To build a standout position in the market, the four most renowned social media platforms need to prove their capabilities in respect of business marketing. In today’s world, a social media is the prime platform for digital marketing. This has been proved that by 2020 social networking is going to bring 2.95 billion users, around a third of Earth’s entire population, under its control. More and more people are expected to use social platforms to market the products or services, increase the visibility of the business or brand, enhance the exposure or improve the engagement rate. But, the question lies which one among all these four platforms is better to bring success in business marketing.
It has been noticed that an ideal
digital marketing agency always prefer to choose and focus on different social media platforms as per the brand values, business offerings and target audiences. The reasons for selecting different platforms at different situations are clearly mentioned in this detailed analytical report.
Instagram vs Facebook vs Twitter vs Snapchat: What and How it is Good for Business Marketing?
What is Instagram?
Instagram is an instant photo sharing application mainly from mobile devices. Users share pictures and videos publicly or privately via this app. Generally, it is meant for sharing user’s own experience with his/her followers.
Instagram is mainly used to build the visual identity of a business.
What is Facebook?
Facebook is the most popular and the world’s largest social networking site that helps to connect and share with your family and friends online. It has more than 1 billion users worldwide.
Facebook helps to share fun elements and important updates with all current and potential followers. This in turn helps to improve branding and exposure.
What is Twitter?
Twitter is more popularly known as a micro-blogging platform, where a user can short posts called tweets. A tweet with 140 characters’ limit should ideally include hyperlinks and hashtags. A hashtag acts as a meta tag, which is expressed as #keyword.
Twitter helps to market your products and services to a large audience. The most interesting part is this professional platform is absolutely free.
What is Snapchat?
Snapchat is basically a fun messaging app that allows to send videos and pictures to your friends. It’s unique feature of ‘self-destruct’ of shared elements has enhanced its popularity and craze among the youngsters.
Snapchat plays a vital role in forming global marketing strategies. Nowadays, more brands are indulging into producing daily stories to engage and excite audiences.
In Instagram vs Facebook, Instagram is dedicated mainly to pictures while Facebook is inclined towards recent updates. Facebook encourages users to share fun elements, whereas Twitter is more about sharing serious elements such as news when you compare Facebook vs Twitter. On the other hand, if you were to compare Twitter vs Snapchat, though a tweet lasts forever, its age lasts only a few seconds before its replaced by another tweet; while a snap disappears within 24 hours. In Snapchat vs Instagram, Instagram users share their photos on their wall while Snapchat allows users to send videos and pictures to friends. If you look at Instagram vs Twitter, the primary importance in Instagram is given to photos while in Twitter text and hashtags. In Facebook vs Snapchat, the former encourages both public and private postings while the latter is exclusively for private chats with friends.
Instagram vs Facebook vs Twitter vs Snapchat: Which is More Beneficial for Business Marketing? How Instagram is Beneficial for Business Marketing?
This photo-sharing app is extremely effective for all forms of businesses. It has been noticed that per-follower engagement rate of top brands’ Instagram posts is generally 4.21%. This proves Instagram delivers 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook and 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter.
How Facebook is Beneficial for Business Marketing?
Facebook, supposedly the most popular social media platform, can be truly effective for business marketing if the posts add value to the community. Atleast 70% of posts should cater to business tips, recent events, local news, or survey questions.
It is essential as Facebook can help to enhance your company’s exposure to manifold. Keep on sharing fun elements and important updates with current and potential followers.
Research shows posts done between the time frame of 1 – 4 p.m. get the maximum clicks and shares.
How Twitter is Beneficial for Business Marketing?
Twitter is a brilliant platform that helps to market your product or services to many people with a small tweet. If you hire an
SMO expert for Twitter marketing to handle your social media accounts, then only you have to pay. Otherwise, the best part about this platform is that it is absolutely free.
How Snapchat is Beneficial for Business Marketing?
Snapchat is one of the fastest-growing social networks, with over 100 million daily active users and 400 million snaps per day.
Stats revealed 71% of Snapchat users are within the age group of 18 to 34. Though target audience for your business does not fall in this category, you should use Snapchat for business marketing as it is extremely effective in forming global marketing strategies.
