Better for Marketers? Facebook or Twitter?

Twitter recently announced that its paid ad platform is now open to any who would like to use it. In testing for over a year, Twitter has been evaluating user feedback and refining Twitter ads. The most noticeable difference in this ad platform vs. Facebook’s is that you are only charged when anyone follows your promoted account from your ad, or someone retweets, replies, favorites or clicks on your promoted tweets. So now that Twitter has ads, does it qualify as a valid alternative to Facebook? Who wins this battle?

The Ultimate Social Media Smackdown: Facebook vs. Twitter!

Back in the day, (a couple of years ago) this would have been no contest. Now – not so sure who wins. To be sure, there are many variables that will factor into who takes home the crown. I suspect that the answer in fact is probably, it depends. Facebook has long been the undisputed King of social media, considering the practical advantages it had. The first huge network to make use of personal and business pages, along with an ad platform that for people who understand how to use it, that rivals anything Google aspires to.

The Case for Facebook

Besides the obvious business pages that are getting more and more useful, the reach of its network is definitely astounding. With more than a billion users, Facebook has evolved into a lot more than a place where one can get together with old school chums. Now, with well-oiled Facebook Pages, relevant groups and an extremely robust ad platform, you have most everything you could desire in a social media outlet.

Twitter’s Up

Twitter has the advantage of immediacy, and has a number of extremely useful applications, such as advanced search for leads, the ability to use embedded Tweets as testimonials, and it’s a wonderful platform for customer service. Inspite of the obvious differences in the length of the information you can share, Twitter’s speed and agility have definitely brought it onto the playing field with Facebook.

Now it’s just a matter of finding where your market is, (socially) and deciding which (if not both) are the best fit for your business!