One of my facebook friends recently sent me this question:
What’s the advantage of Twitter over FB? Seems like you can twitter on FB and do so much more. What am I missing, Ms. Social Media Guru?
I’d been pondering the same thing over the past few months, and this is where I come out:
Facebook is for friends to share personal stuff about each other, and you choose with whom to share. The homepage view format resembles twitter, with its list of short status updates, but it’s much more. Sharing personal photos, sending friends whacky “gifts” among other things make Facebook fairly robust and highly social. While many people use Facebook for business contacts, that doesn’t feel quite right to me. Do I really want to see pictures of my work contact’s children, vacation places and potentially embarrassing moments?
Twitter, on the other hand is an easy way to keep up with the thoughts and goings on of people who you may not even know. That’s where it gets interesting. Follow people or organizations you admire, and you get regular exposure into what makes them successful. A great example is Barack Obama. By tweeting regularly, he’s making good on his promise of transparency and creating a great way to get buy in.
Businesses I think should tweet:
- Wegmans, when they have new products
- Restaurants, when they change their menu
- Organizations when they host events
- Growers when crops are progressing and promising good yields (okay, I’m really thinking about wine, here)
- Any kind of business when it offers new services
That said, I wouldn’t start a twitter page unless you’re going to tweet at least a couple times a month.
Andrea Zuegel
You also have to take in consideration that Twitter should be used as a brand maintenance tool in coordination with other mediums. Wegmans is currently on twitter, but just to announce new products would be a huge underutilization. They should post on community efforts and related organizations like the culinary center, their organic test farm / recipes / menu magazine features, classes , culinary events, food bank drives.
Its should serve as open conversation to its users. More of a tool that offers some transparency, and engage its followers in a more informal way that will help shape more of a personal connection.
I have been using twitter for about 2 years now, and where it succeeds is the open dialog that can occur and relationship one can have with a personality or identity that may have been previously obscured, or out of reach to its customer base.
Lets say I follow a musician on twitter, and he actively posts. The posts begin to paint a portrait of that artist that might have been completely inaccessible in the past. Lets say they post about events they are attending, and even food they eat, small life happenings – this allows for a different type of entertainment and branding from that musician, which will not only help attain and keep followers – but make the followers more vested in that musicians work / products. – One highlight, seeing Martha Stewart tweet Snoop Dogg about her Doggie Blog.
I think to suggest that twitter is only good for news and events updates is misjudging the technology and its potential power. People will often admire what is unexpected, and are quick to accuse and judge on the internet. You have to have to take a big step when approaching these mediums and really think about the far reaching possibilities. It’s always best to be honest and open when it comes to these venues and putting a brand out there, you have to try and sell less of your product and more personality, and offer more value per character.
And speaking on the difference between twitter and facebook is the medium. Twitter is far more open – and organic than facebook. Facebook is so closed and contained and requires too much time investment to become a part of and manage. Twitter feeds, searches and keywords, and its short sweet and simple nature give it more accessibility, and keeps it casual. The fact that its api is open to phone applications, desktop applications, photo apps, blogs etc. make it a much more fluid and flexible for use. You can basically define how you want to deploy, view, and receive your tweets in a very unrestrictive way.
Facebook is now attempting to achieve the same level of “openness” as it continues to “compete” with twitter: http://mashable.com/2009/03/16/facebook-privacy-setting-everyone/
Miguel,
great insights — thanks for adding on here. I totally agree with you.