Social media has gripped the world; even a film based on the creators of the infamous 'Facebook' was released this year.
The reason why social media has reached such heights of fame is not solely because of its usage as a way of connecting friends together, but because of its use as a SEO and marketing tool for businesses, charities and even the government.
But with Twitter and Facebook at heads with one another, which is the best tool for search engine optimisation? Facebook and Twitter are both at the top of their field as social media networks.
They connect a variety of people from one side of the globe to another successfully, but which one is a better tool for online marketing? The advantage of Twitter is that you can solely reply and retweet content, enabling a far more effective and fast way of sharing content and information.
Thus a Twitterer is more likely to share content than Facebook where sharing or 'I like' is more of an optional thing.
On the other hand, Facebook allows people to become 'fans of' and share the group or business page, which means Facebookers are more likely to view further content from the business.
You also have to consider in an SMO plan, how each social media is used by viewers.
For instance, Facebook was originally launched for making or keeping in contact with friends and has kept with it the culture of friendships.
This culture of friendship often means Facebook is not the place for gaining thousands of fans, but rather a dedicated fan base that are interested in your content on a long term basis.
Twitter is the opposite, as it's about keeping up to date with gossip and content not necessarily from close friends but casual ones.
These casual friends are more likely to be connected due to their interest in similar activities, hobbies and interests, thus it becomes quite easy to connect to your target group once you have a few people interested.
Twitter can easily gain you far more interest in content in the short term due to the 'follow' and 'unfollow 'button, however, you can easily get lost in the mass tweets, quickly losing interest in your content.
Twitterers usually follow hundreds of people, wanting people to follow them in return; often meaning that your tweets are lost in the hundreds of tweets.
Because it is so causal Tweeters often don't care as much about your content they may often ignore it, focusing on their own tweets and grabbing more gossip.
Facebook on the other hand is a far better place for sharing updates as status updates can stay on the home page for far longer, meaning they are less likely to not see the content.
Facebook and Twitter combined in SEO tactics complement one another as you can receive the benefits of targeting you exact audience in the long and short term.
Twitter so far has been found a far easier place to engage with the clientele for the first time, but it may not be an ideal place to build a long term clientele.
To conclude, neither one is better than the other; in fact they are best used in conjunction with one another.