Facebook Vs Instagram for Your Business.

Many businesses are fully online and others have business pages on Facebook and Instagram besides their physical stores and home businesses.

Facebook has been around for a while. And for the past 17 years, Facebook has redefined the social media space and brought the possibility of using social media platforms for business.

Instagram on the other hand, launched in 2010 has been one of the fastest-growing social media platforms. Its fast growth is evident through the high numbers of monthly users.

Facebook and Instagram have a wide user base and makes them crucial in linking businesses and prospective customers locally and globally. Facebook has 1.4 billion monthly active users and Instagram has 75 million daily users.

These two platforms have linking features that make marketing on both platforms easier. For example, you can share your Facebook ad on Instagram and vice versa simultaneously.

One thing that makes these two platforms common among businesses is they are affordable. You can even use them for free if you don’t have a budget for Facebook and Instagram ads.

Which is better?

Many business owners new to using Facebook and Instagram for businesses always have a question of which platform is better than the other.

Facebook owns Instagram and the two are almost similar when it comes to advertising for your business. Their advertising capabilities are similar and the difference is only evident through the results achieved.

When using Facebook and Instagram, most businesses want engagement and want to reach the right target audience. Many businesses use these platforms but don’t get great engagement beneficial to their businesses. The issue of reaching the right target audience is also common among many businesses.

For example, many business owners find that they reach a better audience on Instagram compared to Facebook. Same way, on Instagram, many businesses reach an audience that is not interested in their products or services.

Both platforms serve your business with the advantage of ads – paid Facebook ads and paid Instagram ads. And even without asking the question of which is better than the other, using both platforms for your business is beneficial.

Importantly, knowing what you want to achieve is crucial in guiding you on how you use these platforms. When advertising your business on Facebook and Instagram, you can achieve different goals. For example, you can boost your brand awareness, boost your customer service, and how you engage with your followers or generate leads and boost sales. 

Advertising Features on Facebook and Instagram

1.Targeting

Facebook and Instagram users are targeted by ads. How users are targeted depends on their demographics, interests, age, location. Importantly, how a user spends their time on these platforms determines the ads that target them and the relevancy of an ad.

For example, a user who previously searched for a laptop on Facebook is highly going to be targeted by ads showing laptops and websites that sell laptop accessories.

A user who searched for a dress or whose activity shows a specific interest in women’s clothing will see more ads on Instagram showing women’s clothing brands pages and stores.

2.Ads

• Carousel ads

These ads show up frequently on Facebook and Instagram as you scroll and are hard to resist. They appear in a well-designed layout and they are easy to scroll through.

You can combine multiple images or videos with each probably giving more information and are irresistible. These ad increase the chances of converting leads to sales.

• Story Ads

With the story feature on Facebook and Instagram, you can easily run your business ads on your stories.

Apart from running your ads, you can also create a call to action with the swipe up option where users can easily land into your website or the specific product.

Paid ads

People who have been using Facebook and Instagram for their businesses know that it’s difficult to market your business solely on organic content (unpaid promotions).

Both platforms have paid promotion options and this helps you boost your engagement. Once in a while, you might have to pay for ads on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook ads are charged cheaper compared to Instagram ads.

3.Algorithms

Facebook and Instagram operate based on an algorithm that helps deliver the most relevant posts to every user’s feed. The posts at the top of a user’s feed are the most relevant based on the type of content a user interacts with the most.

Interest is very crucial when it comes to advertising as a user is more likely to interact or engage with content that interests them. Thus, both Facebook and Instagram work towards giving or showing each user content they would highly engage with.

Content

Facebook Content

The content on Facebook is mainly informational. You will easily find information about the nearest store to you when looking for a product or service and the store hours.

Instagram content

Instagram content on the other hand is all about originality. Mainly original photos and original videos. And, there is some type of information you will rarely find on a business page.

Engagement

The biggest advantage on Instagram is its engagement. Both platforms get many interactions daily from users but if you want to get more engagement count on Instagram.

A study shows that Instagram stands at 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook with a rate of 4.21%.

On Instagram, engagement is highly determined by a brand’s following. You are likely going to get more engagement if your business has a big following.

Another factor that boosts engagement on Instagram is the lack of a content filter. The fact that there’s no way to actually filter what content you see on Instagram means you are bound to see more Instagram posts. And, this means that your reach on Instagram is more organic and might reach an audience that is not interested in what you are offering at that moment.

Facebook on the other hand has a way to filter out content. And, people on Facebook are not likely going to see your content unless you pay for its promotion. Paid promotions vary in price but even with as low as Ksh.1000 (10$) you could boost your post.

Even with a proven engagement on Instagram, more engagement is not a through-out guarantee. The factors that influence the engagement you get are based on how users interact with you as a brand.

When it comes to Facebook, written posts are more likely to encourage engagement. On the other side, Instagram is primarily known for images and videos, thus images perform better than text content.

Creativity

How users interact with each platform will influence what you post and when you post.

Facebook is set for flexibility as it comes with more features giving brands the allowance for personalizing and customizing whatever they want to post. Users can give more than just a like, and can easily share a post, etc.

Instagram, on the other hand, is more visual and the most you could do is post your original photos and videos.

Final Thoughts…

Using both platforms to promote your business is a win as both Facebook and Instagram have a wide base of audience.

Know how to exhaustively use each platform individually to advertise your business, reach the right target audience, and grow your online presence.