Monday, May 30, 2011

Twitter Followers & Facebook Fans: Which Ones Are More Profitable?

If you wandered over to eMarketer last week, you probably noticed their post entitled “Are Twitter Followers Better Than Facebook Fans?” Fascinating stuff! Just by reading that post, you can find out which Social Network you should focus on, right? Wrong.



Fans VS Followers

In the article, eMarketer noted that Twitter followers were 37% more likely to make a purchase, compared to 27% of email subscribers and 17% of Facebook fans. It also included some helpful stats, which indicated Twitter followers were 33% more likely to recommend a brand they follow on Twitter while emails subscribers were only 24% likely to do so and 21% of Facebook fans were willing to recommend the companies they follow.
This may lead you to believe that, if you want sales and recommendations, you should focus on Twitter. I’d caution you to slow down and look at things objectively.

Analyzing the Numbers

We all know that different segments do things differently. With this study, we’re not 100% sure what industries were covered. We also need to keep in mind that Twitter and Facebook only cover a small segment of Internet users.
Twitter, for instance, has more than 105 million users, not all of these are human, used regularly, or are unique (many users have multiple accounts). Facebook has over 500 million users. Again, not all of them are used, human, or unique. The Internet has an estimated 1,966,514,816 users, which is only approximately 28.7% of the world’s population.
With statistics like these, it’s easy to put this information into perspective. Does it mean these two social platforms should be ignored? Absolutely not. It’s simply means you need to be cautious about your approach.

The Ultimate Solution

If you really want to find out what target audiences are more likely to do, ask them! Don’t just limit yourself to Facebook and Twitter either. There are thousands of social media sites out there. Remember, it isn’t just the number of users, but the quality of the connections and conversions that will make your business profitable.

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