development business- you can moderate your comments, post articles, create back links for yourself and showcase expertise in your blogs.

A lot of the professionals I work with are on G+ as well (rather than being on FB) so it is a good way to build and enlarge your community.

In terms of attracting new business, I have not had much luck with G+.

How about you guys? What's your social media experience?

Make it a great day!

Adrian
http://wittywebnow.com