Facebook vs Twitter – How Smart Marketers Use Both Differently

The following is an excerpt. The complete article, available in our Facebook Marketing Bible, includes more key differences between Twitter and Facebook, Twitter mistakes to avoid, and how to optimize your marketing strategy for the two platforms.

Facebook is not Twitter, and Twitter is not Facebook.

For veteran users of both platforms, this statement is well understood. But for marketers and brands new to either network, or for those with an extensive level of experience in one but not the other, the differences are not immediately apparent.

In this article, we compare brand Twitter Profiles to Facebook Pages, looking at the ways in which one is different to the other and the pros (and cons) each platform offers to the marketer.

How Do Facebook and Twitter Compare?

While the marketer’s aspirations for both platforms are similar – namely, to build a large and engaged audience to raise brand awareness and drive footfall – the manner in which each network and audience is approached and cultivated needs to be tailored specifically to that network.

Facebook and Twitter have many apparent similarities, both in functionality and in jargon, including:

• Usernames
• Profile Pages
• Avatars
• Status Updates
• Tagging

Both platforms also provide an outstanding way for businesses to market themselves to users, and offer first line customer support. However, the use of similar terminology aside, the ways in which these features are both implemented and received are often very different.

Size

Perhaps the most important difference between Facebook and Twitter is the size of the respective networks. As of July 2011, Facebook said it had over 750 million registered monthly active users. Twitter is cagey with the release of its user data but recent estimations put the platform at somewhere between 200 and 300 million users. However, these numbers only reflect registered accounts — the active user count on Twitter is considerably smaller. For example, third party measurement firm comScore shows it reaching 139 million unique users worldwide in May.

Post Frequency

Popular Facebook Pages typically post one or two updates every day. Whether a Page’s fans see that post is determined by the Facebook news feed EdgeRank algorithm. This is designed to show users the most relevant posts in the default Top News tab of the news feed, though users can also select to view a more comprehensive stream of updates in the Most Recent tab of the new feed.

The goal for marketers with Facebook Page posts is to attain the most Likes and comments, which increase a post’s EdgeRank, and drive re-shares of posts, which expose branded content to the friends of fans. Therefore, marketers should compose posts that they think will be the most engaging for their audience.

Popular Twitter profiles typically post much more frequently, sending out closer to a half dozen tweets a day. Twitter’s stream displays tweets in strict reverse chronological order. A profile followers are therefor only likely to see the tweets if they’re reading Twitter within a small timeframe after an update is published, or if it is retweeted by a high volume of people they follow.

The goal for marketers with Twitter updates is therefore to publish as much solid content as possible in order to catch followers when they’re reading. The real-time nature of Twitter also favors breaking news. The first profile to post about breaking news or something important will often receive many retweets. Therefore marketers should try to turn as much relevant content about their brand into tweets as possible, and move quickly when posting about topics that appeal to a wide audience.

Brand Presence vs. Broadcast Channel

Overall, however, Facebook appears to be most focused on reinforcing its focus on private, real-world connections through ongoing improvements to features like Groups and Chat. It is also focused on providing a platform for full-featured brand presences, where business can host engagement applications, contests, and rich media content as well as distribute updates. Twitter has meanwhile settled into becoming a broadcast channel for brands with some conversational functionality.

Facebook and Twitter share some similarities but these are considerably outweighed by the differences between the two networks and their audiences. Marketers looking for success on both must invest time and expertise into tailoring strategies that fit within the unique constraints of each.

Learn about more key differences — and how to optimize for each platform — in the full Facebook Marketing Bible article.

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India has highest number of Gmail users

Many Indian government departments tend to use Google’s free Gmail accounts and its security agencies have demanded access to Gmail user data in the country. This makes sense. After all, India has the highest percentage of Gmail users in the world, more than twice the figure for even the United

States.

According to data from the Reston, Virginia-based digital marketing intelligence firm Comscore, Gmail’s market penetration in India stands at 62%, the highest in the world, far above the second ranked Brazil, which is at 41%. The corresponding figure for the US is 29%.

Andrew Lipsman, Comscore’s vice-pesident for Industry Analysis, said, “Penetration is defined as the percentage of total home and work Internet users who engage in a particular behaviour. I am not surprised that India is the leader for Gmail penetration given the market’s general affinity for Google-branded products and services.”

Gmail is obviously the number one webmail provider in India, and is at number two in the US. According to Lipsman, “Global Gmail usage is up 32% in the past year. It is up 24% in the US, 91% in Brazil and 16% in India.”

The popularity of Gmail in India could also have been a factor behind the early success in India of Google’s social networking initiative, Google+, as Google’s tussle with Facebook for dominance of the Indian market, one of the hottest globally, continues.

According to Comscore, while the US accounted for nearly 5.3 million of Google+’s audience since its late June launch, India is ranked a “strong” second with about 2.8 million visitors.

It’s also indicative of how the Indian market is evolving. In mid-2010, the social networking platform with the largest user base in India was Orkut, with 19.7 million.

At that time, Facebook trailed Orkut by over one million users. By the end of June this year, Facebook’s usage had jumped to 34.5 million with Orkut dropping to 13.4 million, going by Comscore statistics.

Orkut, of course, is the original Google social media platform, predating even the failed Google Buzz network. Google did not comment on its plans for Google+ in India.

However, a spokesperson said, “We’re committed to making the web more people-centric, and we’ve been gradually giving people new ways to share things and interact within our products.”

Facebook didn’t comment on Google+’s early success in India, saying that it was “hard to comment” on the issue since Google+ had a “very different, invite-only model”.

But Facebook’s Global Communications Manager Kumiko Hidaka stressed the importance of India to the company. She said, “As a global company, we are very focused on every region and India remains very important to us.”

She pointed out that Facebook had opened an operations office in India last year and established a “presence on the ground” there.

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