Different facts and figures from Facebook vs Instagram recently report that the engagement rate of Instagram is higher than Facebook. A similar picture is noticed in Twitter vs Instagram 2017. In business marketing, recent events updates are extremely essential and both Facebook and Twitter offer features for it. But there is a difference between Facebook and Twitter. In Facebook vs Twitter, Twitter with 140 characters pushes businesses to innovate and show the important facets of a news to an audience but Facebook provides ample space and bandwidth to give detailed analysis of each event. In Twitter vs Snapchat, the main focus area of a business should be the target audience, as Twitter can help you reach a wider audience in one go, while with Snapchat you reach one person at a time. If you compare popularity with Instagram vs Snapchat, Snapchat may be lagging but its stories and live video feature can create a higher engagement and recall while with Instagram a business can add multiple photos to one post. If you look for Snapchat vs Facebook, the post of Facebook adds value to the community more quickly while Snapchat in comparison adds value only amongst friends.
Instagram vs Facebook vs Twitter vs Snapchat: What are the Unique Features of these Social Platforms helpful for Business Marketing? Unique features of Instagram helpful for Business Marketing
There are a number of new features that have been marketed by Instagram in recent times. Those include:
Instagram Shop fronts - Instagram profile bio gives the opportunity to add an URL of the website, which can also be capitalized to make it more prominent. Earlier, this was the only call to action (CTA) of any Instagram profile.
Instagram Ads - With the intension of increasing views, engagement, traffic flow and high conversion rate, Instagram has also come up with the ad facility through Facebook Ad Manager.
Instagram Analytics - Though Instagram doesn’t have in-built analytics, it can offer a detailed analysis with the support of third-party services like Sprout Social or Simply Measured.
Geofilters - Instagram has introduced a unique feature “Geofilter”, where users can easily share their current location, without specifying their explicit geographical location. Currently, this is available in selected places. However, it’s a brilliant tool for business marketing.
Unique Features of Facebook helpful for Business Marketing
In recent times, Facebook has many unique features that are rarely available in other social media platforms. Some of those are:
Facebook Cards
Real-time Facebook Comment
Spherical Video
Pages to Watch
Facebook’s new Share Sheet
Liberal ad exchange
Invite Email Contacts
Detailed Analytics
Apps Analytics
Facebook Messenger for Business
Parse
It is hard to distinguish or exclude any feature from this list as most of them play significant roles in business marketing.
Facebook Cards – It is a unique marketing tool designed by Facebook with partnership with Moo.com, a printing service, to print them on 16 pt stock paper. It looks similar to profile and includes cover photos, profile pictures, and contact details. If you order now, Moo is offering 50 cards for free on first order.
Pages to Watch – This feature is basically to watch and keep a track of the competitors’ pages. Currently, it is allowing to monitor 5 competitors’ pages and to see the number of new likes on a weekly basis.
Invite Email Contacts – In the ‘Admin’ panel under the ‘Build Audience’ tab, Facebook has the option to invite email contacts to like the business page. This can be done by many email providers as well as through Mail Chimp, Constant Contact, iCloud, etc. But, there is a limit of invited contacts up to 5,000.
Liberal ad exchange – It helps Facebook and app developers to earn profit by displaying ads on mobiles.
Apps Analytics - This is a very unique tool that helps app developers to understand the way people are using their app.
Facebook Messenger for Business – This new feature has been added on messenger. Here, consumers can ask questions about anything while shopping or send notification to the seller in case the product is defective.
Detailed Analytics – Under ‘Posts’ tab, Facebook gives the option to get the detailed analytics of audience, posts, engagement, etc. This helps the brand to evaluate its success rate and bring necessary changes to the posts.
Unique Features of Twitter helpful for Business Marketing
Twitter is never lagged behind. They have also come up with some unique features to help the business in the long run. Those are:
‘Go Live’ Button for Periscope
Twitter acquired Periscope, which allows to see a “go live” button while composing tweets. This button enables users to broadcast directly through Twitter. It helps to expand the content types marketers. User can use live streaming to compile and publish long-form thoughts and responses.
Native GIF Search
You can share your thoughts with the help of GIFs. In 2015, people shared more than 100 million GIFs on Twitter.
Uncropped Image
Twitter has come up with uncropped photo update and a new view for multi-photo displays. This makes Twitter more visually appealing and an engaging platform.
Anti-harassment Features
Twitter has taken some serious steps to respond to harassment and threats on the network with a series of features and services so that people feel safe to use the platform. Those are:
Clear definition of abusive behaviour in the Twitter’s terms of service
Bold functionality for blocking, muting, and reporting abuse
Launched Twitter Safety Center and the Trust and Safety Council
Unique Features of Snapchat helpful for Business Marketing
‘Self-destruct’ of shared elements after a few seconds of a person viewing them, is the most unique feature of Snapchat. There are many more features that are exclusively available in Snapchat. Those are:
Scores - A score will be rewarded under Snapcode in profile screen by equating all the number of snaps sent and received, stories posted, and other activities done. A friend’s score can be viewed when a friend on your contact list, story feed, or chat area.
