Social media marketing is one of the essential strategies to win in the competitive online world. The social channels bring the brands closer to their customers with more personal engagement. There are numerous social media marketing platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn. And the recent entry in the list of highly effective social media marketing channels is Snapchat.
Looking at the success of this new social channel, Facebook is also preparing to compete with it by eyeing up most of its features. Both the channels have their own features and strengths, which make it really difficult for the brands to pick one for their social media marketing.
The question here is, “Who is the clear winner?”
Actually, there is no exact answer to this question. We can just compare the features and find out their strengths. Let’s try to understand which is better with the points given below.
1. Audience
If we look at the number of users, the clear winner is Facebook with around 1.65 billion monthly active users. The comparatively new social channel Snapchat boasts of having over 100 million daily users.
2. Youth Appeal
When we look at the platform that attracts more people in the age group of 13 to 35, Snapchat wins the race. This is an appealing social networking tool for a younger audience that likes the funny and instant form of communication. Around 60% of the audience on Snapchat is of youngsters and teenagers.
Facebook, which was once highly popular among the youth, has now become a social networking channel for older people. Most of the new registrations on the platform are of people in the age group of 45 to 54. Further, due to more involvement of family members on Facebook, youngsters have now started avoiding it.
3. Engagement
Though Snapchat tried to grow its engagement through ephemeral content, it couldn’t beat Facebook that is a great source of information for an enormous number of users. The point to notice here is that Snapchat is expected to get more engagement in future, which is expected to be 23 minutes a day by every user in 2018. So, right now Facebook might be the winner, the new channel is all set to give it a tough competition in near future.
4. Fun
Facebook used to be interesting, but using it is no more a fun activity. It has just become an information source with some creativity time to time.
On the contrary, Snapchat is making all the efforts to grab the attention of the youth by offering more and more fun activities. The platform has many interesting activities like turning you into a dog, swapping your face with Leonardo DiCaprio etc. Further, an association of brands with the sponsored lenses made it more interesting from a business perspective.
So, when it comes to more interesting and enjoyable channel, Snapchat is the clear winner.
5. Advertising
I know you have been waiting for this point all throughout the blog as this is the most important factor for any brand. Actually, there is as such no competition between Facebook and Snapchat on this point. With numerous promotion options for brands, Facebook has already captured a huge market and has established itself as a preferred advertising channel.
Further, this well-established social marketing platform offers a number of tools to expand the reach of ads. On the other hand, Snapchat is still in its infant stage of advertising growth.
Takeaway
Looking at the points above, it is clear that Facebook is more beneficial social media marketing channel for brands. But you cannot ignore the fact that Snapchat has given a tough competition to Facebook and has a huge potential in future. The channel offers the best features and creative content for consistent engagement.
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