Posted on: 25th Apr. 2023

When it comes to social media, in order to showcase your SME, the natural temptation is to post to every platform and cover every channel but that’s not necessarily a good use of your marketing resources.

What works for one type of business won’t work for another, so we’re here to help analyse the main differences between the social channels so that you can decide where your focus should be. First up we’ll look at Facebook and Instagram.

Firstly here’s some quick stats:

FB: 2.96 billion monthly active users
INSTA: 2 billion monthly active users

FB: 89% of marketers say they use Facebook as part of their brand social strategy
INSTA: 65% of marketers say they use Instagram as part of their brand social strategy

FB: 31% of Facebook’s users are between the ages of 25 and 34. Nearly 60% are between the ages of 25 and 54.
INSTA: 30% of Instagram global users are between 18 and 24 years old. 70% are under 34

One of the main differences between these two platforms is how we use them.

Facebook is great whether you like to work on a desktop, laptop or mobile whereas Instagram has been created predominantly for mobile users. It lacks a desktop experience and there’s no easy way to upload photos or edit existing posts unless you’re on a mobile device. Instagram was designed to work mainly with Images so a business that is predominantly visual will usually benefit from an Instagram presence. That’s not to say the same post won’t work on Facebook and facebook does have other advantages.

The number of platform users alone isn’t always the best indicator of how your marketing efforts will perform, it’s really about engagement and interaction.

Over 93% of marketers say they use Facebook paid advertising regularly, and 62% find it to be their most important social media channel. While the platform has powerful paid advertising potential, It’s widely believed that Facebook intentionally hides business page posts so brands spend more on ads (which would makes sense); organic reach for business pages posting to Facebook is, in fact, less than 2%.

Instagram’s organic reach is better. Using the right hashtags can get you seen but remember anything done organically will take time so you’ll need to be patient.

Facebook is largely informational. You can find out things about a company through its Facebook Page, whether it’s opening hours, business address or upcoming events. If these things are important to your customers then Facebook is probably the better option. Make sure your details and company profile are always up to date.

Instagram is about capturing moments. Engagement is all about observation, inspiration, and discovery. People don’t usually go on Instagram to find out your company’s business hours, it’s perhaps more suited to showcasing products. Engagement makes Instagram effective for building your brand and gaining popularity.

Instagram has its limitations. It will only allows users to post photos, videos, Stories, and Reels along with a brief caption.

Besides photos and videos, Facebook also allows users to post other types of media such as links, longer videos, articles, Stories, and quizzes. The key difference though is that any links in captions or comments on Facebook are clickable. Instagram doesn’t allow clickable links in it’s captions.

In short SME’s need to identify their audience, think about the type of content they want to publish and then find the best platform. Facebook is not a replacement for Instagram and Instagram cannot replace Facebook.

Talk to Happy about which channel is right for your business and let us help you create the perfect social media strategy.