Snapcode - Snapcodes are scannable codes. This can be used to add new friends. Once you click on the ghost icon on the top of camera screen, you will find Snapcode in your profile screen.
Snapstreak - It is another unique feature of Snapchat that allows to show different emojis next to Snapchat names in the chat screen. This denotes you have snapped with your friend not chat within 24 hours for more than one consecutive day.
Lenses - It helps to add adding real-time special effects and sounds to snaps with lenses.
Filters - Snapchat is famous for its fun elements. It allows to zazz up the snaps by adding a filter on it.
When the issue is about the unique features, each of these four platforms is well-prepared with their respective weapons for the battle to be the best in business. If you review Instagram vs Facebook for business, you will find Facebook has Liberal Ad Exchange feature and Instagram Ads utilize Facebook Ad Manager to offer an ad service. In Facebook vs Twitter, Facebook uses Facebook Live whereas Twitter acquired Periscope which allows to add a ‘go live’ button. The most significant feature that can be noticed in Twitter vs Snapchat is Snapchat has the ‘self-destruct’ feature for security and Twitter has anti-harassment feature. Snapcodes are scannable codes, which can be used by people to view you but no such feature is available in Facebook; this is the difference you will find while analysing Facebook vs Snapchat. However, in Snapchat vs Instagram, you will find a unique feature named ‘Geofilter’ in Instagram to share current location without specifying their explicit geographical location, but no such feature is available in Snapchat. One interesting photo related feature has been introduced in Twitter wherein businesses can provide uncropped photo update and a new view for multi-photo displays allowing businesses to showcase an event or a new launch more explicitly. Though Instagram is mainly for photos, in Instagram vs Twitter, this unique feature is noticed in Twitter only.
Instagram vs Facebook vs Twitter vs Snapchat: What are the Top Strategies need to be Followed for an Effective Business Marketing?
While discussing the business marketing plan, you may confuse social media services with the most effective Search Engine Optimization services. This is because to build a successful business marketing plot, the strategy to proceed always remains the same. However, it may vary from one platform to another.
Top Strategies for Instagram for Business Marketing
Focus on the unique qualities of your brand’s audience
Tell a story with your caption
Run some contests
Collaborate with popular influencers or micro-influencers of your niche
Take the support of the advertising platform
Stats denote across more than 475 global campaigns, ad recall from sponsored posts on Instagram is 2.9x higher than Nielsen’s norms for online advertising.
These strategies are to be implemented to achieve the ultimate goal. All businesses target to grab the attention of their Instagram users with the help of their posts/ images. Users should be able to recognize your images instantly and engage in liking and commenting. This will, in turn, help to:
Increase traffic flow
Improve sales graph
Enhance brand awareness
Increase branded hashtag mentions
Top Strategies for Facebook for Business Marketing
From 2006, it has been allowed that anyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address can join Facebook. This is the most vital factor of Facebook. Any business marketing strategy should be youth-centric as the target audience of Facebook comprises mainly of youth section. Though it has been noticed that Facebook is more popular among middle-aged adults.
A proper sketched strategy should be drawn to gain success in Facebook marketing. An ideal Facebook marketing strategy should include the following steps:
Step 1: Use a profile pic that is recognizable.
Step 2: Launch and maintain a proper company account.
Step 3: Fill the “About Us” section.
Step 4: Maintain a consistency among cover photo, posts and all profile CTAs.
Step 5: Tailor your organic posts.
Step 6: Set specific timings of postings. Don’t post too often.
Step 7: Make proper usage of multimedia posts.
Step 8: Do respond instantly.
Step 9: Use insights to analyze the page performance.
Step 10: Utilize the paid version to amplify the reach of the posts.
Read more Importance of Facebook in Business
Top Strategies for Twitter for Business Marketing
It is simple to map and set a proper strategy for business marketing. It includes:
Say ‘Thank you’. 1 out of 4 whom you thank will follow back.
Search for influencers & micro influencers and interact with them on a regular basis to carry micro influencer marketing
Involve more people to do Twitter marketing
Optimize Twitter bio
Track mentions
Provide special offers to followers
Use images, videos, gifs, etc.
Integrate Twitter with other marketing efforts
Tweet regularly, retweet, favourite tweets
Follow trends/hashtags
Use promoted tweets
Use Twitter analytics
Top Strategies for Snapchat for Business Marketing
Snapchat is a bit off-beat platform which is perfect for real-time social media marketing, so the strategies need to be implemented for it should also be critical and valuable.
