Do you enjoy Facebook? Do you enjoy Twitter? Of course you do! They are the primary means of procrastination and biggest blows to productivity the world has ever seen. But they both have many applications, including professional, and that has brought up a polarizing question: which is better?
The truth is, it is more a matter of preference. Some people like Facebook, some people like Twitter. When it comes to marketing, one might be more suited than the other for specific users, but it isn’t written in stone.
In order to get an idea about the benefits of these social platforms, it is better to break them down into their positives and negatives.
Facebook: The Pros
- Provides an in depth profile with plenty of customization options, including the Timeline photo, profile photo, and information about yourself and your interests.
- Has lots of groups and pages that you can join, or makes it easy to create your own for direct engagement with those who are interested in your niche.
- Offers advertising for both pages and third party websites at an affordable rate, letting you choose exactly how much to spend per day, or in an overall lifetime budget.
- Lets you write longer updates.
- Shows visual content right in the friend feed, with a large preview rather than a thumbnail.
- Gives you control to edit updates after they were posted.
- Has a decent business platform, including storefronts.
Facebook: The Cons
- Most people have private profiles, and it is not a very open platform.
- Doesn’t have the cleanest or most efficient interface.
- The friends feed is full of ads (not yours), and now includes auto-play videos.
- Facebook is notorious for selling user data to anyone who waves a dollar in their face, and everything you publish on their site becomes technically theirs.
Conclusion:
Facebook has a lot of positives, mainly when it comes to content and social marketing integration. Well suited for visuals, and allowing for larger text posts, it allows for an in depth conversation that is great for engagement.
However, the privacy and copyright policies are a joke.
Twitter: The Pros
- The first truly successful micro-blogging platform that innovated the industry.
- An increasing focus on mobile advertising in particular.
- Super simple profiles that put more focus on letting users quickly skim your most recent tweets.
- Super open platform that allows anyone to search for or interact with anyone else.
- Full of major influencers in every industry, often manning their Twitter accounts themselves, such as celebrities and major industry names.
- Great for b2b networking.
- The hashtag done right.
Twitter: The Cons
- Terrible profile customization, with only a few ways to design and change it.
- Short character length means you have to either spam your feed or link to off site content.
- Not great for visual media.
- No real business applications beyond engagement and direct marketing, as there are no storefronts.
Conclusion:
Twitter connects people who would not otherwise be connected. It puts people right in the line of sight of potential customers, and allows for direct networking and marketing on a more efficient scale. But it isn’t good for maintaining a thorough conversation, because you are hindered by the functions of the site itself.
So, Twitter Or Facebook?
Both. A well rounded social media campaign is going to use both tools and play to each site’s strength. That could mean using Twitter more for passing on coupon codes and reputation management, and Facebook more for intense conversations and customer engagement.
Failing to have both - and, indeed, a number of other social platforms - working for you means that you are missing out on a real opportunity. You are not catering to the full audience that you could, and not taking advantage of features that each posses. Not only should you be on both Facebook and Twitter, but also Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram, ect.
Do you have any tips about using either Facebook or Twitter? Which one do you prefer? Let us know in the comments.
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