Social networking has become increasingly popular in recent years. The fast growth has provided a great place to quickly and easily get a message out to a very large audience. With the way each specific website is handled, different tactics of promotion can be used.
The use of Facebook and Twitter in particular are popular ways to begin promotions. These ways do, however, have many differences in how they can be used.
Because of the 140-character limit per message on Twitter, it makes a great way to put out small, easily consumable lines of information. Any messages sent out on Twitter are going to be directed at the target audience, because all the followers will likely be in the audience to be targeted, and would be interested in what the promoter has to say.
Where Twitter falls short is the reach of messages. It is pretty well limited to the followers on Twitter; the message or information doesn't go past the small group of followers.
Facebook on the other hand, does not have character limits on messages, and there is the option to include audio/video and images with messages.
Although Facebook faces a similar problem with reaching people outside of the group of followers, the possibility for the group to expand is better. On Facebook, there is a news feed displaying friends' activities, such as status updates, comments on photos and videos, and recently joined groups. Chances are if one person joins a group of interest to him or her, an amount of friends would share the same interests, and may join the group having found out about it through the news feed. This is a lot like how information spreads by word of mouth, except on Facebook, the action to join or get involved is readily available and makes it easier.
Twitter can also reach new followers, but, in my opinion, it is less effective than Facebook. For a tweet from a company to reach more than just the followers, a follower will have to re-tweet it. This is completely at the discretion of the followers and is very selective as to which messages will reach more than just the company's followers. Facebook would automatically post that the group was joined and send it to all of the joinee's friends.
Facebook, however, will not update a new message from the group. Depending on the type of message, it may not even alert the group members.
Both forms of social networking can be effective promotional tools, and both have their own advantages and disadvantages. The key is to use them to their full potential.
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