The Pros of LinkedIn:

The first, most obvious benefit from using LinkedIn comes from the algorithmic realm of SEO (search engine optimization). It’s yet another avenue that search engines use to bring businesses in search query results. It’s the perfect tool to give a business more exposure while also allowing it to expose the most crucial parts of its business – the mission, the background, the members of the team, etc. Increased SEO exposure leads to increased web traffic which, in turn, leads to an increased conversion rate.

The Cons Of  LinkedIn:

When looking at LinkedIn, it’s also important to be aware of and acknowledge its cons. One of the major negatives is the way users use LinkedIn as an advertising megaphone via SPAM so brace yourself for the slew of SPAM coming your way.

The Pros of Google:

•  You can now have a branded Google+ Business Page.  Finally.
• You can participate in the discussions of the Google+ profiles who have circled you as your Page.  You can post as your Page within their thread and get more exposure for your Page.
• You can tag Pages and Profiles as your Google+ Page.   One strange not is that it looks like you can tag people and pages who haven’t circled you yet.  Not sure how this works but I’m pretty sure if you start tagging the whole world you are going to be blocked pretty darn quick.  Since other Pages don’t get notifications (see Cons below), I don’t know how they see that you have tagged them other then if they follow your Page.

The Cons Of Google:

• The Business Page has to be tied to one personal account.  You can’t have multiple admins.  **Update, now you can have multiple admins.  Ahhhh!
•  No transfers of Business Pages between accounts.  Make sure you aren’t going to fire the person who creates your company page.
• No vanity URLs.  You have some crazy-long Google+ Page name that no one can remember.  The search function is much better than Facebook (of course it is- it’s Google!) so you can find Pages easier.  You can also use a shortner like http://gplus.to/ to make it easier.  Or you could also make a redirect on your own website like:  www.yourwebistename.com/googleplus if you wanted.  Here’s the Grandma Mary Show Page if you want to circle me up:  http://plus.google.com/u/0/b/105232629877370018077/.  It’s a doozy.
•  You can’t circle people as your Page until they circle you first.  So you won’t get their updates in your stream until they circle you.  You can however, circle other Pages as your Page without them having to circle you first.
• Pages don’t receive notifications in the Google bar.  I did get an update on my phone App and a e-mail when someone tagged my Page so that is good.
• You can’t run a contest or give away coupons on Google+.  You can post links to other sites where your contest or coupons are hosted.
• You can’t customize a Google+ Page with apps.

The Pros of Facebook:

• It’s easy! Setting up a profile is a smooth process, and the relatively uncluttered UI of the site is easy to navigate and use. It’s free and all you need is an internet connection and any device that can connect to the internet, mobile phones included.
• Beyond boundaries: Facebook transcends all physical boundaries, and lets your kids connect with far away friends and distant family. Your kids can easily be informed about what goes in the lives of people who are physically distant.
• Your child decides who to share with. Your child can choose who they would like to share their status updates, photos or check-ins with.
• A place to share thoughts, causes and ideas. Your child can interact with kids with similar interests and ideas across the globe. They can join groups and support fan pages, and find out what other kids are interested in.
• Enhances social skills. Facebook allows kids to keep up with current friends and make new ones. When used in the right way, social media can increase a child’s self-esteem and help them feel less isolated, as if they belong to a group. Facebook also allows those who are shy or have trouble making friends to socialize more easily. And let’s face it – everybody’s on it….
• It’s educational! A majority of tweens and teens use social networking to discuss school work and share discussions about school assignments.

The Cons Of Facebook:

• Privacy: Privacy is a major concern for most Facebook users, and it’s really important to understand the site’s privacy settings and set them accordingly. And even though a lot has been done to improve the site’s security, it can still be confusing. As a result, hackers can have access to- and misuse- personal information.
• Time consuming Facebook is a real time guzzler – your kid could be playing outdoors, doing homework or doing other more meaningful things.
• Freedom of expression? Other kids (or even your own for that matter) on Facebook could misuse that freedom and post offensive or inappropriate content, which your kids will see! And this leads us to the next point:
• Kids can be mean:cyberbullying can be a real problem. There are even some documented cases of kids who committed suicide after being bullied on social networks!
• Things aren’t always what they seem There are many fake Facebook accounts, information that is misrepresented – your child could be exposed to these.
• It’s addictive! Besides all the social features there are games on Facebook that can be very addictive. Did anyone mention Farmville?
• Whose image is it anyway? Once your child uploads an image to Facebook, it becomes public and anyone can download and misuse that image.
• Its anti-social? For your kids online interaction could become a replacement for face-to-face meetings. This can hurt social development and isolate your kids.
• It can hurt their future: kids can post regrettable information or photos that will be discovered by college admissions or potential employers in the future. Once information goes online, it never goes away

