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Facebook "likes" vs Tweets: which is more profitable for business?
I was reading this Mashable article and found it interesting that this study found that "Likes" on Facebook have proven to be more profitable than Tweets. What has been more profitable for your business? How do you track/measure this?
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8 Answers
Echoing a few of Lewis's comments & adding some more depth on how to measure:
-We use social media quite a bit at HubSpot ... and we have seen it generate leads and customers, though it isn't our 'TOP' channel ... it is actually meaningful.
-We can compare the different social channels and have found that for us LinkedIn is the number one in terms of conversion, but Twitter it the highest in terms of volume with Facebook as a close second. You could use HubSpot or if you are pretty good with Google, then you should set up unique goals on your social media promotion pages and you can then track visits and 'conversions' from those channels. It might be a little harder to track customers, but if you are smart with your CRM you can do that too.
-That means that in terms of 'bang for buck' we get most value out of LinkedIn ... but because we also seek awareness - Twitter and Facebook give us that additional benefit.
But how do you decide the 'value' in terms of dollars for these channels?
-Pure 'clean' ROI would require us to take the number of customers we generate compared to the amount of time we spend cultivating those channels - but it would leave out the awareness part. We actually did an exercise a few months ago to evaluate the 'monetary value of a Twitter follower' and based it on leads and came up with a number that we now use as a benchmark to think about effort / investment.
-That said, we don't have a specific model we use to evaluate the awareness dollar value. Ideas are welcome and rest assured our own Dan Zarrella is always at work thinking about this stuff in his role as Social Media Scientist.
At my company I am in charge of the social media. I started Facebook and Twitter for our company around the same time in Feb of this year. We have accumulated a significantly bigger following on Twitter as well of had more people engage us via twitter. However neither medium at this point has generated a significant business opportunity or actual profit.
Twitter has sent more traffic to our site based off of my Google analytic reports. However despite the much lower "likes" (28) vs. 300+ followers on twitter FB still has sent quite a few people to our site also.
At this point I would say that Twitter has helped to generate more awareness and branding of our company.
I hope that in the future we may have actual revenues generated from both mediums but in order to track that we would need the prospect to either contact us via FB or Twitter or mention to us that they found us that way.
At this point I look at social media as a way to build awareness of our company identity and brand and not so much as a revenue generation as we are in B2B. For B2C I could see social media more effective in actually transmitting sales.
-Lewie
For starters, I wouldn't compare "likes" to "tweets".
I would compare Facebook likes to Twitter followers as each of them gives an instant indication of your page/profile popularity.
I would compare Facebook "posts" to "tweets" in terms of which of them got more comments/retweets.
For Garious, Twitter brings more Traffic than Facebook. The reason behind that is the entire team is Twitterholic!
But we didn't let our Twitter passion affect our Facebook presence as we kicked off the year by revamping our Facebook page and adding welcome tab with a promotional video about our services.
Personally, I don't think there's a general rule of thumb that would apply to every business. It's the business nature and how actively it is engaged in both platforms that will determine the final outcome. I hope this helps.
Its not the number of likes or tweets that matter - its all in how you use them. I use twitter mostly to post news and topics that I find online that I find relevant, this has helped me gain new 'followers' and also helped me gain some new readers to my blog.
I use Facebook mostly as a marketing tool, telling people about my products/services and what I am currently working on. Once I get enough followers, I plan on running contests, etc to get more participation and to get people excited about my brand. My hope is that this will help drive sales, etc.
Looking at my analytics, I get more people coming to my site through Twitter, however most of them are looking at my Blog only, while the visitors from Facebook trend to look at the site as a whole.
I will say that it makes sense that Facebook is more valuable, simply because there is more that you can do with it. With the new feature of I-frames replacing FBML, you can even do e-commerce right from a Facebook business page, or "mimic" your website right in Facebook. That's pretty powerful stuff, and Twitter doesn't have anything close to what Facebook can bring to the table as far as tools are concerned.
Ryan
http://MassachusettsWebDesigns.com
Hi Lauren,
Facebook likes are more profitable than tweets as mentioned in "Mashable".Facebook likes are qualitative and Tweets are quantitative in respect to CTR to your web site.
I agree with Lewis with regards to Twitter being a positive means of generating awareness and company branding. Twitter is a great resource for individuals to learn more about the company and what the company is doing. In addition, if individuals tweet positive comments about a specific company, then it’s essentially free positive advertisement and prove quite profitable. On the other hand, “Likes” on Facebook are similar to “likes” or high scores on Yelp or YouTube. They allow individuals to see what others think of that company without having to read lengthy comments. While “likes” may drive someone to a company’s page, Tweets provide the information necessary for a person to “like” that company or not.
I'm wondering which is more profitable for customers? As customers, we all go where we find value; value can be defined in many different ways for each one of us.
If I use Facebook to complain, that in itself is of value to me, although a company may not interpret it in that way. Also need to bear in mind that in order to write on a company's wall, I need to 'like' them. So it's important to understand that the underlying reason for a 'like' isn't necessarily all positive.
There is also more of a sense of permanence with Facebook, unlike with Twitter where it is literally a snapshot of a moment. This in itself has implications on value.
But ultimately, as Aaron refers to above, Facebook and Twitter are two different beasts. It's difficult to compare 'likes' and 'tweets' and make them add up to 'five'.
User generated link shares to Facebook and Twitter are more valuable than 'Likes”
- 'Likes' are a one-time engagement action. The 'like' post appears in the users Recent Activity stream and then gets tucked away under "Other Pages" in their profile. Likes can help you get page subscribers, but as a P2P referral tool, this tactic falls short.
- Getting users to "like" your page and become subscribers is not enough to ensure continued community engagement. There is steep competition when it comes to news feed visibility and Facebook uses a complex ranking algorithm to determine which content gets displayed to your fans. If the content you produce is popular enough (receives a high number of 'likes' and comments) you have a better shot at getting your updates displayed, but often times your posts won't be distributed to all your Facebook fans.
When it comes to social marketing, fueling user generated link shares is the way to go. It took my team 6 months to design and build a turnkey way to facilitate this, but we are thrilled to announce that businesses are no longer limited to ‘Likes’ and “Tweets” to create P2P social media value (and ‘check-ins’ are no longer limited to mobile devices and physical locations).
http://stopped.at - Check In to websites. Share your online location with friends. Unlock deals and discounts.
Would love to hear your feedback! Feel free to contact me at Mara@stopped.at
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