Twitter, Facebook and Instagram? Oh my!
If you’re a business with limited time and resources, deciding which platform is most important to you can be taxing.
Sometimes too much choice can be a bad thing.
You’re might be asking yourself:
- Which platform is my target audience on? All of them? None of them?
- Which platform is the best to engage with my target audience?
- Which one is the easiest to use?
- Should my business be on all of them? Should my business be on none of them?
- Should I just quit my job now????
I’m just kidding. Don’t quit your job…because we’ve come to save the day!
Jumper Media has come up with the ultimate comparative guide to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram so that you can easily choose which social media platform will fill your business’ needs.
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter – these are the big three “top dogs” of social media marketing.
Chances are you’re already using at least one of them, but just in case you’re one of “those people” here are some basic stats about the three platforms.
The Basics
Instagram is a photo-sharing platform that allows users to edit their images with filters, stickers, text, and more!
Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 Billion in 2012.
Date Founded: October 2010
CEO: Kevin Systorm
Number of Employees: 550+
MAU: 700 million
Fun Fact: Pizza is the #1 most Instagrammed food, followed by sushi.
Twitter is a microblogging platform where users can send ‘tweets’ to their followers and friends.
Date Founded: March, 2006
CEO: Jack Dorsey
Number of Employees: 4100
MAU: 317 million
Fun fact: Saudi Arabia is the country with the highest percentage of users active on Twitter.
Facebook is a social profile where users have ‘friends’ that can see their profile and everything they post on it.
Date Founded: 2004
CEO: Mark Zuckerberg
Number of Employees: 11,000
MAU: 1,79 billion
Fun fact: Facebook is available in over 101 languages
Each platform appeals to a different audience.
When deciding which social media platform to focus your marketing efforts on, you should think about your own customers demographics and think about which platform they use the most.
Here are some stats to help you figure this out…
Demographics
Young, hip millennials are in love with Instagram. This platform is a great place to engage with them, visually.
Male users:
- 10% of all male Internet users are on Instagram
Female users:
- 16% of all female Internet users are on Instagram
Age:
Income:
- 38% of users earn less than $USD 30,000
- 32% of users earn between $USD 30,000 – $USD 49,999
- 32% of users earn between $USD 50,000 – $USD 74,99
- 31% of users earn more than $USD 70,000
Place of Origin:
- 80% of users come from outside the US
Area of Living:
- 39% of users live in urban areas
- 28% of users live in suburban areas
- 31% of users live in rural areas
What this means for your business:
- More females are using Instagram than males
- According to a study by omnicoreagency.com, “17% of teens say Instagram is the most important social media site (up from 12% in 2012.)” So if your target audience is teens then you definitely need to be active on Instagram.
- Millennials of all shapes and sizes also L-O-V-E instagram. The platform has become a lifestyle setting, food-sharing, dog-loving, art gallery and more for millennial hipsters.
- Although the highest percentage (38%) of income earning on Instagram is below 50,000 $USD, overall the distribution of all incomes is relatively evenly with 31% of users earning over $USD 70,000. Therefore, there is lots of money to be made on Instagram.
- Whether you’re targeting an audience that lives in urban, suburban or rural areas, Instagram is a safe bet for reaching them.
Male users:
- 24% of all male Internet users are on Twitter
Female users:
- 21% of all female Internet users are on Twitter
Age:
Income:
- 54% of users earn over $USD50,000
Place of Origin:
- 27.7 million users from Brazil
- 25.9 million users from Japan
- 23.5 million users from Mexico
Area of Living:
- 30% of users live in urban areas
- 21% of users live in suburban areas
- 15% of users live in rural areas
What this means for your business:
- Young people rely on Twitter for their news, friends and celebrity updates, and entertainment. If your business is targeting youngsters, then Twitter is right for you!
- An income of $USD 50,000 means that there is potential on Twitter to make money selling your products/services.
- If you’re target market is in Japan, Brazil, or Mexico, Twitter is a great way to reach them.