The Pros of Twitter:

• Easy to create – less than a minute to write and send
• #hashtag power –  use them to increase your social reach and improve brand awareness. Join the conversation – what’s trending?
• Get to the point – 140 characters
• Analytics – measure and boost impact on Twitter
• Automation – using various tools, you can tweet in advance to save you time!
• Lists – A list is a curated group of Twitter users. You can create your own lists or subscribe to lists created by others. These lists are like a mini news feed of the people that you have added.
• Twitter cards – Website cards to lead generation cards work a treat to drive more engagement.

The Cons of Twitter:

• Spam balance. It can take practice to ensure you’re interacting adequately on Twitter. Create a balance where you’re not missing key marketing opportunities without coming off like a spammer.
• Twitter is busy! There are approximately 340 million tweets per day.
• 140 character limit. The character limit on Twitter can be challenging if you have trouble expressing your thoughts in a few words.
• Quick response. People are impatient and growing more impatient these days. they expect to be responded to promptly on Twitter.

The Pros of Instagram:

Instagram is the fastest growing social network.

In just the last four years, Instagram expanded to over 200 million monthly active users. There are over 30 billion shared photos, with 70 million photos on average uploaded daily. And there are 25 billion likes on content per day.

And just as importantly, Instagram has also been shown that, relatively speaking, Instagram has the most engaged users compared to other social media platforms. Instagram users are 15 times more engaged than Facebook users, and 20 times more engaged than Twitter users.

Instagram makes it very easy to post pictures and video from your smartphone.

Posts of images on Instagram remain there forever as long as the user does not remove them.

Instagram is a great for those who love taking pictures and uploading them right away for others to see. When you take the picture, upload it, you could have Instagram pre-configured to automatically post the same picture on your Facebook account, Twitter, and Tumblr.

Instagram is great for visually promoting your brand or products. When combined with the description field, your posts can be powerful in creating your brand and building an interactive following.

When used properly, hashtags can be a powerful way to increase the visibility of your posts. You can use a lot more hashtags in Instagram posts compare to Twitter, and still be free of penalties like that of Twitter.

The Cons Of Instagram:

The main advantage of Instagram can also be its biggest disadvantage: it relies on images. That means you need to be very mindful of the images you post because it is the image that will attract followers. Poor pictures will have people that follow you skip past you in their feed and not read the message in your description.

Instagram pictures need to be square to be most effective. Loading non-square images will cause parts of the image to now show in the feed. That means your message or branding can look sloppy because not all the words, etc may be shown.

Instagram is only an iPhone and Android app. If you have Windows mobile, Blackberry, or Linux it won’t work. That means you won’t be reaching all your target audience.

While the direct messaging (DM’s) are better in my opinion than Twitter, they fall short of what Facebook offers for messaging.

Instagram is more difficult to target local markets compared to Facebook or Twitter. It is better suited for marketing to niches worldwide.

The Pros of  Pinterest:

