You have a limited budget and a limited amount of time. Should you focus your attention on Twitter or Facebook? The answer to this question is (of course)… “It depends“. It depends on a variety of factors, with the most important being your specific objectives and goals. To help filter your response, we recommend three core questions
- What are you trying to accomplish?
- Who are you trying to reach?
- What is the best place to reach these people to accomplish what you need to accomplish?
The answer to these question might surprise you as Twitter or Facebook might not be the best answer. However, we frequently see that even when social media channels are not the perfect place,due to the sheer market potential and amount of press, brands and products are flocking to both spaces (as are potential consumers). In fact, according to Pingdom.com, over 1.4 billion tweets are published on Twitter each month and there are over 80,000,000 million people on Twitter (according to the Metric System):
(For a more in depth look on Twitter statistics, check out this impressive compilation at The Metric System.)
Meanwhile, Facebook’s usage is even more impressive. According to the Facebook press room, over 400 million users are currently active, and there are more photo uploads (a total of 3 billion / month) loaded to Facebook than there are tweets on Twitter:
Facebook Statistics (as of 02102010)
However, even though Facebook’s audience is significantly larger, and the audience is more active on Facebook, Twitter receives an astounding amount of press. For example, while Facebook garners more than 40x the amount of searches when compared to Twitter, the number of news articles related to both are almost the same (And, with Google Buzz entering the space, it will be interesting to see how these relationships change over time):
Don’t be deceived by the hype. Relative to the number of users, Twitter receives a disproportionally large amount of press and attention. We don’t think Twitter is going anywhere, and it certainly is very valuable to certain brands, but before you follow the press, make sure to pause long enough to ask – does this platform help achieve brand and products goals?
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Hey, I came to this site from Bing and just wanted to take some time to say thanks for your marketing advice.
That rss page on your blog here is splendid, you should tell people about it in your upcoming post. I haven’t noticed it for the first couple of times, now I’m using it each morning to check on any updates. I’m on a rattling slow dial-up link in Ohio and it’s rather frustrating to sit there and wait for such a long time ’til the page loads… but hey, I just found your rss page and added it to the Google Reader and there you are… I’m always up-to-date! Well buddy, keep up the good work and make that rss button a little bigger so that other people can enjoy that as well
Discovering how to get more followers on twitter is relatively easy. By having updated messages every day, you have the ability to attract a loyal following.
Twitter is not just status updates! Twitter is a venue where you can market your brand or yourself in way to captivate and socially interact with your followers. Twitter, in essence, is really about building online relationships with your followers.
Great advice! Loyalty shouldn’t be underestimated. Too often, it’s taken for granted. In the long run, hard work doesn’t go unrewarded.