Social Media Strategy for Facebook – 10 reasons why its better than Twitter !
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Just like you, I started off facebook as an experiment. Someone recommended it to me and said its lot of fun and you could make lots of friends…all that blah blah…yeah. Apprehensive at first, I registered and then left it at that for months together. Didn’t even care to add my known friends then. After months, something triggered me to go back to it, I think its seeing one of those successful and “engaging” profiles, and I couldn’t resist but get back to it. And I did.
Today, I spent almost the same time on Gmail on facebook. Its awesome and I love it for many reasons. Many of which makes it a better social networking site than Twitter. Here are 25 such odd reasons.
1. Twitter has a short attention span unlike facebook
Things I say on facebook remain. Twitter ? Not necessarily.
2. Facebook has a higher engagement value than Twitter
If you think about it with a shorter time span, may be Twitter has an edge. But cut off the excitement, if you try the same on facebook, the effects are long lasting.
3. The bigger you grow, the better the network, not always true with Twitter
I’m not trying to say that Twitter is more noise. But if you compare your network growth, Twitter sticks lesser value with it compared to facebook. You might even find out a few details about a guy you add on facebook, but not on Twitter.
4. Your network naturally rearranges itself putting quality folks on top on facebook
I like the fact that facebook leaves you with more activity from people you engage with more unlike in Twitter, and lets you find out who’s more “like you” in the long run.
5. Relationships made are clearly seen by all on facebook
I mean, you can see who your friends are on facebook right ? I wish if Twitter did something like that.
6. Facebook knows your preferences, whom you like and whom you don’t. Twitter doesn’t.
Well, lets say facebook studies you more than Twitter. Twitter doesn’t really care if you made friends on it or didn’t.
7. Twitter is great for “pushing” message across, but facebook takes it naturally ahead.
A breaking news might go hot on Twitter unlike on facebook, but facebook is more about sugestions than news, right ?
8. Facebook is more personal to you than Twitter.
Now, don’t lie on that.
9. Facebook is about meaningful relations, while Twitter may not be.
May be Twitter is not really a “social networking” tool. Wait ! No body ever told me it was.
10. Facebook is more about “you” while Twitter is more about “Others”
Twitter hardcore fans out there, before jumping into the conclusion that I’m a twitter hater, please understand that I’m not one and I love Twitter as much as facebook. But with the time spent on each, I understand that both networks have a lot of difference in its basic qualities. And that’s how it should be. They don’t compete with each other on the same grounds. Both the networks have evolved in to completely different environments, each having its own nature and behaviour. We as their users, should understand the differences and fit ourself accordingly, and that’s the moral of the story here. 
Hope you liked it.
Not sure why social media have to be compared with each other as “better than”. I think combining them all together is much more beneficial.
I am sorry, Mani, but you can’t generalize it that way. It’s like comparing pears to apples. Both networks are charming when used in the right way. Just two examples:
1. What to have real engagement on Twitter? Just follow the people you’re really interested in and read a l l of their tweets. The rest will follow…
2. Facebook is ranking contacts by quality? I do not need an algorithm for that, I can handle it myself
Twitter is like my chat stream, talk everything, share everything, blah blah blah.
)
Facebook is more like Life-stream. Things like, I feel… I wish… I hate.. and the awesomest of the awesomest links (now that’s a new word, fyi
And I love the way FB brings me the news feed on the homepage. Its easier to catch up with friends at the end of the day.
I have been playing with BuddyPress, its more like Facebook, its awesome
It’s all in how you use it. The whole idea from a business point of view is to optimize your social networks for search engine optimization. When people research you, they find you, they follow you, they may one day buy from you. Use all the social networks you can get on and create as many followers as you can.
Don’t be a spammer, write good quality articles on your main blog and then bookmark them to all your social sites… learn how to optimize your articles to hit the top of the search engines and then it all falls into place.
It’s not about which one is better or worse, it’s about what ones aren’t you on?
Great Blog!
Well the only thing wich can b asserted frm this is Twitter is best in its qualities whereas fb is best in its own qualities, though d rankings differ, but maybe lets c what happens in future
Its my favorite
you need it all facebook, twitter, business cards, linked in, social oomph,
Agree Stacy
This is a good list, but without examples it’s pretty hard to believe. I agree that you develop meaningful “personal” relationships on Facebook but I have had both Facebook and Twitter going for about the same amount of time, and I find that Twitter is working so much better.
I think there are two camps: Twitter-holics and Facebook fanatics. I love both but use them very differently. I’m having a hard time seeing the value in Facebook for my particular site. Twitter just seems to work better.
I think that Twitter and Facebook are for different type of comunication. You cant compare.
Tw is better for breaking news and Facebook for long term campains.
The limitation that have Tw are the way it keep stronger.
Example y you could write long twits or upload photos in Tw – The most important thing of Tw fell down becouse it going to be full of crap.
When you write short and no photos added, you write better or it force you to do that.
Well, I’m late to the game on this one, but the title here immediately makes me skeptical.
I don’t think any one social media tool is better than another. I think certain social media tools are more effective for implementing certain strategies than others. Comparing Twitter to Facebook in such a general context is like comparing apples to oranges. Any social media expert worth their salt will tell you this.
This is why people need to focus less on social media tools and more on social media strategy. It doesn’t matter if Facebook has a higher level of engagement (and I’d like to see some data to back this up) if your target audience isn’t on Facebook. Further, my Twitter feed may not be meaningful to my friends and family, but it’s incredibly meaningful to the three PR execs that I found and hired through my Twitter networks. My Twitter relationships are very meaningful to me in one way or another.
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning, Foursquare, Gowalla, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, etc. etc. etc. are tools with different characteristics that can be combined to implement a larger, multi-faceted social media strategy aimed at reaching a variety of audiences where they want to be reached. They should always be viewed as complementary, not competitive.
Paige Holden
@PaigeHolden
I’d say this kind of division might be a little short-sighted since it gives out the notion that one must choose between these two medias.
Giving that such a huge population has divided into two camps, would you have any ideas on why one would leave one of them without marketing exposure?
I don’t know if Facebook will get bigger than Google, but it is becoming a serious player in the Internet Marketing world. I like your SEO tips are great. I think most of the social media sites are over rated for there IM benfits, but Facebook is different.
Nice Article!
Twitter: atlantareia
Both Facebook and Twitter are great for social networking, but Facebook does seem a lot better for many of the reasons you mentioned. If I had to choose between the two, Facebook would definitely win. Thanks for the great post.