Social selling. Difference between Facebook and Twitter

sasha uritsky

Feb 03, 2015

There are obviously some key differences between Facebook and Twitter that make them appealing to different people as well as businesses. If possible, businesses should try to leverage both networks in their marketing and sales efforts.

But marketing approaches for each network differ. Consequently social selling approaches differ as well. Here are some major differences of the two networks that impact sales strategy:

- Twitter lets all the accounts commingle, Facebook makes a definite distinction between business and personal. This can be an issue because a business page cannot proactively connect with individuals with personal profiles. Individuals have to first like a business page and still the business can’t reach out to them directly unless they message first. This is not the case with Twitter, as anyone can follow pretty much anyone.

- Facebook preferred way to market products and promote online sales can be compared to a showroom. The prospects can see the product and purchase it through some other channel, however engagement (with prospects) is limited to friends and followers. Hence growing the number of friends and followers becomes a critical task on Facebook. Twitter does not offer promotional capabilities but engagement activity is not limited to followers. The engagement on Twitter is therefore more straightforward and can lead to direct sales.

- Facebook user data is typically open to friends or followers. Twitter data is typically open to the entire world.

- Twitter is fast (minutes). Facebook is slower (hours and days).

- Twitter is more about building a brand identity. Facebook is more about business relationships.

To summarize, a direct timely engagement could be a good strategy on Twitter. In a typical scenario a user tweets that she needs a taxi or asks where to dine tonight. A taxi company or a relevant restaurant engages in a conversation and secures a customer. It is an efficient approach with immediate ROI.

On Facebook a good strategy is to grow and educate a community of followers. Facebook is excellent for promotional campaigns. This is a longer-term strategy with effects not visible until after several months.

Interested in reading more? Check out our other blogs:

Social Engagement and Sales Accelerate When Using Intent-Driven Data

nmodes delivers consumer intent from social web to businesses. In real-time.

That is, if your company is selling cars we will connect you with potential customers out there that express intent to buy a car.

nmodes has partnered with a medium-sized travel company to help grow their social web sales channel. Our approach is to deliver consumer intent relevant to the company (people planning vacations, going on trips, flying to various world destinations, etc) and develop engagement strategies maximizing the impact of this consumer information.

Here are the results based on 4 months of data:

• The most efficient way to achieve short-term sales turned out to be individually targeted promo campaigns. For example, our travel partner created an attractive vacation destination package, and nmodes helped to spread the word on social media to those intended going on vacation.

A typical conversation start leading to promo offering. nmodes intent-based solution made it especially easy to target only relevant end users:

• The response rate varies geographically.

Canada - 20%

USA - 64%.

• The conversion rate is consistent across all locations and is slightly above 4%. When concentrating on vacation packages we were targeting 20-50 prospects daily, resulting in 2-4 sales per week, averaged $15,000 /mo or $200,000 /year.

• The potential for this particular market segment (all-inclusive vacations) in the US is at least x10 higher.

• The engagement was based on the combination of intent-based data and location data.

An intent-based sample for European destination package, travelers from USA:

While working with companies from various verticals we proved that intent-based data paired with location data offers a powerful opportunity to drive sales aggressively and accelerate business growth.

nmodes is best equipped to ensure that your business can benefit from this newly available power.

The Automation Is Coming

A close look at the history of humanity leaves us with no choice but to admit that the majority of jobs as we know them now will be transferred to automated systems. This is part of the technological and scientific progress our civilization is undertaking and it is irreversible.

Artificial intelligence became mainstream in 2016. For the first time artificial intelligence is not only available to big companies like Google, Amazon or Apple, but to the majority of businesses worldwide. Startups have started building products and services using artificial intelligence en masse.

The essence of artificial intelligence is massive, intuitive computing power: machines so smart that they can learn and become even smarter. The machines are becoming quicker and more nimble. They cover wider range of conversation topics. They now connect to robotic systems and online interactive systems. There is literally very little they cannot, or will not be able to, do as applied to industrial workforce.

With all the good that’s going to come with automation, we are suddenly faced with a new problem: the elimination of many low and middle class jobs. Many jobs that have already been severely impacted by computers (manufacturing, administrative support, retail, and transportation) will continue to diminish. In the nearest future routine-based jobs (telemarketing, sewing) and work that can be solved by smart algorithms (tax preparation, data entry keyers and insurance underwriters) are most likely to be eliminated.

What to do? It is fruitless to fight automation, we need to find ways to work with automation rather than against it.

The solution is to become more creative as species. Creativity is the natural advantage of humans over machines. Automation is about to change the course of the world, it’s going to be a great disruptor and impact the workforce like nothing we’ve seen before. We can sit around and gradually become obsolete, or accept the challenge and use the tool of creativity, which we are in unique possession of, to maintain our superiority.