Last week we provided you with a review of two blogging heavyweights; WordPress and Blogger. This time around we're reviewing some slightly different platforms - these two are not focused on blogging and it is not their main feature, but these two are industry leaders in their own merit.
We are of course talking about Facebook, the 1.5 billion active member-a-month powerhouse and LinkedIn, the number one business network for connecting with other industry leaders.
While neither of these networks are designed specifically for blogging, both do have an element of the site that enables the user or organisation to compose and share articles in a similar way, rather than linking to an external source.
Have a read of our comparisons below and let us know what you think.
Templates
As Facebook and LinkedIn are not blogging platforms per-se, there is no flexibility with templates. You are not given any options to customise the layout or appearance of the article structure wise, though you do have some text formatting options.
Facebook gives you the option to make text bold, italic and underlined, as well as the use of numbered lists, bulleted lists, and block quotes. It's quite a similar story for LinkedIn's editor - bold, italic and underlined text, numbered and bulleted lists and block quotes, but you also have the use of H1 and H2 tags for headings (also good for SEO), strikethrough text, left and centre aligned text, but also with the added options of inserting links, images and videos. The latter is a huge advantage for LinkedIn's editor as it gives the author much more room to showcase visual materials to really bring your article to life.
Aside from the text and article formatting, the general layout and structure is maintained with each respective website's design so that it remains fluid and consistent when browsing the site. Both have please user interfaces, though we feel LinkedIn's takes the victory for styling as it also has the ability to use a large, featured header image.
Ease of use for admins
Due to the simplicity (and restrictions) of both systems, they are both incredibly easy to use for administrators. They both have very similar WYSIWYG (although LinkedIn has a couple of extras as mentioned above), so there aren't many new skills that an average webmaster would need to learn.
The only real difference is how easy it is to get to the blog section. LinkedIn has a visual button right on the home page which says "Publish a post", whereas with Facebook one must go into your Facebook business page, edit the tabs that display on the page and activate 'Notes'. While this isn't too difficult to do, if you didn't know Facebook had this feature it's likely you'd never find it.
For this reason, LinkedIn also wins this category. Facebook seems to have made a couple of extra unnecessary steps in order to access Notes, and this means that many people may not even know the feature exists. LinkedIn's clear signposting is the way to go in our eyes.
Extra features
Both platforms are fairly scarce when it comes to added features, but as they are not fully-fledged blogging systems, they really don't need it. Both have little perks which are worth mentioning.
Facebook has the ability to tag posts with interests, so for example Cosmic may post a note tagged with "Website development" and "Website design". You can then click on these and learn more about them.
LinkedIn also has a handy marketing feature as it notified all of your connections when you publish a new post. This can be great if you are trying to drive up interest as all contacts will be notified, and the chance of them then sharing the article amongst their connections is drastically increased.
For the reasons above, Facebook takes the win in this category. The ability to embed posts into your website is a huge bonus.
In conclusion...
Overall, LinkedIn wins it for us. The general layout of the posts is much more visual and pleasing, especially as the user has the ability to add a featured header image and images within the post, something which Facebook does not currently offer. To us it seems like Facebook isn't quite there with it yet, but they also don't seem to be pushing it in front of the user as much so it's likely that it's a feature that's taken a bit of a backseat, whereas LinkedIn's blogging feature is portrayed clearly on the home page for the user to find and utlise.
While the embedding feature Facebook has is great, the LinkedIn notifications are a much handier way of marketing your content directly to your connections and acquaintances.
In this review, Facebook scores a respectable 20/30, with LinkedIn scoring a solid 22/30.
Keep an eye out for the next blog platform review - drop us a tweet if there's a particular system you'd like us to try out and we'll pitch it against another in the coming weeks.