26 August 2014

Social Media

The Ultimate On-Going Battle; Facebook Or Twitter?

As Facebook and Twitter continue to up their game there will always be the debate; which is better?

Both sites are undoubtedly very useful and popular for both business and personal use – whilst some of us may ‘stick to our guns’ and only use one platform; the truth of the matter is most of us do use both. So this makes for a very intriguing and anticipated question; which is more beneficial and why?

You can’t simply answer this just by deciding upon which you personally prefer; where would you even know where to start? Instead there are many considerations which might determine which one you are more pulled toward, which we have explored below.

Let’s not argue…

To begin, no one can argue against the fact that these sites (among other less popular social networks), could be considered as the news, power and inspiration for many things in this modernised world.

For example; if you wanted to find out anything about the world cup back in June/July time all you had to do was log on to one of these platforms and see information about goals, substitutions, penalties etc. In fact any significant occurrence would first be uploaded to Twitter of Facebook; a first cause for any news getting out or becoming ‘viral’.

Surely they can’t differ too much?

Each site has similar features, that much can be seen as soon as you login; they both are social networking sites after all! They can’t differ too much can they? Well, you may be shocked to learn that there are differences and big ones too…

Keeping up-to-date

Twitter is generally used to keep up-to-date with what is going on in the world; hence why there is whole page dedicated to ‘what is trending’. What is shown here is all dependent on who you follow and can be found underneath the ‘#discover’ tab. The ability to add hashtags into a post has allowed for news to be easily spread in a quick and efficient manner.

Facebook allows you to do the same but in a slightly different way – posts will appear on your news feed from friends and other people and businesses that you follow; with the added benefit of being able to hide particular people from showing up. This is great if you are getting annoyed at the amount of posts someone is doing but don’t want to ‘unfriend’ them all together.

Two identities

If you want to create or manage your business Facebook page through your personal account this can be easily done through selecting admin roles. This is great if you would like several people to manage your account but don’t want to give out logins for security or time efficiency reasons. However, this isn’t the same with Twitter. You won’t be able to manage your business page through your personal account – as you need to create a whole new account altogether. Whilst this may seem a negative at first, this isn’t all true, as you will never mix up accounts and post from your business account thinking you are using your personal account. Also if you need to deny someone access, you can simply change the password and they will no longer be able to sign in.

Let’s get interactive

Most people prefer direct messages with Facebook as you can set up group chats with multiple people; whereas with Twitter the same cannot be said. Also, with Twitter there is a character limit – which is great if you want to keep it short and sweet. However for more in depth messages Facebook comes up top triumphs!

Both give you the ability to post messages either via a tweet or status update - with the ability to tag people inviting them to get involved. The same applies with the character limit from above – with Twitter you are only allowed up to a certain amount, whereas with Facebook you can write to your hearts content. Each has their pros and cons such as; we have all been in that boat where we are one character over in a tweet meaning we have to delete a precious hashtag or find alternatives ways to convey our message; whereas how many times have we clicked ‘hide from news feed’ as some people just seem to go on and on, often telling their life stories over Facebook.

With both platforms you can upload videos and pictures – Facebook does have the added benefit that you can upload whole albums and people can be directly tagged within the photo. Another similarity with Facebook and Twitter is that you can personalise your page to a great deal, you can alter the profile, header and background image and much, much more.

Who is more popular?

Facebook, based entirely upon users can definitely be regarded as more popular; with an incredible 1.28billion users. Twitter is up to over 500billion users but bear in mind that Facebook has been around for longer. On top of this, Facebook also has over twice as many employees, and beats twitter’s worth quite literally tenfold, putting Facebook's quantity in most aspects firmly on top.

However, you could run through all the stats and battle them out based on statistics but what really matters when deciding which you’d rather keep is how much they’re used, why they are used, and how important they are to our society.

How FDC can help you…

As a business do you eagerly want to get on social media but unsure which platform is best for you? Perhaps you know which platform you want to use but just don’t have the time to manage your account effectively? Why not give the team here at FDC a call and see just how we can help you on: 0800 131 0707? Perhaps you would like to check out the social media services that we offer - you can do this by clicking here.