September 19, 2014

Facebook vs. Twitter: How Does Engagement Differ On Each Platform?

How many times have you clicked “post” or “tweet,” and then obsessively checked to see how many likes or retweets you received? If you’re a social media marketer, chances are you’ve done this more than you’d like to admit.

In a perfect world, every piece of content we distribute via social media would go viral. Unfortunately, this rarely happens. As marketers, we share content on social media in hopes of getting a reaction from users. However, it’s difficult to know whether your Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn followers will find your content helpful or simply browse by it. So what do you do?

The folks at Klout were wondering the same thing, so they took the social media data— derived from the social interactions of over 580 million people—contained in their Klout Topics System to determine what topics resonate most with users. Some results were expected, while others were quite eye-opening. Here’s the lowdown:

  • Entertainment and Lifestyle are the two most engaged topic areas on Facebook and Twitter.
  • The top 10 topics on each network are similar, with music and television ranking number one and number two on each network, respectively.
  • The food and beverage category sees much higher engagement on Facebook compared to Twitter.
  • Customer service sees significantly more engagement on Twitter than on Facebook.
  • Despite being popular conversation starters, healthcare, insurance, electronics, concerts, and business news have low engagement rates on Facebook and Twitter.
  • There are more dog lovers than cat lovers on social media. Posts about dogs actually drive more engagement than your favorite cat meme on both social platforms. (Can you believe that?)

So does this mean you should ditch your cat and adopt a puppy? No, it means that social media marketers must think strategically about content creation—which starts with first getting a grip on your target audiences’ likes, dislikes, and everything in between. The next, and often most difficult, task is creating content that attracts and engages. Here are a few quick tips on creating shareable content:

1.Make it useful: Engaging content is useful content. Teach your audience something new that can be applied easily to their everyday life or job. Chances are if one person finds it useful, they will share with others in their company, industry and social networks.

2.Entertain readers: The last thing you want to do is bore your followers to death with content. Use videos, pictures, lists, and graphs (even throw in a meme) to make your content entertaining. More importantly, entice readers by creating a killer headline.

3.React fast: During last year’s Super Bowl blackout, Oreo got a lot of buzz from their on-the-fly Facebook post. When posts are timely, they feel more authentic to users. However, there’s a fine line you must walk. Don’t “jump on the bandwagon” unless it’s relevant to your audience.

Need help with creating content or managing your social media accounts? Good news; we can help! Check out our list of content marketing services here.







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