Best Organic Online Marketing: Facebook vs. Instagram
Are you looking for which social platform will provide for the best organic online marketing for your business? It is recommended that you focus on only one social platform until it is sufficiently built up. Which should you choose? Here is a comparison of Facebook and Instagram.
Number of Users
Facebook has over 2 billion users and Instagram has over 1 billion.* Both have plenty for your following!
Age of Users
For Facebook, the largest group of users is 25–30 year-olds.*
On Instagram, the largest age range of users is 18–24 year-olds.* However, there are still plenty in each age range on both Instagram and Facebook for your marketing to reach.
Income
For both Facebook and Instagram, the income bracket with the largest group of users is $75K+.*
Gender
75% of women are on Facebook, compared to 63% of men.*
43% of women are on Instagram, compared to 31% of men.*
(Non-binary was not included.)
What do these demographics mean? Because there are so many users on both platforms, they each have plenty in each category. However, which is better depends on what your target market is. Instagram is better for reaching teens than Facebook. If you are mainly trying to reach seniors, Facebook is best. For any other age, they can both work well. If you serve only men, however, you might want to go with Facebook.
Main Factors to Consider
Engagement is key to the best organic online marketing. It helps build trust, essential to conversion.
Engagement on Facebook
On Facebook, you need to participate in groups, friend people, and start direct messages with them to gain engagement. You are not going to reach many people merely by posting on your profile or business page. Even better is to start your own Facebook group where people can get to know you. You can direct the discussion toward the value you provide and promote your services or products.
Engagement on Instagram
On Instagram, there is a lot more engagement with posts than on Facebook. Also, you can follow as a business page those people in your target market. On Facebook, your business page cannot follow profiles. On Instagram, you can follow those people who are not only in your target market but likely to follow you back. You will know this by what their interests are and how their number of followers compares to the number of people they follow. Instagram allows you to easily search for your target market interests. You can follow both business or personal accounts, and both can follow you back on your business account. Instagram will make suggestions on accounts to follow based on your pattern of following people. On Facebook, you must find people to follow with your profile. These can be people you’ve gotten to know in groups.
Summary
The main advantage of Facebook is being able to participate in Facebook groups. It also has a greater number of seniors than Instagram. The main advantage of Instagram is the increased engagement with posts and being able to follow people based on searching for your target market’s interests. Which serves you best depends on your target market demographics and the type of outreach you want to do. No matter which you choose, the best organic online marketing comes from engagement.
*Demographics were taken from the Sprout Social article “Social media demographics to inform your brand’s strategy in 2020”
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