The number of social media users continues to grow every day that making these platforms extremely popular. Clearly, this means various businesses can use it in creating their marketing strategies. Among some of the most popular social media sites are Facebook and Instagram.
They are both owned by Facebook, but even so, the two have a lot of differences. These differences are something that marketers need to consider before they try and establish a marketing campaign on these platforms.
To make sure your business will succeed you need to be active on social media and market your services and products on these platforms. Below https://jatapp.com/ marketing experts break down some of the noticeable differences between the two and how they affect marketing.
Differences in audience
Understanding the demographics of your audience can help you set up a marketing campaign and ultimately, get better results. One of the first important differences between the two is that Instagram has a much younger user base.
Younger Instagram users are active daily while older users use it less regularly. Most Instagram users are less than 30 years old, and a lot of them are still teenagers.
Even though Facebook has an older audience, it doesn’t mean that marketing on the platform doesn’t have its advantages. First of all, they have a higher income on average and a higher level of education. This means that certain types of businesses would do better on Facebook than on Instagram.
Content-type differences
Currently, Instagram is the best when it comes to engagement, as images excel at grabbing people’s attention. A lot of marketers use Instagram to host image contests along with a hashtag campaign for better result tracking and more viral potential.
The crucial difference between the two in terms of content is that Instagram promotes more visual content.
Instagram doesn’t allow you to use all of the functionalities it has on a PC. It’s designed to be used by mobile users primarily. If you want to add photos, stories, or videos, you have to do this using your phone. This is why Instagram is generally good for spreading original photos and videos that can be branded.
On the other hand, Facebook is more suitable for curated content. There are a lot more things being shared on Facebook, while Instagram encourages users to make their own content. Facebook is also better for creating text-based posts and allows marketers to create.
Engagement statistics
Engagement is where Instagram reigns compared to Facebook, even though it has far fewer users. The average median engagement rate on Instagram is 1.60% per post, while it’s 0.09% on Facebook. This indicates just how different these two platforms are in terms of campaign benchmarking.
One of the reasons for this is that Facebook limits business pages. This means that if you have 1000 people following you, only around 30% of them will see the posts you share. Simply put, marketers have to pay and boost their posts to get better engagement.
On the other hand, there aren’t such limitations on Instagram. At the same time, the audience is more open to liking posts on Instagram, which further leads to increased engagement.
Paid options
Facebook has been organized to encourage people to use paid marketing options. This is why their algorithms hide a lot of things from regular users and make it impossible to reach them. Facebook has a dedicated campaign manager with all the tools and functionalities marketers need.
You can create ads, boost posts, or use them to manage full marketing campaigns. Instagram also comes with an ad manager and different options for creating ads, including story ads, photo ads, video ads, collection ads, carousel ads, and so on.
Still, tracking campaign results is a bit trickier on Instagram. In general, both platforms give you a lot of paid marketing options and many targeting options to help get the best results possible. Additionally, Instagram offers more influencer marketing options than Facebook.
Mobile
Facebook is pretty much the same when accessed through a PC or an app. The user can chat on Messenger, make posts, and upload anything, and so on.
On the other hand, Instagram is designed for mobile use and has many limitations when used on a PC. This means that Instagram limits marketers and other users to mobile devices.
On the other hand, marketers on Facebook can use whatever they prefer to create their marketing campaigns. Still, around 95% of active Facebook users access the network via mobile, while around 31% do this with a desktop or laptop.
When creating content for Facebook users, make sure they are mobile-friendly but can also be viewed or used through PCs, laptops, and tablets. With Instagram, you only need to ensure that the content is mobile-friendly.
Conclusion
In our opinion, you shouldn’t make a choice between these two platforms. You should find a way to use them both for your marketing campaigns to further enhance your results. Just work on recognizing which aspects of your campaign would work better on which platform.
