Instagram vs Facebook: Which Is Best for You & Your Brand?

Social media marketing can be very tricky. It seems like the platforms keep changing their methods of how you can get your message out. It can be very frustrating at times.

Should you be using Facebook or Instagram to promote yourself? It can vary depending on what you are selling and what medium would fit best. Before you decide to join Instagram engagement pods, it’s best to look at what is out there with the two social media giants – they have over 3 billion users among them.

In this post, we will do Facebook marketing vs Instagram marketing.

Facebook

Facebook is the giant in the field. They have helped shape the course of how this country think for better or worse. Are they the best option?

This is what is used by a lot of people for anything from remembering birthdays to setting up group events. A huge portion of the United States still log in daily and spend a good amount of time on the site. That makes for a great target group for you to try to reach.

The best feature that you should consider for Facebook ads is target marketing. Why?

• You can choose from a wide array of demographics and specifically choose which niches that you want to pick from.
• That will allow you to craft things that get their attention instead of taking a scattershot approach.
• More teens are leaving to go to other platforms, but you can still get in front of adults who will likely have more disposable income to spend on your product, among others.

You can create a business page for free. Make sure to put up an eye-catching banner page that captures people’s attention while explaining what it is that you do and what you are selling. You can update the page with

• specials
• sales
• tutorials
• Anything else that comes to mind

You need to regularly add things because it shows that your business is active. People rapidly lose interest if they see that a business page has not been updated in a while. Constant updates can keep bringing in new people, too.

Another option to consider for your brand is to regularly use the Facebook Live option. Older users tend to gravitate toward that, and it’s also an excellent way to talk with them in real time.

Basically, Facebook is more for people who are:

• text-oriented
• looking for original content
• likely to ignore influencers
• using a broad range of devices, from phones to tablets to computers
• using the Facebook Messenger app
• more likely to click on links in a post

Instagram

The first thing to remember is that Facebook owns Instagram. They can seem to operate as separate entities, but there are ways that they are intertwined. Like if you want to promote something on Instagram, you have to have a Facebook business page attached to it.

Instagram is a visual medium. People can post photos and videos, which makes it an excellent place for creatives to gather. The nature of the platform, with people scrolling makes it important to do something that immediately makes them stop and watch.

The thing about Instagram is that it also allows you to be creative when it comes to the captions under the photos or videos. You can craft your own voice and make it something

People used to be able to look at photos from the people that they follow in chronological order, but now it depends on how many people interact with a post by either

• liking
• sharing
• commenting on it.

That being said, there can be different strategies to use. The aforementioned engagement pods, for example. If you are not familiar with it, basically you do a mass direct message to people within your group, or ‘pod’, so that they immediately go interact with your latest post so as to boost your engagement. The algorithm will see that there is activity there and may then decide to promote your post more widely.

While this may be a good short term strategy, it can be

• Time-consuming and stressful, since the window for the engagement is roughly 45 minutes after the post was published.
• Difficult since you can’t tell if you are truly reaching more people or just are in sort of an echo chamber.
• Hard to maintain, since both Facebook and Instagram don’t like when people try to game the algorithm

There are certain products that might lend themselves to your contacting influencers on the site. They might wear your clothes, talk about your perfume, or use your recipes. Influencers can reach MANY people each day and that can boost your sales.

Those influencers will want money, though, and like the pods, it’s possibly not a good long-term strategy. Why?

• Social media fame can be quite fleeting. There are many out there that get their 15 minutes and then fade away.
• The users may not like the obvious ads and scroll past them. They can sense inauthenticity too, which really hurts both the influencers brand and yours.
• You don’t want your influencer saying anything misleading. That can lead to FTC fines.

So what can you do? Find an influencer that genuinely loves your product, uses it, and has a loyal following that truly trusts them. It may take some digging but the payoff can be well worth it.

Consider using IGTV or Instagram Stories to get bite-size messages about your product or service out to the younger generation. This is the age group that tends to utilize this option. The more creative, the better.

The people who use Instagram are:

• more visual
• open to curated or shared posts
• open to influencers
• liking the carousel posts the most
• avid phone users
• more apt to talk via direct message
• open to clicking links in a bio

When it comes to cost-per-click, this is a more expensive option, but the people who do click it are more likely to follow through.

Do Not Do The Same Thing For Both

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While it is tempting – Instagram does offer you the chance to send out your posts to other platforms like Facebook, it is not a good idea to publish the same thing all over. You want to curate your social media posts for different platforms… and having an Instagram post on Facebook wouldn’t have the impact of a carefully-written ad. It’s all about knowing your audience.

Celebrities tend to like using Instagram more because it’s a visual medium and they want to post pictures of themselves and other things around them. Instagram really also gives you the best chance of being creative – though TikTok is closing that gap, too.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to know what market you want to reach out to. Your product or service might be something that people of all ages can use or wear. You would likely be best served using both to a degree.

Why? It’s not a good idea to use only one platform, since the age ranges are not set in stone. You might have a senior citizen start up an Instagram account and you might have a teenager decide to checkout Facebook again.

When you do post on Facebook or Instagram, you would really do well to focus on the quality of what you put out there. You should be asking yourself, “Is this really what my audience wants to see?” Do that every time and that should really help boost your metrics over the course of time.

You or your marketing company should do a deep dive into each and really consider how to approach them. Play around a bit if you are just starting out. You can always adapt and change as time goes on.

As time goes on, you may see that there are some synergies that can happen and there are others where one works strongly in one category and not in others. By tailoring things, you can truly set yourself up for success.