Aliza Sherman (@alizasherman) wrote a great post in Web Worker Daily yesterday (see link below) about the ongoing debate whether Facebook or Twitter is better for building your business. She makes it clear that it depends on your business goals and what you’re trying to accomplish, but that both can be valuable marketing tools. I agree with Ms. Sherman that the critical difference between them is the level of user engagement.
“You might gain a fan on Facebook just because someone sees someone they know becoming your fan. You gain followers on Twitter — genuine and engaged followers — because they actually want to hear what you have to say.”
Another way of thinking about it is that Facebook is the current version of “mass marketing” and Twitter follows the new customer engagement model. With Facebook you can reach a large audience, using many of the traditional advertising techniques. Arguably these are more effective than most online ads.
But with Twitter you can listen to what people are saying, get into real conversations with them and cultivate interest in your product or service. You engage with your prospects and they follow you because they’re actually interested in what you have to say. Oh, and one of the side benefits? If they like what you have to say, they retweet it ... that is, they send it out to their network of contacts with an implicit endorsement. Remember that old shampoo commercial? I told two friends, who told two friends ... you get the idea. The techies call that the “network effect”. I call it expanding the impact of your marketing program.
“Social media is not about placing an ad to capture eyeballs. Social media is about engaging in meaningful and appropriate conversations with consumers, because today’s savvy consumers are no longer passive couch potatoes watching a stream of advertisements. They are empowered with social media tools that provide them with the platforms to have their say about the products they love or the companies they hate.”
Thanks to Ms. Sherman for publishing such a great analysis.
Comments