social media facts infographicWhether you are looking to increase your sales or build a better relationship with your customers, social media marketing can help you achieve your goals.

But if you could only spare the time to work on either Facebook or Twitter, which one should you choose?

These are the two most popular platforms of choice for new start up businesses or small businesses with limited staff, and they are both leading heavyweights of the social media world. Many success stories have come from businesses using one or the other to increase the marketing power of their company.

A lot will depend on what sort of business you run, and which platform would suit your needs better, but on the whole many more entrepreneurs and sole traders have stated that Facebook leads the way in the race to get your business recognised and established online.

Since its inception in 2004, Facebook has grown to become the largest social media networking site across the world. It was originally created with an aim to bring together family and friends and allow them to connect instantly no matter where they were in the world.

The business world quickly caught on to the potential of marketing their goods and services to an ever growing network of potential customers. Ten years on and Facebook numbers are still growing, and as of the third quarter of 2014, Facebook had 1.35 billion monthly active users.

On the other hand you have Twitter. The overall aim of Twitter when it was created was to keep everyone updated with ‘what am I doing right now’, and the 140 character limit really lends itself to this sort of update. This is why it is such a popular site with celebrities who don’t have the time to sit and write lengthy posts, but want to keep their army of fans up to date with what they had for breakfast, or who they are meeting for lunch today.

Despite the character limit of each post, you can post links to your website or blog and give a short punchy ‘fire-starter’ teaser to get people to click through to your site, and you can also link to photographs of your new product, premises, member of staff etc.

As of the fourth quarter of 2014, Twitter averaged at 288 million monthly active users. OK, not quite as impressive as Facebook for the same quarter, but still a number not to be sniffed at.

From a marketing perspective, Facebook is larger and has been around for longer than Twitter, but despite the numbers we still have to engage with people and build their trust in us. However, we cannot make connections were there are none to be made, and our marketing efforts will mean absolutely nothing if those people we are trying to reach are not active, right?

Hello, Are You Dead?

Twitter breakdown demographicIf we break down Twitter numbers into a more manageable chunk, then we can see our precious time and marketing efforts will be quite limited if we were to only use this platform for our social media needs. So if you were faced with the choice of either using Facebook or Twitter because of time constraints, then Facebook would and should win out. Makes sense, yes?

The ease of which you can set up a business page on Facebook is also a bonus. You get a complete step-by-step walk through each time you create a new page, so you ensure your business profile is completed, image uploaded, logo displayed and welcome message in place ready for anyone visiting for the first time.

Twitter has followed their lead however, and you can now go to business.twitter.com for a helpful guide to setting up your business account and optimising your efforts, however I do prefer the ease with which you have all your different pages linked on Facebook, and that you can switch to a different page with a click. You can get notifications and alerts shown from all your Facebook pages without having to go to each page and check individually.

Facebook also allows you to integrate so much into your posts that can make them so much more interesting and engaging for your followers. You can add YouTube videos, maps, special deals and eye catching promotions, surveys, contests and fun quizzes. This social engagement is a little more difficult to manage with Twitter.

Overall Facebook really has the feel of a more warm and welcoming place where there is a lot of interesting things going on. Twitter still has its advantages, but when time is precious to a small business, new start-up or sole trader, it would be better spent on Facebook first before branching out to other social media sites.