SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is at the vanguard of new techniques to communicate with clients, friends, family and so on. Tools like Twitter and Facebook allow people from far reaches of the earth to communicate with each other, and engage each other on a level that was virtually unthinkable in years past.

Businesses have been keen to use social media to engage customers. According to The Wall Street Journal, the most successful business firms which use social media use it to engage customers in a two-way dialogue and to invite people and get them involved. The way businesses use Twitter and Facebook is different than the way individuals use these social media devices; not to mention there are some drastic differences between these tools. What then can businesses learn from the way its customers use social media?

When individuals use social media such as Twitter, it is typically to interact with people they may not necessarily have a connection to. It's a rather impersonal tool, where unknown individuals can follow your messages, and view your profile. This is in stark contrast to Facebook, where users must be accepted as friends in order to follow, or view certain information about a user. Typically, only friends view your profile.

Individual users on Twitter typically use it as a means to communicate a simple message, usually related to something they've seen on TV or on the Internet, whereas users on Facebook use it to communicate personal messages directed towards friends and family.

What this means for the business community is quite clear: campaigns to reach a customer base would be far better served on Twitter than on Facebook. Facebook is far from the ideal location for a business to pitch its wears in comparison to Twitter.

That being said, a well organized, integrated campaign which uses both tools will undoubtedly be more productive and yield better results than either individually.