Twitter and Facebook are likely your go-to social media platforms these days. But do they hold the same status for your customers?
In order to develop an effective digital marketing strategy, you need to understand the ins and outs of these platforms and how you can best incorporate them into your strategy. So here’s what you need to know about advertising on Twitter and Facebook:
What You Need to Know About Twitter Marketing
Twitter is a social media platform that is designed to share short and concise ideas while keeping up with current events and trends globally, nationally, and even regionally. In the old days, Twitter had a character limit of 140 characters — before doubling it to 280.
Twitter is a popular social media platform with younger demographics — especially Millennials who have been using the platform for years and contributed to its growth. For instance, 25.2% of Twitter users are between the ages of 18 and 24, 26.6% are between the ages of 25 and 34, and 28.4% are between the ages of 35 and 49.
Only 12% of users are over the age of 50, and only 7.8% of users are under the age of 17.
While Twitter is primarily thought of as a “text” application, images, memes, gifs, and short videos are all popular on the platform. So while you can pay for a text ad, you also have the option of an image ad, a video ad, a carousel ad, or a moment ad.
What You Need to Know About Facebook Marketing
Facebook is a social media platform that is designed to connect with close friends and family. You do this by sharing personal updates and opinions through text, photos, videos, and more.
Like Twitter, Facebook has grown immensely since its inception and now includes a whole host of useful features, including Facebook groups, Facebook marketplace, Facebook events, and Facebook live.
Facebook holds the incredible title of being the world’s most popular social media platform with more than 2.8 billion monthly active users — 228.6 million of them within the United States alone. Yet, despite this large and impressive number, Facebook tends to cater to older demographics, with younger demographics preferring platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and TikTok.
Facebook offers a wide variety of different ad formats for brands to take advantage of, including photo ads, video ads, stories ads, messenger ads, carousel ads, slideshow ads, collection ads, and playable ads.
Which Platform Is Better for Digital Marketing?
Both Twitter and Facebook are powerful social media platforms that can contribute to an effective digital marketing strategy. That being said, one of the two may be a better option for your brand to focus on.
While we generally recommend investing in a variety of different social media platforms for a comprehensive and omnichannel approach, here are some different factors to consider when developing your digital marketing strategy:
- If you’re trying to reach a younger demographic, then Twitter may be a better option to focus on.
- On the other hand, if you’re trying to reach an older demographic, you may want to focus your advertising efforts on Facebook.
- If you want to be involved in the political or media spheres, then you may want to invest more resources into advertising on Twitter.
- If you want a more personal connection with your audience on a platform used to connect with friends and family, you may want to invest more resources into advertising on Facebook.
Now that you’re well-versed in the differences between these two platforms, you can take the appropriate steps to advertise effectively on each of them.
How to Advertise Effectively on Twitter
Here are some tips for advertising effectively on Twitter:
Choose Your Campaign Goal
Twitter utilizes campaign goals that allow you to set specific goals for your advertising campaign. On Twitter, you can focus on gaining new followers, earning website clicks or conversions, increasing app installations or engagements, boosting Tweet engagements, or earning more leads.
Keep It Short and Sweet
While this advice reigns supreme in advertising across the board, it’s especially vital on Twitter’s concise platform. After all, the entire platform is based on the idea that you can communicate within 140 characters. But just because you have 140 characters to use doesn’t necessarily mean that you should.
We generally recommend keeping your message around 100 characters to boost engagement levels.
Initiate a Conversation
Another unique feature of Twitter is that it’s largely conversation-based. This is a feature that you can and should incorporate into your Twitter advertising strategy.
Your strategy should strive to initiate a conversation between your brand and your audience. Engage with your audience about trending topics by replying and retweeting early and often. In fact, Twitter recommends that 80% of your Tweets should be interaction-based while the remaining 20% should be promotion-based.
How to Advertise Effectively on Facebook
Here are some tips for advertising effectively on Facebook:
Choose Your Campaign Objective
Like Twitter, Facebook utilizes campaign objectives to tailor your advertisements towards a specific goal. On Facebook, you can focus on increasing brand awareness, boosting reach, driving traffic, increasing engagement, gaining new app installs, earning new video views, generating leads, boosting messages, increasing conversions, and driving store traffic.
Target Effectively
It’s no secret that Facebook has tons of data about its users. As an advertiser, you can use this data to your advantage through targeting. After all, an advertisement won’t be effective if it’s not presented to the right people.
Ensure that your content is reaching the right people by prioritizing targeting on Facebook. For instance, you can target people based on geographic location, demographic information, specific interests, past behaviors, and current connections. Facebook also allows you to target people based on contact lists, site visitors, or even lookalike audiences.
Use the Right Format
As you now know, there are several different advertising formats to choose from on Facebook. The key to advertising effectively is to choose the right one.
While basic image ads may be easy and cost-effective, they can easily blend into the feed. Instead, focus on more engaging and interesting ad formats like video or even an instant experience.
From there, always make sure to optimize your content for the best possible results.
Final Thoughts on Twitter and Facebook
It’s hard to say whether advertising on Twitter or Facebook will be better for your business. It all depends on your industry, brand, and overall goals. If you still aren’t sure what to do next, working with marketing experts is perhaps the best way to make sure that your digital marketing strategy is efficient and effective.
Greg Gillman has worked with big brands to help them earn more than $4 billion in revenue as a result of his expertise. But, he also understands what it’s like to be a small business and the challenges and constraints that come with the territory.
Feel free to reach out for a consultation to learn how to improve your digital marketing strategy and effectively grow your business.
Sources:
Twitter Ads Campaigns 101 | Twitter
Choose the Right Advertising Objective | Facebook
How to Reach Your Target Audience on Social Media More Effectively | Inc.
