There you go. I’ve said it. Right at the start of this piece, I’ve set my stall out..
You can’t say anything in 140 characters. It’s difficult to work creatively with images and video. It’s nearly impossible to find anything useful in your Twitter stream when you follow thousands of people in order to get them to follow back.
Okay, that’s a bit harsh. Twitter has its role. I use it a lot for getting news out, pointing people to websites and, in a personal role, for finding session plans for football training.
However, I don’t think I’ve ever managed to sell anything for a client via Twitter or have meaningful and productive engagement with people interested in my clients’ services. All of that is achieved by using Facebook.
Facebook, to me, is just simply better than Twitter from a marketing perspective. Facebook allows greater creativity. It provides better analytics. Yes, it’s a business, and given recent changes to Facebook’s business model, marketers are having to pay a little to reach people, but it’s worth it.
Let’s look at what you can achieve with Facebook.
- You can post more than 140 characters – so you can say more.
- You can upload images, videos and audio – that people can see immediately.
- You have apps that can be embedded into your Facebook page – allowing you to sell tickets for events or enabling people to sign up to newsletters quickly and easily.
- You can advertise effectively – Facebook allows you to target demographics, locations and interests in a far more comprehensive way than Twitter’s fledgling ad platform does.
- You can evaluate your efforts – Facebook has analytics built in (as does Twitter to be fair).
- You can reach more people – Facebook is still the largest social media platform in the world.
- You can survive online with just a Facebook page, you don’t have to have a website – some companies I know only have a Facebook page. It’s all they need.
What all of these factors give you is greater scope for creativity. The more creative you are, the better the chance of creating engagement.
We’ve run several Facebook campaigns. Not so long ago, we used Facebook as the platform for our Hallo’win promotion. People received a pumpkin from us and were challenged to carve it, post their pictures on our Facebook page and then ask people to Like their pimped up pumpkin. The artwork with the most likes on 31st October won! Not only did this promotion get people engaged in a fun activity, but people shared our promotion with their friends.
Just last week, we set up a Facebook page for an event that we’re helping to organise. With just one promoted post, we directed 93 people to the box office page on the event’s website and generated 30 sales. Just as important, people are still sharing our post, so that one piece of marketing activity is continuing to deliver a return.
For that very same event, we’re also able to answer people’s questions, direct them to the event website and provide customer service all within an environment they’re comfortable with.
We also have a Twitter stream, Instagram and YouTube account set up for the event. Yes, we will push our news out in 140 characters and shortened links. Yes, we will publish photos and videos. All of these social channels have their place in our campaign but for me, the one social media channel above all others that I Like the most, is Facebook.