Small Business Blog

I always recommend Referral Key first if exchanging qualified sales leads and small business networking are what you’re after however, I realize that promotion and personal branding are also important areas of marketing, areas that social media can help facilitate.

Advice from Chris Brogan

I’ll admit, marketing guru and fellow Bostonian Chris Brogan’s blog got the gears turning on the subject of Twitter versus Facebook.

“Facebook has many more users, but it’s a bit harder to find customers, prospects, partners and colleagues. Twitter is easier to use and faster to connect with people, but there are far fewer users on there today. I’ll let you choose. If you go with Facebook, make a personal account under your own name, and then start a fan page for your business.”  Chris Brogan

I happen to agree with Chris,  except I don’t think the actual size of either Twitter or Facebook (Since they are both massive) are going to have much consequence for the average small business owner. A greater emphasis should be placed on demographics and niche’ prospects. I’m also not yet convinced of the effectiveness of Facebook fan pages, particularly for small business owners in less glamorous industries i.e. Law, Finance, Maintenance etc.

Facebook is 40% advertising 60% relationship

Pros

• Facebook facilitates much more comprehensive media sharing (Within the actual site)
• Fosters deeper relationships than Twitter.

Cons

• Limitations set by Facebook mean that you are going to have a very difficult time connecting with people you don’t already know.
• Facebook pages tend to be beneficial for big businesses who promote them but, are not as effective for small businesses.
• It’s much more difficult to identify actual ROI from Facebook activities

Twitter is 60% advertising 40% relationship

Pros

• Twitter is fast
• It is easy to have a reach of a few hundred within a few days
• If you produce good content people will listen
• Twitter Search is an unprecedented way to identify people talking about your services
• Demographic is older*

Cons

• Whether they’d like to admit it or not,  most people have never actually met the majority of their Twitter followers (at least for those using it for marketing)
• Connecting with existing customers and associates means you are making your connection list public to your competitors for the taking; See Think Twice About Business Networking With Your Existing Customers and Associates On Twitter.
• The big advantage of Twitter went to early adopters. As more and more people crowd the space only two things can happen:

1. The natural laws of marketing clutter mean everyone’s voice becomes less effective as more marketers crowd the space (i.e. Myspace)
2. Twitter enables strict regulations, effectively eliminating much of the original advantages of marketing through  Twitter. (i.e. Facebook)

The Winner:

Twitter (For Now)

If you are going to use one of the two for marketing I’d recommend Twitter, at least for now. Too many of your competitors either aren’t on Twitter yet or aren’t using their account. Ii is extremely important to get the most out of Twitter today. There will be a time, very soon, when we’ll all hark back to the glory days of marketing on Twitter.

Tags: Business Networking, twitter

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Business Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.