• It is very easy to drive traffic from Pinterest to external sites.
  This is because of the unique design that Pinterest offers. Every image that you place on a pinboard is automatically hyperlinked to its original source. If you want to experiment with new landing pages or promote something specific, you can test it out pretty easily. Because of this design, the referral traffic that comes from Pinterest exceeds that which comes from sites like YouTube or even Twitter.
• Followers aren’t force to follow everything you do. Many people today want information that is specifically valuable to them. If you’re following an account on a different platform, there will undoubtedly be content which is not of interest. On Pinterest, followers can follow individual boards on your account so they can receive only the information updates that they find to be valuable.
• Information on Pinterest is very easy to share. Embedding images from Pinterest onto an external site is very easy. This allows you to refer traffic from your site to Pinterest, creating a circle of interest. For Pinterest followers, they can pin your content to their boards to share content they found to be interesting. Not only does this allow them to access your content on their time, but it also increases your brand’s exposure to those who are following that person’s boards.
• Comments are optional on Pinterest. The goal of Pinterest is to make information be as useful as possible. People can choose to just follow boards if they want. They can choose to just repin images if that is their preference. This platform doesn’t offer the same hidden pressures to comment on content just to stay engaged with a certain brand. It also means you won’t have to worry about the platform hiding content from your followers if they haven’t liked or commented on something in awhile.
• All of the boards on Pinterest are public boards. Your content isn’t automatically excluded from people just because they don’t follow the board where it was pinned. Pinterest users are able to access any image that has been pinned anywhere on the network at any time. This makes it a lot easier for brands to connect with new prospects because people who want what you have can find you. As long as you can prove your niche expertise when you’re found, Pinterest for Business makes it very easy to expand your reach.
• Conversion rates on Pinterest are typically higher.Because people can research subject matter that is important to them quite easily, this means they’re already in the mindset to buy or sign up for something. This means that the conversion rates on Pinterest tend to be higher compared to rates from Twitter or Facebook. Conversions on Pinterest also tend to spend about 2.5x more per conversion than the other two platforms. Without a presence on Pinterest, this is money a business could be just throwing away.

The Cons Of Pinterest:

• The traffic on Pinterest is attractive to a very specific audience. 
  Although the Pinterest demographics have been slowly equalizing, the majority of users are still women who are under the age of 45. Broad traffic is a possibility on this platform, but not as likely as it would be on a different social media platform. If you want an easy way to reach women, however, 4 out of 5 Pinterest users may just be interested in the content that you are pinning to your boards.
• The images you use must be very specific. The images that get pinned to the boards on Pinterest must meet certain quality rules. There are also size requirements which must be met. You can use tools and apps to automatically resize your graphics to make them Pinterest compatible, but that can also change the perspective of the image. What typically works on your blog on your website isn’t going to work here, which means you’ll need to take time to create Pinterest specific graphics to grow your presence on this site.
• There are legal issues which must be considered. If you’re sharing your own content that you’ve personally made, then you won’t have to worry about this key point. If you’re repinning content that someone else has made to use for your own marketing purposes, however, you might find yourself in some difficult gray areas when it comes to copyright issues. Always ask permission to post items to your board if the content didn’t come from you, but remember: just because someone posted an image on Pinterest that you want to repin doesn’t mean they’re the ones who made the content.
• More repins isn’t always a good thing. Although the hyperlink process is great on Pinterest, it isn’t 100% effective. When content gets copied by someone else and then pinned to a different board, you may lose the link to your content. This means your work is still being spread around, but it may not draw the same level of traffic back to your site.
• Many boards on Pinterest are not necessarily business orientated. Pinterest is primarily a lifestyle social site. If your business fits in with this profile, then you’ll have a good chance to find success. If not, then you may need to alter your approach to the content that you’re creating so it can fit. The top categories on Pinterest tend to be fashion and recipes. If you’re selling aluminum sheeting, that might be difficult to transition over into the arts and crafts world.
• It is difficult to fully automate Pinterest. Pinterest for Business only offers basic scheduling and tracking options for users. This makes it difficult to save time by scheduling your pins in advance. There are some options which make this a possibility, but many of them tend to be costly and go further than what the average business typically needs – especially during the first days on this platform.
• More content typically needs to be shared to get noticed. The average Pinterest for Business account will need to share between 5-20 pins per day to get their boards noticed. Sometimes that recommendation is per board. If you have 5 boards, that’s 100 potential pins per day that may be required. Even if you repin content, that’s a massive time investment that the other platforms don’t necessarily require. It also takes a lot of creativity on a consistent basis and let’s face it: even the most creative people need to take the occasional break.
• Your content may go places you don’t want it to go. Imagine if a church’s pins were being used to promote a porn website. Or what if Coca-Cola had pins which Pepsi was using to promote their products? With this being a public platform, you have limited control over where your content spreads. It may go places you don’t want it to go.