Instagram Vs Facebook: Which One’s best for Brand Strategy?
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It is a fact that today if you are thinking of promoting a service or product you have to strategize a marketing plan centered around social media marketing. This is because every day hundreds of millions of people spend some of their time on social media. So, if you want to look for your target audience or potential customer pool, this is a great place to do that. You get a mix of audience who are from different locations, cultures, are of different gender and age. You can use different tools to ensure that you are reaching out to the audience who will be most interested in your products and would probably become your customer. Many people use various ways to promote their business on these platforms. Some buy Instagram followers or buy Facebook likes. You can find the list of best sites to buy Instagram followers on ReviewsXP.
If you are just starting out you may have been told to promote your brand on twitter or YouTube or Facebook or Instagram. Though using multiple social media platforms can be beneficial for your business, giving focus on one and growing a good loyal follower base there can be very helpful. You can then direct this audience to other platforms or websites.
Two of the biggest social media platforms in today’s day and age are Facebook and Instagram. Facebook had an exponential growth and is currently one of the most valuable brands in the world. Instagram came later but has become one of the most popular social media platforms pulling millions of people everyday. But which one should you choose for your business promotion? Though it depends on your business and your marketing strategy, we will try to help you get a better understanding of what to look for. Let’s get into it.
Let’s take a look at Facebook first. Who generally uses it? What are the different stats you should be looking at? How businesses are using it? We will try to get into these questions. Facebook is one of the very first social media platforms which paved the way for various others. Many social media platforms which were popular back in the day like MySpace or Orkut did not survive in the long run.
So, a bulk of the social media users moved to Facebook and stayed there. It is a great platform to connect with friends, families, colleagues etc. Though different platforms pertaining to different fields, like LinkedIn which is for professionals, started popping up Facebook was the place where everyone used to connect initially. Currently, a lot of users use Facebook for news articles and memes. Let’s look at some numbers now.
Facebook claims to have more than 2 billion active users per month. This is a huge number. Most of these users use their smartphones to access Facebook. Facebook allows creation and verification of business pages. There are more than 65 million small businesses who have a Facebook page.
People who use Facebook tend to check the site around 7-8 times a day. Most social media marketers (more than 70%) try to include Facebook in their marketing strategy. These numbers are a lot and quite an attractive prospect for business owners. The overwhelming volume that Facebook presents is the reason why many consider it as one of the biggest promotional grounds for brands.
Now, let’s take a similar look at Instagram. We will try to understand who generally uses Instagram and what they generally expect from the platform. Then we will look at some of the relevant numbers or stats for Instagram. So, what is Instagram at its core? It came as a place where people can share their thoughts, opinions, talents etc. via pictures or videos. We all know that visual data is more interesting in most cases than textual data, especially when it comes to social media platforms.
Soz people who joined Instagram wanted to share their photos and videos and interact with other user’s posts. The entire platform was optimized for posting images and videos. Instagram boasts billion active users per month. Half that of Facebook, but still impressive enough. More than 68% of Instagram users are daily visitors. More than 60% of marketers are looking to include Instagram more and more in their digital marketing strategy.
When you just focus on the numbers then Facebook as a social media platform seems to have a bigger advantage. But you have to keep in mind that face used a billion dollars to buy Instagram. So, there must have been something special about that platform. One of the main USPs of Instagram is that it is optimized to encourage user engagement from the very start. So, in general more users engage with an Instagram post.
The Demographic
Audience demographics involved is probably one of the most important deciding factors in all this. You won’t be marketing rental vacations to kids or teenagers in the same way you won’t be marketing parenting self-help books to the elderly (of course there are exceptions).
So, depending on your business you have to choose a platform which means more towards your target audience. We will give a basic audience demographics of both the platforms. You can use third party tools to make much deeper and specific analysis depending on your business.
Facebook Audience Demographics
Let’s take a look at Facebook’s demographic first.
Facebook has a fairly diverse group of users when it comes to age. A lot of elderly also use Facebook which is not the case with various other social media platforms. So, you can expect to see more people with age 60 or more. You can also expect to find more people of age 40 and above on Facebook than on other social media platforms.
More than 70% of people who use Facebook do fall under the female gender. While male users are near 60%.
Around half of the Facebook users are non-English speakers.
So, what does this mean? This means that a lot of Facebook users are probably having some form of income given that a lot of them are over 40. This means that they have the potential to buy stuff. Also, if you use different languages for your promotional ads you can target a much larger demographic.
Instagram Audience Demographics
Instagram users are not that diverse when it comes to age. Most of the Instagram users are 45 or younger with people in their teens and early twenties using it more frequently.
Again female Instagram users are more than male users.
More Instagram users are from the United States than from other countries with around 116 million active users. You can also get a bunch of users from European countries as well.
This tells us that products which are trendy, stylish and more geared towards young adults can tend to fare well on Instagram.
What should you look for?
The above metrics we looked at can give you a roundabout idea about both of these platforms. We can take an example to showcase a few points. Let’s Aya you own a bakery and are planning to use social media customers to order from your online store. Which platform should be better for your growth?
Of course, Instagram. People love engaging with food pictures on Instagram. You can gain success on Facebook as well but high-quality and delicious looking photos are what Instagram Is for. If your business requires you to post more textual ads then it will do better on Facebook.
One thing that you should try to research is loon at your competitors or other success sinesses in your field. Look at how their posts fair on Facebook and check how they are doing on Instagram. More often than not you will find brands having a Facebook page as well as an Instagram account. But they will be mainly focusing on one of the platforms more. So, once you have an idea about what aspects of your business aligns with the platform you can make a decision.
Facebook is good for textual content or content which is more informational. It is not that much focused on the aesthetics of the content. Instagram on the other hand is meant to make your posts look good. Each of these impact people in a different way.
If your business can promote itself on visual fronts using original photos and designs then Instagram could be a good choice but you have to ensure that your business aligns with the target audience or you will be wasting your time and money. But if you are looking to have a more informative approach then Facebook can work better but again it depends on your target audience as well.
Here’s our suggestion. Use both! Believe us it sounds trivial but it will help you utilise the power of both these platforms to grow your business. You have understood the difference so lean more towards the one which can align with your business and marketing goals but also use the other one creating promotional posts specific to that platform.
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