Facebook or Twitter?

Posted by Gabe on December 10, 2009 under Facebook, Social Media, Twitter | 6 Comments to Read

It just seems inevitable that I start to write about Facebook.  Even though six months ago I was telling people I was strictly a Twitter person, only keeping up an outpost on Facebook, I have become much more involved with it since then.  I totally agree with those who are tired of all the “gurus”, many of them being far from it, so I of course do not claim to be one.  But being a software developer I have a keen interest in learning the technical concepts and using them to our benefit.

Bear with me because I am still learning.  I have delved into WordPress a bit lately as well.  You may see some FB and Twitter plug-ins here on my blog and I finally understand how to get the blog to do what I want for the most part.  This kind of stuff is fun for me.  So what I plan to do is talk about some differences between Facebook and Twitter in this post, and follow up with a technical “how-to” post regarding Fan pages as I have been getting requests to do just that.

When I originally asked my friend Bob about how to best spread the word about Kids Are Heroes, he did not hesitate to reply “Facebook and Twitter”.  So I started an account on both platforms.  Immediately I saw quite a difference.  I find Facebook to be much more personal as people tell intimate details of their lives and post their family pictures.  I did not want everyone to “friend” me. I didn’t feel it was appropriate.  Then I started a Kids Are Heroes group.  That’s the ticket, I thought.  My nephew told all his friends to join and before you know it I had over 200 members.  The problem was I was the only one writing anything.  There was no participation.  I had the ability to message everyone, but being a person who hates to be bugged that way I hardly ever used that capability.

Twitter on the other hand was entirely different. It seemed to be a much easier way to connect with people.  There are several ways to find those that share your interests. WeFollow.com and TweepSearch.com are just a couple.  Follow people and voilà, they more often than not follow you back.  Strike up a conversation and you are on your way to making a connection.  All of a sudden guess what? I was actually starting to get comments on my blog.  The number of Twitter ”followers” was increasing much quicker than the number of Facebook “friends” or group members. So I focused most of my efforts on Twitter.

I’m not saying you can’t use Facebook in the same way — many people are far quicker to “friend” others than I am.  For some reason I was less comfortable with that.

Then along came the Facebook Fan pages.  At first I didn’t pay much attention to them until I “fanned” one or two pages. Wait a minute — the updates go to my wall automatically! Very “Twitteresque” I thought.  When I realized this I immediately dropped the group and started a fan page.  I messaged everyone in the group to come over and a good portion of them did.  I was left with a hundred and some fans and more fans were just trickling in.  Ok, I thought — just like everything else regarding social media, this isn’t going to happen overnight.  Patience is the best virtue you can have when it comes to things like this.  So I hunkered down and kept up both my Twitter account and my Facebook fan page equally.  I tweet more than I update my FB status, only because I have a sense that people don’t want to fan pages to clutter up their walls all day.  I may be wrong — this is just a gut feeling.  So I make sure I have at least a couple of updates a day on my fan page and tweet whenever the urge comes over me.

The Fan Chart

As you can see by this chart, things got started in late July and the numbers crept up ever so slightly over time.  Then you can see a big jump in fans in November.  Ironically, this was a result of me going against my own principles.  (Kind of like George in the Seinfeld episode where he does the opposite of what he normally does and eeverything works out for him.) If you have been keeping up with my blog, you will know that I try and follow my own rules of social media and I also sort of preach them.  I often say do not ask for votes or ask people to follow or fan you.  I still go by those rules, but I also admittedly break them from time to time.  I just went through my status updates and found this posted on November 18: “Hmmm… Wondering what would happen if all fans of this page suggested it to their friends. ;)”.  This is totally against what I tell people to do. “Patience is so important”, I say. “Rome wasn’t built in a day!”  Well my friend Eri (who is also a Twitter friend) did just that. She suggested my page. So did Amy.  Neither of them have their number of friends listed on their profiles, but let me tell you they have a lot. Eri is from Indonesia and as a result Jakarta ranks as the top city of fans with 83. Chicago, where Amy comes from, ranks 3rd with 31. So as of this writing I have close to 1300 fans.  To some that might be a lot — to others that’s chump change.  But I will say that this is one of the biggest differences I have seen between Facebook and Twitter.  I get #followfriday recommendations on Twitter every week and they never amount to an onrush of followers.  As a matter of fact, the additional followers are negligible.  Since I put out that FB request my fans have increased by 400%.

So what does all this mean? As of this writing we have 1289 fans and 16,403 followers.  Do these numbers mean anything?  Not really.  It’s the amount of interaction you receive that’s important. Dialog is what you want on both platforms. Connections – even making new friends is what this should be all about.

So getting back to the main topic, which aims to list differences between Twitter and Facebook, I will relay a few gems as they have applied to us.

1) You are much more vulnerable to spammers on Twitter than in Facebook. This is truly a drawback in my eyes.
2) Followers seem to be much easier to get that fans.  The difference here is that fans are there because they truly have an interest in what you have to offer. Followers, at least some of them, are more interested in getting you interested in them.
3) It is much easier to have a conversation in almost real time on Twitter.
4) You are born with a “vanity url” on Twitter. Facebook requires at least 25 fans to get this. It used to be much more, so now it’s not as bad as it used to be. Vanity URLs, like http://facebook.com/KidsAreHeroes, are much easier to send out and put on business cards, etc.
5) Twitter seems to have a lot more applications that replace the native web interface.  Seismic Desktop, Tweetdeck and others offer an alternative to viewing and interacting with your tweets.  As an afterthought seemingly, Tweetdeck now allows you to read and update your Facebook page, but at this time doesn’t seem to have any way to access your fan page.  Tweetdeck is the only one I have experience with, so I may be wrong on this.  But the convenience of not having to refresh the browser every time is nice.
6) For fan pages at least, at least so far for me, fans mostly react off of what we write as opposed to posting original material.  Many fan pages don’t even want you to post original stuff for fear that the other fans will be subjected to spam of that the message might somehow become diluted.  At this point I haven’t experienced that so it’s totally all right if fans start up a conversation, as long as it is related to the theme.  On Twitter most of the posts are written by others.  You select those that interest you and interact with them.
7) Twitter makes it much easier for you find new people and to get to know them, at least at a basic level, before you decide to follow them.  Even if their tweets are protected you can see their profile, where they live and what they say about themselves if they have filled out that info.  If they are not protected you can see all their tweets and get a good sense if you might have a chance for a connection. Facebook doesn’t allow for that.
8) Facebook has a better capability to be a hub for your company. In a Twitter profile you are able to provide one hyperlink that will actually go somewhere.  With a little trickery in FB you can have virtually unlimited links on the sidebar of your wall.

Again, if you have 100 followers on Twitter and 100 friends on Facebook, the experience between the two might be very similar.  This post comes from the angle of wanting to promote a business or in my case a non-profit.

So, which one is better for promoting your business, cause or non-profit?  If you had asked me 6 months ago I would have said Twitter – hands down.  But now I spend a lot of time managing both platforms. I think I am finally starting to worry less about which platform to use and worry more about effective ways to engage people in general.  We don’t want to overload or spam people.  We do want to get our message across, but must realize they have a message too that is equally as important.

I would love to hear your suggestions on how we can engage people better, and/or tell us how you do it.