Male users:
- 23% of Facebook users are men
Female users:
- 77% of Facebook users are women
Age:
- 6% of users are between the ages of 13-17
- 23% of users are between the ages of 18-24
- 24% of users are between the ages of 25-35
- 31% of users are between the ages of 35-54
- 16% of users are over the age of 55
(2014 Stats)
Income:
- 72% of Facebook users have an income of over $USD 75,000
Place of Origin:
- 12% of the Facebook audience are from the US
- 10% of the Facebook audience are from India
- 7% of the Facebook audience are from Brazil
- 5% of the Facebook audience are from Indonesia
- 4% of the Facebook audience are from Mexico
Area of Living:
- 81% of adults living in suburban areas use Facebook
- 77% of adults living in suburban areas use Facebook
- 81% of adults living in suburban areas use Facebook
What this means for your business:
- If your target audience is everyone on earth then Facebook is right for you. In reality, 1/5 people on earth have a Facebook account!
- Women are prominent users of Facebook, making it an ideal platform to target women.
- Facebook is most popularly used by middle-aged men and women, making it an ideal place to target Baby Boomers and Generation Xer’s.
- Facebook’s older generation of users with a higher disposable income and higher spending power makes it an ideal platform for selling products.
Alright so we’ve gotten the boring (but important!) statistics out of the way… now what features does each platform offer businesses that want to grow, engage, and overall be epicly successful?
Read on to find out!
If you think that all the social media sites are starting to look like each other, you’re not wrong.
Instagram Stories feel a lot like Snapchat Stories.
Facebook has Live video. So does Twitter. So does Instagram.
But there are certain feature sets that make each platform unique, and this is key to your social media marketing plan.
If your company is very visual, Instagram might be a safe bet.
If your company puts out lots of blog posts and educational content, Facebook or Twitter are probably right for you.
Let’s dive into the different features of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter….
Features
Instagram Stories: Instagram’s newest feature is Instagram Stories, where users can upload video clips that last 10 seconds to their followers.The feature also allows users to go Live, chat in real-time, and tag or link brands, influencers, websites, etc.
Filters and Edits: Instagram comes with a myriad of filters and editing tools that are designed to make your selfies look flawless!
Instagram For Business: Instagram ups the game for brands who create a business account. The business account allows users to add contact information, provides them with analytics, and displays a button to drive visitors to call the business or go to their website.
What this means for your business:
Instagram is a platform designed for visual appeal and customer engagement:
- Filters allow users to design photos to be captivating, eye-catching, and flawless.
- Instagram’s Live story feature, where brands chat in real-time with their followers provides an engagement level of 100%
Studies have shown that customer engagement on Instagram is 10x higher than on Facebook.
Click here to find out your Instagram’s engagement rate.
Twitter’s Trending Topics: The trending topics features lets Twitter users from around the world see what everyone on Twitter is talking about.
Twitter Archive: This features lets businesses save and archive all of their tweets so that they can see which tweets preformed the best and use the same formula for future tweets.
Conversion Tracking: This feature lets businesses see the full conversion impact of their promoted tweets.
What this means for your business:
Twitter is a platform for improving customer service and customer connection:
- Trending topics give your business a chance to be seen by Twitter users from around the world .
- The conversion tracking feature will help your business see which tweets and campaigns perform the best.
- Twitter is great for getting closer to customers and answering their questions and concerns in real-time.
Facebook Page Insights: Similar to google Analytics, Facebook gives businesses insights to how well their business page is performing.
Scheduled Posts: A tool that lets users schedule their content to be posted at a later date.
Promoted Posts: For $5 a post, businesses can highlight their posts on relevant Facebook user’s newsfeed to share their products/service, promotional offers and more.
What this means for your business:
- Page insights will help your business determine which factors of your business page do well and which factors need improvement.
- Schedule posts will give you more time to worry about other parts of your business while Facebook does all the work for you!
- Promoted posts are affordable and will increase your brand’s visibility.
Conclusion
And the winner is…drum roll please…
INSTAGRAM!
We believe that Instagram is the right tool for most businesses to be using right now.
Need more proof, check out our article: 8 Reasons Instagram is The Ultimate eCommerce Tool
The new Instagram for business feature lets users add contact and business information like Facebook and the news feed and stories features act as a news source like Twitter, making it an all-encompassing platform.
What do you think? Has your business hopped on the Instagram bandwagon yet?
