Social media is a challenge for businesses… even websites and services that have no actual need for social features usually place a Facebook or Google+ Like button somewhere to help spread the word of their existence. Even so, it’s quite difficult to explain to people just why they should or shouldn’t make the effort to maintain one or more fo the many social media options… Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Twitter… the list just keeps growing!
A few weeks ago we posted on our Facebook page the Donut Analogy. Douglas Wray posted a whiteboard breakdown of all the major social media services and explained how they differ from each other using the example of a donut. Quite fittingly he posted the image on Instagram, the photo sharing service. And of course it’s been an internet hit.
The breakdown is the clearest we have seen of how something like Twitter differs from Facebook or LinkedIn. Twitter is for telling people what you are doing at any given moment (eating a donut), Facebook is more for sharing what you like in general (I like donuts), and LinkedIn is for sharing what you’re good at (skilled with donuts). Yet all rely on the sharing of information in different ways to remain relevant and keep people using them.
We had more feedback on this post than any other, so we thought we would share it on our blog!