Provide access to live events
Deliver personalised content
Take people behind the curtain
Conduct contests
Interact with influencers
Strategies for each of the four social platforms is distinctive and none can be replicated by the other. If you study strategy formation for running contests in Twitter vs Instagram, Instagram is considered better because a tweet has limited characters and age and it is a professional platform. Similarly, if you consider Facebook vs Instagram for marketing, Facebook is better for telling a story in detail whereas in Instagram a caption is what captures the audience attention. When it comes to collaborating with influencers or micro-influencers of your niche both come across as important facet for Instagram vs Snapchat. If you study Twitter vs Snapchat, you will find that as a strategy delivering personalised content is only available in Snapchat and not on Twitter. As a strategy towards providing access to live events there is marginal difference between Snapchat vs Facebook 2017 as both the platform are gaining strongholds for targeting different demography. However, in Facebook vs Twitter creating a brand or even hashtag is extremely necessary in Twitter while on Facebook sharing details leads to better audience connect.
Instagram vs Facebook vs Twitter vs Snapchat: What are the Challenges faced in these Social Platforms? Challenges of Instagram
Some of the greatest challenges are:
To build or to retain the position of Instagram as the most favourite social media platform,
To search where your followers are hanging out, then build a presence over there,
To interact with your brand and create a stronger community,
To convert the users/ followers to dedicated blog readers or web design clients.
Challenges of Facebook
The greatest challenge you may face while conducting Facebook marketing is mapping topics of the post. Be aware that choosing some uninteresting facts or posting too many posts can bring an adverse effect on the image of your brand.
One more challenge is to meet the expectation of the consumers in terms of response time. It has been researched that almost 42% of consumers launch a complain as they expect a response to their query within 60 minutes.
Challenges of Twitter
Inspite of adopting proper marketing strategy, businesses may still face various challenges, such as:
It may affect the reputation of the brand. It has been noticed by Twitter that it often become the subject of bad press.
It has limited operating experience. It also involves certain complexities of laws and regulations regarding privacy and security.
It is a race to stay ahead of user growth plus.
It involves a slow growth.
Read also How to Start Twitter Influencing
Challenges of Snapchat
It is tricky to cope up with this fun messaging app, that is the reason brands face various challenges while conducting business marketing.
It is difficult for the users to find whether the snap has sound or not.
The look and feel of the platform is little unprofessional.
It is hard to identify what and when to share.
Platform many not be apt to your followers.
Both social media platforms and the businesses using social media, are struggling to retain their market positions. If you study Facebook vs Twitter vs Instagram, the major challenge an entity faces while trying to master these three sites is mapping topics vs limited characters vs building a presence. If you look at the time challenges for Facebook vs Twitter vs Snapchat, it ranges from meeting response time, slow growth and when to share, respectively. In case of look and feel, in Snapchat vs Instagram vs Facebook, Snapchat is considered less professional as compared to Facebook and Instagram because 60% of its user base is between 18-34 years and hence it is designed accordingly. If you consider the audio in posts for Instagram vs Snapchat vs Twitter, a user usually finds it difficult to know if a snap come with audio or not, but in both Twitter and Instagram, user will get an option of turning the audio on and off with a video post.
Instagram vs Facebook vs Twitter vs Snapchat: What are the Cost of these Social Platforms? Cost of Instagram
It is a brilliant idea to complement the Instagram feed contents with adverts on images, videos, carousal and stories. Instagram ads offer 2.5 times more clicks than ads on other social media sites.
Due to impressive targeting capabilities and higher CTR, the cost of ads on Instagram is little higher than the cost of Twitter and Facebook advertising. The estimated CPM of Instagram is $13. But, it is expected to reduce as more and more companies are utilizing the platform.
It has been noticed that Instagram can provide:
97% lift in ad recall
16-point average ad recall lift
7x higher Nielsen ad recall vs. other study data
Cost of Facebook
The advertisement cost of Facebook ranges from $0.16 to $1.00+ on every click. It varies from industry to industry, on the size of audience and also on the quality of the ad.
The cost is not too high that is the main reason why 1.5 million businesses spend money on Facebook ads and 75% of brands promote their Facebook posts.
In 2014, it has been seen that businesses paid 122% more on per ad on Facebook than they committed on 2013.
Cost of Twitter
Twitter has 3 types of advertising options –
Promoted tweets,
Promoted accounts, and
Promoted trends.
The cost of promoted tweets and promoted accounts ranges between $.50 – $4.00 per engagement and promoted trends cost around $200,000 per day.
