Businesses need to understand the major differences when they market and brand themselves through the social networking juggernauts Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. To best utilize social media, solution providers need to view these three platforms as different marketing pipelines, says Christine Heckart (pictured), chief marketing officer at networking vendor Brocade Communications.

"Those three tools are completely different and you should treat them differently if you're a VAR," said Heckart. "Social media gets talked about a lot. It has a place, but you need to understand the value of each of those three [platforms]."

Heckart, a long-time marketing veteran and former CMO of Juniper Networks as well as NetApp, talked to IT Best of Breed about how solution providers should best utilize each of the three platforms.

She also explains in this Q&A why simply hiring a millennial to run your social media charge can backfire.