Social media is gradually diversifying day by day and finding its usage in miscellaneous realms of life such as B2B marketing. While previously, the usage of social media could have been said to be restricted to social networking purposes only, its usage has now changed the landscape of digital marketing, as we know it.
B2B Marketing & Different Forms of Social Media
As social media is progressing with time, we are coming to know about new sites and applications every other day. However, some names tend to stand out as dominant such as Facebook. Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. These four together make up for the most widely used sites in digital marketing such as for B2B and B2C marketing.
B2C refers to Business-to-Consumer whereas B2B refers to Business-to-Business. B2C is what we witness every day as the consumer watching a commercial or ad. B2B, on the other hand, is targeting businesses directly.
For example, you are running a start-up and you want to procure a ‘big’ client. You will try your best to market your small business in such a way that you eventually land your much-needed client. That is B2B for you.
What Will Be Better for B2B Business? Instagram or Twitter?
While Facebook continues to dominate the kingdom of social media, Instagram and Twitter are emerging as tough competitors as well.
The article focuses on the Instagram vs. Twitter debate for B2B businesses, so we shall leave Facebook out of the discussion for the while. Instead, we will discuss how both of the brands are useful and how the brand itself can leverage the platform for reaping benefits from the platform.
Importance of Twitter
Twitter is popular for being an important platform in journalism. You get instant updates and headlines to bigger stories. A majority of the news channels nowadays tend to give a headline and link the status to the full-fledged articled.
That way, not only do users get an abstract from the full story, but they do not have to go through a whole page to find out the news overall. Twitter provides a limit of 280 characters for uploading ‘tweets’, which means that whatever update you are going to give, you have to keep it within 280 characters or less.
Importance of Instagram
Featuring a platform similar to a roll of photos and videos, Instagram is readily gaining prominence for content sharing purposes. There is no character limit, so you are free to write as long or as short as you wish.
However, since the main focus lies on the photo or video, users of Instagram leverage their updates by uploading highly intriguing and appealing media to capture the attention of their audience.
1. User Statistics for Twitter and Instagram
There are 316 million monthly users on Twitter whereas 400 million monthly active users on Instagram.
- 500 million tweets are sent out on Twitter every day whereas 40 million photos are shared on Instagram every day.
- 80 million photos are shared on Instagram each day, on an average.
- Twitter has around 80% of its user active on mobile.
- Most of the audience for both platforms belong to the 18-24 age group.
- Engagement rate for Instagram is 4.21% for a post, as opposed to 0.3% for a tweet on Twitter.
These are just a few of the statistics, which can serve as the trailer to understand what platform will be better for you. One cannot simply deduce the performance of a platform based on these statistics alone.
Twitter does have a large audience present on mobile, but its engagement is not only limited to mobile, unlike Instagram. Twitter is functional on desktop and does not lose upon its appeal, like it does for Instagram on desktop.
There are possibilities that your ad may run better on Instagram than on Twitter, or you could post a photo on Twitter, which could end up being retweeted.
2. Advertising on Twitter vs. Advertising on Instagram
Since social media is now widely used for marketing purposes, the platforms have incorporated tools to aid people in reaching their audience. Through these tools, you can simply spend a small amount of money and hope to advertise your brand easily.
Twitter and Instagram both offer paid advertisements. Since Facebook owns Instagram, the ads are relatively similar and you get the benefit of sharing across both platforms.
Twitter ads have a higher engagement rate, as high as 1-3% and offers targeting capabilities. You can customize your ad based on the targeting capabilities and hence filter out unwanted audience out of your paid ad.
However, Twitter ads are comparatively much more expensive. Nevertheless, if you have the budget and want quicker return-on-investment, then Twitter can be beneficial for you.
3. Marketing on Twitter and Instagram as Per Brand Niche & Target Audience
Perhaps the most important aspect of marketing in general is narrowing down your audience according to your brand niche. Twitter and Instagram both have their uses and each of them proves helpful depending on the niche of the brand.
Twitter is considered more of a ‘content distribution platform’ as a majority of the tweets are re-shared and many get Likes on Twitter for engagement purposes. Instagram, on the other hand, offers you the chance to upload unique and original content where you can drive engagement as well.
Consider this; you are a food blogger and you want to post about the different recipes you try each day. In this instance, Instagram will be better for you. However, if you are running a news channel with updates every instant then Twitter will prove better for you.
Suffice to say, you could be a food blogger who wishes to update his/her followers regarding their new recipe. You could utilize Twitter in this regard. Similarly, you can try publishing the whole story on Instagram and still drive engagement.
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