Which is Better for Your Business?

Thanks to Gary Dunstan at Q&A for suggesting this topic.

The gloves are off. Facebook and Twitter – the two giants of social media are engaged in an epic fight for social media supremacy.

Enough hype – in this article, I’ll look at one basic question; as a small business owner should you focus on Facebook or be tenacious on Twitter?

Round 1

What outcome do you want?

Are you looking for a knockout blow straight away from your social media involvement or happy to land a few jabs to pave the way to success?

The bottom line is that Twitter may work best for some types of businesses and Facebook better for others. For example, you might have an information type product that people can download from your website.

Facebook might be a better option for this as you can show people snippets of it to encourage them to buy rather than being restricted to 140 characters on Twitter.

On the flip side, if you have an architectural business and want to increase the profile of your company, you may be better using Twitter to connect with other professionals in related fields.

Round 2

Going beyond the first round

Too many small businesses tinker with Twitter or faff about with Facebook for a week or so and then give up. Like anything in life you’ve got to put in some hard work to start seeing results.

If you’ve only got a few followers or a low number of ‘likes’ you’re not going to be able to achieve much. I would recommend a month working on Twitter and Facebook separately before throwing in the towel.

Round 3

Train to win

In order to make sure you get the most out of Twitter and Facebook, some social media training might be worthwhile.

Just make sure you go on a course that’s had good reviews or been recommended to you. Once you know exactly how each of these platforms works and what you can do with them, you’ll be in a much better position to make a judgement.

Summary

Of course, you don’t have to exclusively use Facebook or Twitter; you can use them both, if you have the time. However, if you only have enough resources to use just one, you need to make an informed decision.

You can read all the case studies you like showing Twitter worked wonders for one business and Facebook transformed another, but every business is different.

Your business is not business A or business B. To find a tailored and accurate answer to the question this article poses, you have to test each social media platform for yourself.

Using the three step approach above and concentrating on just one of these sites at a time for a period of say, a month, the answer will become clear and you’ll no longer have double vision.

If you liked this article you might also want to read my top 10 social media tips for small businesses

This entry was posted on Monday, April 4th, 2011 at 9:30 am and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.