In the world of Social media marketing, Facebook is regarded as the biggest name with a staggering 2.7 active monthly users as of the 2nd quarter of 2020. That is a giant lead over Instagram’s 1 billion active userbases over the same period. Quite obviously Facebook is the best Social media marketing platform, right? Or is it?
On paper, Facebook might sound like the best social media marketing platform, but no it’s not the end of the discussion yet. There is more to it. Riding on the success of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has become the 3rd cent-billionaire and the youngest one in the club. With nearly a billion userbase Facebook is the undisputed social media king. The young and the old use it alike.
Instagram, on the other hand, had a rather humble beginning. What started as a mere photo-sharing app where you could flaunt the bright side of your life but eventually became an everyday stress-busting capsule for the millennials. Instagram is the best possible way to be updated on your favourite influencers, art, fashion, and of course the new addition – Instagram reels.
But the real question here is which one is better for a social media marketing platform? Let’s find out:
User-Base: Facebook is the most popular social media platform with a userbase of nearly 3 billion active users. In this arena, Instagram has a lot of catching up to do as it has something over just a billion users. It is quite obvious that with Facebook you have access to a large number of people irrespective of geographical boundaries and age groups.
User-group: The big difference between Facebook and Instagram is the type of people who actually uses this platform. Facebook is just like a free ticket to anybody regardless of their age. Facebook has been standing strong since the past 10+ years after it overthrew Orkut and Myspace. On the contrary, Instagram is dominated by bye the millennials that are, the people born after the 1990s. The biggest difference between these two groups is the ability to be influenced. Millennials are easy to influence and convince group whereas the baby-boomers and boomers (people who were born before the 1990s) are a tough nut to crack
Algorithm: Facebook algorithm once was one among the finest of its kind, but was nerfed many times as it was caught up in many controversies including the US election controversy (Cambridge Analytica) and Russian misinformation controversy. This took a serious toll on small businesses that depended heavily on Facebook.
Despite having a large userbase, the reach of Facebook posts is quite low as compared to Instagram. Even if you are a person with 1000 friends on Facebook, sometimes it becomes quite difficult to even reach 100 people. On the other hand, Instagram posts are mostly based on the most relevant topics coupled with the freshness of the post.Audience Targeting: As mentioned before, Facebook used to give you God-like control before the major controversies, but has been nerfed many times. Even today great flexibility is offered by Facebook in terms of audience targeting and the level of in formation you can gather is staggering.
Instagram is also owned by Facebook. But their recent changes benefitted digital marketers in a great way. Over the past 6 months itself, Instagram has gone through a lot of change which hugely benefitted the Social Media Marketing community. By looking at the momentum, we can sure say that Instagram might eclipse Facebook in the near future in terms of marketing abilities and effectiveness.Audience engagement: When it comes to audience engagement, Instagram is the undisputed king. The parity between Facebook and Instagram in terms of audience engagement is astounding. The rate of engagement in Facebook stands around 2 to 5 per cent, but it Instagram, it stands tall at a whopping 30%. This stat alone is a testimonial to the fact that how powerful Instagram is.
The biggest reason behind this is due to the fact that the purpose of these two platforms is totally different. Facebook is mostly about connecting with people you know, staying in touch with friends, families, etc. Instagram on the other hand is more visual-oriented. The appearance itself has a huge difference. Here people love to connect with their icons, stars, and amazing pictures and videos. So, on Facebook, people aren’t, much into ads or other stuff but the Instagram audience is much for receptive to ads and they even appreciate visually appealing stuff there.Content: The general content of Facebook mostly includes updates from friends, family, and colleagues. Facebook can incorporate long texts and lots of informative content suitable for imparting knowledge or educating people about a particular topic, trending topics, etc. But on the other hand, Instagram is mostly about attractive images, short and crisp videos, and reels to long IGTV videos. They are effective in propagating quickly to attract content such as colourful imagery.
The Final Verdict
Facebook and Instagram are both amazing in their own ways. But when it comes to digital marketing, it is mostly based on the nature of your business and the type of audience that matters.
If you are into marketing visually appealing and aesthetic products that can be marketed using amazing imageries, then Instagram is your thing. Go for Instagram if your target audience is the millennial group. Also, Instagram is the place where you can take the aid of influencer marketing too, which cannot happen much on Facebook on this scale. It is among the best way to build your brand image and better customer image. But one big disadvantage here is that Instagram does not allow link sharing and only one hyperlink can be mentioned in your bio.
Facebook on the other hand is suitable for those kinds of businesses or services which need a lot of explaining to do and B2B businesses. As opposed to Instagram, Facebook does not look like a photo album and people are more receptive to long texts over here. You can explain and enlighten about your business, channel some serious omg omg traffic to your webpage, and as opposed to Instagram, you can share multiple links here. Also, don’t forget about the huge user-base this platform has as it accommodates all the different age groups.