The Facebook and Instagram are two most used and favorite social media sites among users of every age. You can do lots of things by creating accounts on these two services. You can stay connected with your friends and family, even they are at a distance from you, you can promote your business, add your pictures and many other cool things.
To identify the best social media platform research these three main objectives:
- Reach
- Engagement
- Demographics
In this post, we will look at these three main objectives for both platforms in detail.
1. Reach
Instagram has 800 million monthly active users. This huge number of worldwide users makes Instagram a good bet for business and brand promotion.
Instagram also has stronger organic reach, a quality the network is intentional about preserving with newer features like the ability to follow hashtags and a “Suggestions for You” section, which shows posts that your friends have liked.
Facebook is one of the oldest social media platforms. It has a larger active user base compared to Instagram: Facebook has 2.07 billion monthly active users.
This makes Facebook the number one social media platform when it comes to reach, so if you’re looking to increase brand visibility without targeting a specific age group, Facebook may be the right choice.
That said, Facebook does have a ton of ad targeting options. These are the options available for creating a new audience, which you can find in the “Audience” section of ad set creation on Facebook Manager:
- Locations. Target ads to people based on locations (ex: country, state, province, city, congressional district, zip or post code). Most objectives let you target worldwide (type in “worldwide”), by region (ex: “Europe”), by free trade area (ex: “NAFTA,” the North American Free Trade Agreement) or by app store availability (ex: “iTunes app store Countries)
- Age. Target ads to people within an age range.
- Gender. Target ads to women, men or people of all genders.
- Languages. Target ads to users of certain languages.
- Detailed Targeting. Include or exclude people from an audience based on demographics, interests and/or behaviors. Learn more.
- Connections. Include or exclude people from your audience based on connections to your Pages, apps or events. Learn more.
- Custom Audiences. Custom Audiences are target audiences of people you already know. The groupings are created from information you provide or from information generated on Facebook’s products. You can create Custom Audiences from customer files, the Facebook pixel, the Facebook SDK, and engagement on Facebook.
A subset of Custom Audiences is Lookalike Audiences. A Lookalike Audience is a target audience you create from a “source.” It finds other people on Facebook who are the most similar to the people in the source.You can include or exclude people in a Custom or Lookalike Audience from your target audience.2. Engagement
Instagram
This is compared to 48.8% in 2016. Why are brands flocking to Instagram? Engagement.According to Instagram, 80% of users follow at least one business on Instagram. As of March 2017, over 120 million Instagram users visited a website, got directions, called a business, or emailed or direct messaged a business.Facebook
Facebook engagement from organic posts may be lowering, but the ad targeting opportunities on this network are huge. With ads, you can get very specific about the kind of engagement you are looking for.Some examples:- The Oakland Raiders delivered special holiday season offers to fans with carousel and link ads, resulting in a 19X return on ad spend for their “Holiday Savings” headwear promotion
- FabFitFun increased its click-through rate by 80% with Facebook ads’ Canvas + collection
- Denny’s generated a 15% higher incremental reach by adding Facebook to their TV campaign
3. Demographics
Instagram
A study conducted by Pew Research found that there are more female than male users present on Instagram. According to this study, 31% of women and 24% of men use Instagram on a daily basis.The study also found that Instagram is highly popular among young adults between the ages of 18 and 29. Furthermore, 55% of the total internet users in this age group use Instagram. This proves that Instagram appeals more to a younger audience.Facebook
The same study by Pew Research found that Facebook attracts adult users of all age groups. Just like Instagram, Facebook has more female users than male users. Sixty-six percent of male internet users and 77% of female internet users are using Facebook.The Pew Research study also found that Facebook is most popular among young adults within the 18-to-29 age group. Seventy-nine percent of internet users between 30 and 49 use Facebook. These statistics prove that Facebook reaches users of all age groups.
