This is always been an unanswered Question from the marketers that which social platform to choose between Facebook and Twitter.

It is like choosing between Android or iOS, or Pepsi or a Coke. You will never get a definitive answer for that.

That’s because it’s about which site is more suitable for your specific goals but not about which site is better in its category.

Facebook and Twitter both are the same class of social networks, the other high-ranking but not much old ones are Instagram and Google+.

Over the past decade, many social sites came and go, but Facebook and Twitter never got out of interest.

The secret behind this could be their ability to constantly adapt and bring social networking to another level by serving both users and marketers. Also, maintain integration with both.

With all facts being said, the question still remains unanswered: Which site should marketers prefer?

There are some factors by which one can get a hint to some extent to decide what is more beneficial according to our product to be marketed:

1.Numbers:

In terms of the number of users, it’s impossible practically for any social site to compete with Facebook. Facebook is the clear leader of all ant that’s not going to change in the near future.

But that doesn’t mean that Twitter will fail out.

Facebook Statistics

• 1.23 billion daily active users on average for December 2016
• 1.15 billion mobile daily active users on average for December 2016
• 1.86 billion monthly active users as of December 31, 2016
• 1.74 billion mobile monthly active users as of December 31, 2016
• Approximately 85.2% of our daily active users are outside the US and Canada

Data provided by Facebook.com

Twitter Statistics

• 313 million monthly users

• 82% of active users on mobile

• 79% of users outside the U.S.

• 500 million tweets sent per day

• Unique visits monthly to sites with embedded tweets

Data provided by Twitter.com

As compared to Facebook, Twitter lags in numbers, which could be a very important factor for businesses. If we’re seeing statistics based on numbers, Facebook is on the upper side.

But there are other factors that can be considered.

2.Audience:

Looking at the user’s numbers, Facebook is typically the first choice for companies for its largest audience. Despite more number of users, it may be possible that a business’s target audience spends more time on Twitter. That’s why it is important to know what each site brings in terms of audiences.

From some time now, Facebook’s users have been moving away from the younger generation and towards the older demographic of 50-plus years old. There can be various explanations for the migration, but it mainly boils down to younger users moving on to the newer trends. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t any young users on Facebook, a report says, 18-29-year-olds are still very active out there.

When you look at Twitter’s audience, the main factor that comes out is the younger audience. A majority of users on twitter are below 40 years of age. Although, the speed that Twitter moves at and a large amount of content that gets passed through, that’s clear. The younger generation likes to deal with small information precisely and consume it quickly. Whereas the 50+ users tend to prefer the more detailed nature of Facebook.

Another interesting difference in audiences is that Twitter is mainly used by people who live in urban areas instead of rural areas. Depending on the type of industry the company is in, this could help you decide to put your focus on Facebook or Twitter. For instance, a new e-commerce startup would probably do very well on Twitter, but a company in the manufacturing industry might not see the same level of progress.

You can do some research to find out your target customers, and use that information to help you decide whether Facebook or Twitter is the best platform to cover them.

3.Engagement of users:

Engagement of users could easily be the factor for deciding marketing on Twitter or Facebook. Past few years, companies have complained about the significant downfall in the percentage of organic reach to their Facebook posts.

The main complaint was being that unless you pay to “boost” a post, your content won’t get maximum reach.

Researches showed that organic reach for content posted to Facebook declined by 49% in less than six months. Now you can have an idea that also had an impact on the percent of engagement of posts.

Despite the decrease in organic reach, Facebook posts somehow still get engagements. See data:

One of the biggest advantages of Facebook has over Twitter in terms of engagement is that the content posted on Facebook has a longer lifecycle than a Tweet.

Since Tweets get disappeared from the stream so quickly, brands practically have to Tweet multiple times in a day to avoid getting lost in the field.

With Facebook, you can post sufficient times in a week and still stay fairly on the pages, especially if you’re boosting your posts.

Apart from these, there could be many factors by which you can decide which platform to choose for your business marketing.

If you have any of the suggestions regarding this, do tell me in the comments. Also if you have any questions, please let me know, and you’ll be answered.