Written by ContentPowered.com
Both Facebook and Twitter are extremely powerful tools that help businesses interact with and market their customers. However, with as popular as they are, you may be wondering which is best for your company. Although there is some user crossover where individuals will use both sites, each platform offers different methods of connecting, as well as varying options for how you connect with users. To get a better idea of which social media is better for your marketing needs, here are some things that you should consider.
Where Are Your Customers?
The first thing that you may want to do as a business is figure out which social media platform that your customers are using. While some demographics and markets rely on Facebook for the majority of their news and information, younger generations tend to use Twitter for some of their social media news. If you are a business that is trying to reach out to a certain demographic, it does you no good to go places where people won’t hear you. Instead, you’ll want to utilize the best platform that offers the most amount of followers. Once you figure out where your customers are at, you’ll certainly want to make a presence on that particular social media network.
Benefits Of Twitter
The foundation that Twitter was built on was the fact that it offers quick and easy-to-read information. With Twitter, you only get 140 characters or less to make your mark and say what it is you want to say. Granted, you can link other, and longer, bits of information from inside of one tweet, which makes for more interaction from your customers. In today’s world of quick and easy-to-read information, it is vital that companies don’t bore their readers. And with Twitter’s 140 character limit, you can certainly attain this goal.
Because Twitter is known for fast and readily available information, it makes it much easier to share information. That also makes it much easier for things to go viral and start trending on social media. Think of a meme or video that you suddenly started seeing popping up everywhere you looked. Well there is a high probability that that content gained some momentum by using Twitter. No imagine that your company has something that is viral and interesting to viewers. Before you know it, the information that you post on Twitter can spread like wildfire. This makes it much easier to get out to a variety of different followers and customers that are interested in your brand.
In most cases, it is easier for you to make connections on Twitter than it is on Facebook. For example, on Facebook, both parties have to mutually agree to be friends. However, on Twitter, it is much easier to simply follow a person or a company, without needing to wait for their approval. This makes for the potential for many more followers, which will also provide more interaction.
Where Twitter Comes Up Short
One thing that you may notice about Twitter is that it can be somewhat intimidating to initially get into. For example, you may be wondering what a hashtag is or how you can even message someone that you want to connect with. There is no doubt about it that Twitter isn’t necessarily as user friendly as Facebook, although it doesn’t get to be as overwhelming once you take a bit of time getting used to it. This may also have something to do with the fact that Twitter is typically used by younger generations, and that demographic has picked up on how to use Twitter more effectively. If your marketing to younger people, Twitter may be a great idea. But if you think your customer base doesn’t understand how to run their Twitter account, it’s obviously probably not the best option.
Another downside of Twitter is that it isn’t nearly as easy to find past information that was posted by a user. Facebook makes it easy for users to search for past posts and information, which is all organized by months and years. When on Twitter, it will take a bit more time and effort to find a specific tweet or information that a user posted.
And while one of the biggest highlights of Twitter is the fact that everything is so fast-paced and quick, that can also be a downside. This can be the case when so much information is being uploaded, that it certain marketing posts and information quickly find their way to the bottom of a stream of newly updated information.
Lastly, Twitter isn’t nearly as popular as Facebook. This means that even if you have a huge Twitter following, it still may not have the potential of what it could have if your business was using Facebook to market instead.
Benefits Of Facebook
Right off the bat, you can’t deny that the presence that Facebook offers. Facebook has over 1-billion users, to Twitters roughly 230-million. This means that if your company develops a huge following, you can more easily market to individuals who are already on the world most popular social network. With 10-times the amount of users, that means 10-times the amount of opportunity to reach followers and potential customers.
Another benefit of Facebook is that it makes it a bit easier to share information and content. On Twitter, you have to set up a link if you want your followers to see a video or a photo. However, on Facebook that content is just embedded in your post and then put into the newsfeed. This makes for much quicker interaction for potentially viral content. For your marketing purposes, you may want to decide what type of content you’ll be uploading. If a lot of it is videos, photos or memes, Facebook could be the better option when it comes to getting views and shares.
Where Facebook Comes Up Short
Facebook does offer an easier way of finding information through their use of the timeline. This can be great for customers who are looking to find information about your company. Unfortunately, if there ever comes a time that your company wants to get rid of information, Facebook does not make it very easy to do so. It can take a lot of effort to manually go back and alter, edit or simply delete the content that you don’t want on Facebook, which is a major drawback.
Because there are so many users on Facebook, it is inevitable and obvious that there is going to be a lot of stuff on there that your followers aren’t going to care about. And unfortunately for you, this mindset may harm your chances of being noticed. For example, if a customer is just scrolling through their newsfeed and seeing irrelevant post after irrelevant post, well then they are going to potentially zone out anything of yours that they come across as well. This is why it is vital that your Facebook posts are interest worthy and that they require people to change their thoughts and take interest in whatever it is you are posting.
Lastly, many businesses and individuals will argue that Facebook monitors its content too objectively. This means that if you post a photo or some sort of content that Facebook doesn’t like, there is the possibility that it will get taken down. What’s worse is that Facebook seems to have very odd restrictions that don’t explain why some things are taken down, but other content is left up. The point is, you can be at the mercy of Facebook in terms of the content you are allowed to post when marketing for your company.
There is no question that both Facebook and Twitter have changed the way that people interact with one another, as well as how businesses can market to customers. It is now easier to connect with people and get responses in a way that can only be described as lightening quick speeds in comparison to past generations. However, the only question is which social media site you should implement that has more potential for success. Consider the tips mentioned above before you decide which social media network to begin utilizing for the marketing of your business.