There’s no doubt that social media has a big impact on businesses and draws in potential customers and fans from all over the world. The decision about which platform to choose has always been a major dilemma, particularly for small businesses that have limited resources in terms of time as well as money.
The Difference Between Facebook and Snapchat
Facebook, of course, is still considered the daddy of social media. It’s usually the first platform that entrepreneurs sign up to when they launch a new company. It boasts over one and a half billion users worldwide and allows users to post articles, videos and images to their fans and followers.
Facebook has been looking to expand recently with the introduction of live streaming. It’s a range of different and quite powerful tools, including targeted advertising, which many businesses find useful.
Snapchat may be way behind on just 100 million daily users, but it’s also attracting a good deal of the youth market, something that is declining on Facebook.
Snapchat is a more focused social media platform, allowing users to produce videos and images which only last a few seconds before they ‘self-destruct’. This ephemeral nature seems to appeal particularly to younger users and up to 700 million snaps are sent on the platform each day.
The good news for your company is that you don’t have to choose between one or the other. Both Facebook and Snapchat can help your business reach out and engage with users all over the world.
Facebook and Your Business
Facebook undoubtedly has a broader range of tools suitable for marketers and businesses. You can create your own page, post a range of content and also advertise using Facebook Ads which has become more and more sophisticated over the last few years.
As with most social media it’s a low-cost marketing initiative and with 1.6 billion users there are plenty of people to reach out to. Sharing a wide range of content is easy and many businesses are now using the platform as a way to provide customer service, help and advice.
Snapchat: The Challenge for Businesses
While Facebook has been a standard marketing choice for businesses around the world, Snapchat does require a different approach. That doesn’t mean, however, it won’t pack a punch if you get your marketing strategy right.
For a start, you can produce tutorials for your product and services and give an insight into how your business runs. As with Facebook, developing the right content for your audience is vitally important. Get the approach perfect and you could find Snapchat users taking up the challenge, engaging with your product or service and sending your message viral.
While Snapchat is still, to a certain extent, unchartered territory for businesses, and you may have to experiment a lot more to find the best approach, it’s a social media platform that brands are increasingly engaging with and getting profitable results.
As with any marketing strategy, you need to build your fans and followers on both Snapchat and Facebook. That means having a clear brand identity and an idea about who your customer is and what content they want to see.