Social media platforms are the best place to find new customers, connect with your existing customers and increase your brand awareness. In fact, more than half of the world is using social media these days! This means businesses have more than ever chances of marketing their products. But the real question that arises in every digital marketer’s mind is which is the best social media marketing platform especially when it comes to paid marketing.
In this post, we will consider the two top of the range of social media platforms: Instagram and Facebook and will see which one of them is better for your next paid marketing campaign.
1. The Number Game
Before we look on to any other aspects of these platforms and decide which is better, let us first see some latest numbers. This is simply because these numbers can make a huge difference in your marketing strategy.
Launched in 2004, Facebook has more than 2.38 billion active users today and more than 65 million small businesses have their Facebook pages.
On the other hand, Instagram, which was launched in 2010, currently has around 1 billion active users and more than 500 million daily active users of Instagram stories.
Considering what marketers think, around 74% of the marketers are using Facebook as a part of their social media marketing strategy while 65% of the marketers are planning to lean more towards Instagram.
We can see that Facebook is winning the number game. But Instagram is also coming up as a promising option as marketers are showing interest in this platform.
2. Type of Users
Facebook has been launched for quite a while now and therefore almost everyone is aware of it. At least, that’s what the demographics say! It has been found that Facebook has users of all age groups starting from 13 years old to 65 years or older.
Instagram, on the other hand, is right now most preferred by young users. More than 70% of its users are in the age group 13-17 while only 10% of the users are of the age 65 years or above.
This can be a pretty good insight for the marketers as they can choose a platform based on the type of users they are targeting.
3. The Mighty Algorithms
We all know that both Facebook and Instagram run on different algorithms. Although we cannot decode them, luckily many business and marketing assignment help experts have given their time and observations to understand how these algorithms work. Here’s an overview of such results:
There are many factors that consider the rank of the post in both Instagram and Facebook. These factors include engagement, relevancy, relationships or interactivity.
However, many people do not know that Instagram accounts for the timeliness, that is how recent the post is and also how much time people spend on that post (scrolling past is not enough!). It also considers profile searches and direct shares. This means if you target the right audience on Instagram, you are likely to get exposure.
Facebook’s algorithm gives preference to the posts from family and friends and then to the posts from brands. If you are aggressively promoting to like, share and promote your posts, Facebook would not work for it.
Also, Facebook is less likely to promote products/services or any kinds of unofficial ads. Facebook always encourages personal communication. So if you want to be popular on Facebook, you have to drop the ‘professional factor’ and somehow think of ‘personal connection’.
We can see that both Instagram and Facebook have their own way of promoting connection and conversations on their platforms. Now it all depends on your choice of communication and strategy.
4. The Functionality Factor
Another thing that is important while you decide to pick the best platform out of Instagram and Facebook is how both these platforms work.
Now if we consider Facebook, it is a huge platform. It offers many functionalities. You can create a whole new page about your product/service. You can mention your working hours, share the background stories, create groups, cross-post, engage your employees, put up videos, images, animations and more.
Facebook is like a complete library of your business. There is something for everyone out there. You can give complete information in a detailed and creative way about every section of that library to the audience.
Instagram, on the other hand, can be considered as one particular section of that library. This means it offers an enlarged view of the section so that people can make connections. Instagram is more about engagement than information. It gives you different ways to connect with your audiences like stories, IGTV, reels and regular posts. Everybody goes on Instagram for images and videos and not to know the details of your business.
In all, we can see that Instagram is all about engagement while Facebook is more about information!
5. Let The Content Decide
You might be willing to create a variety of content for your promotion. It can include images, videos, blog posts, service pages, testimonials, press releases and more!
If you are planning to share text-heavy content such as blog posts or sensitive content like company news, you can try Facebook. However, you can post the same content in the form of images and less textual content on Instagram.
Facebook also allows you to build photo albums so you can use that feature for your promotion. Instagram, on the other hand, can be used to share live content on a day to day basis through stories.
You can post multiple images and create a theme on your Instagram account but Facebook albums would give you a complete exposure. You must share high-quality images or videos on Instagram and create a hashtag for the same to engage the audience.
Instagram and Facebook demand different types of content. So do not try to create the same content for both the platforms. If you do so, it is likely that you won’t succeed in engaging an audience on at least one of the platforms.
Key Takeaways
Whether you are running a small business or a large organisation, you need to understand that Instagram and Facebook are two powerful platforms these days. Your business must be present at both.
Michel, who works as a social media marketing research expert at GoDissertationHelp, revealed to us that many people are thinking of just abandoning Facebook and switching to Instagram because it is new and preferred by the youth. But Facebook is still relevant for marketing because it has a wider audience.
However, you can decide to run paid promotions on any one platform at a time by understanding how these platforms work. You may also consider factors like the audience you are targeting, products/services you want to promote, type of content you want to share and how you want to engage with your current and potential customers.
Reflect upon these things while creating your next social media marketing strategy and you will not have to worry about anything else.