Clicking, replying, retweeting or favouriting your paid tweets and ads cost between $.50 – $2.00, depending on your targeting. For local campaigns, this figure is $1.35 per engagement.
Cost of Snapchat
Snapchat is a bit costlier platform as compared to other social media platforms. The swipe-up rate for Snapchat ads is 5 times more than the average CTR for other platforms. The cost for Snap ad campaigns start from $10,000/month.
Snapchat sponsored lenses costs is $450,000 per day Sunday to Thursday, $500,000 for Fridays and Saturdays, and $700,000 plus for holidays or special events.
If we compare these four platforms in terms of users, growth and ad revenue, then we will be able to see Facebook still has a dominant lead in the social media space.
It is important to compare costs among these four platforms before investing money in promoting posts. In Instagram vs Facebook, Instagram is costlier than Facebook, though Instagram has started using Facebook Ad Manager to facilitate PPC ad services for businesses. If you compare Instagram vs Twitter, you will see the same scenario, Twitter ads are cheaper than Instagram ads. In Facebook vs Twitter, both charge as per engagement ratio but the involvement rate is higher in Facebook. While studying Twitter vs Snapchat, as a business the unique feature in Snapchat of cost variation on different dates can be very helpful while planning your ad placements. The same comparison holds true for Snapchat vs Instagram. It can be safely said that as of today Facebook is cheapest platform while Snapchat is the costliest among these four when it comes to comparing Facebook vs Snapchat.
MAU (Monthly Active Users)
Instagram: 600 million
Facebook: 1.79 billion
Twitter: 317 million
Snapchat: 150 million
DAU (Daily Active Users)
Instagram: 300 million
Facebook: 1.18 billion
Twitter: 100 million
Snapchat: 60 million
2016 MAU Growth
Instagram: +50.0%
Facebook: +15.7%
Twitter: +3.2%
Snapchat: +67.2%
If you look for Instagram vs Facebook users then you will find a huge difference. On monthly basis, where Facebook receives more than one billion active users, Instagram only receive 600 million. On the other hand, figures for Facebook vs Twitter users vary even more. As compared to billion users of Facebook per day, Twitter only has 100 million active users on a daily basis. If you compare the competitors, Instagram vs Snapchat users Snapchat is gaining popularity the well-established Instagram continues to draw 5 times more traffic everyday than Snapchat.
2017 Projected Ad Revenue
Instagram: $5.3 billion
Facebook: $10.0 billion
Twitter: $2.54 billion
Snapchat: $935 million
2017 Projected Ad Revenue Growth
Instagram: +65%
Facebook: +13%
Twitter: +32%
Snapchat: +155%
In Terms of Female users and Male Users
Instagram- 40:60
Facebook- 55:45
Twitter- 60:40
Snapchat- 80:20
Some important facts about these platforms that may interest you.
Key Facts of Instagram:
On an average, users spend at least 5 minutes per day on Instagram and Facebook.
A study conducted by Simply Measured in 2013 found 59% of the world’s top brands are now active on Instagram.
In 2014 reader survey has noticed that 50% of respondents favoured Instagram over other social platforms.
Key Facts of Facebook:
Research has shown that visual content usage in Facebook campaigns can generate 65% more engagement within one month.
20% of Facebook posts are based on promoting other business events, tagging others, or sharing others content.
10% of posts are promotional that display discounts or sales.
Key Facts of Twitter:
HubSpot study noticed that tweets with images resulted in 18% more CTR and 150% more retweets.
According to reader survey, in 2014, it has been noticed that Twitter ranks second in popularity with 21% over other social platforms.
Key Facts of Snapchat:
Snapchat stories last only for 24 hours. These actually are string of snaps used to create a video narrative. It has been noticed that there are over 1 billion views of Snapchat stories each day.
Almost 60% of viewers skip ads in Snapchat.
The fact is that you cannot deny the specific contributions of each social media platforms to excel the business marketing.
If you look into the bigger picture, you will be able to find that:
—> Twitter has the largest penetration potentiality as it is spreading slowly and steadily.
—> Facebook has the largest opportunity to communicate with consumers in a non-prominent way.
—> Instagram is a better platform to participate with the use of hashtags and posting pictures.
—> Snapchat apparently seems to be a non-professional platform but has the maximum capacity to grab the attention of users in a funny way.
In a nutshell, it can be revealed that you can choose any of these platforms but make sure that your brand’s postings maintain the thumb rules, such as:
Maintain consistency of posting.
Maintain frequency. Do not bombard your followers with too many posts.
Follow the time zone of your followers while posting.
