Twitter Shines Bright, Facebook Clouds Over.

I have to market our business on both Facebook and Twitter (among other platforms) that is something that just has to be done. However I don’t think I am alone when I say I open Twitter with excitement and open Facebook with a sense of dread. Twitter is a world of opportunity, where as Facebook seems like a constant uphill struggle.

When promoting our business through social media, I like to manage our accounts as closely as possible. This means constantly checking and analyzing our content as well as our interactions and social network base. Understand who is liking or following us, and who is un-liking or un-following us gives us a better idea about how to improve or modify is needed.

This is where my main concern occurs. Don’t get me wrong, Facebook provides you with a great platform to market your business, and everyone who is serious about giving their business a social media presence should be using it. You have opportunities to put your stamp front and center of the timeline of the people who choose to follow you. However recent research has suggested that your posts will only reach 16% of your base likes for your page, cutting out a whole portion of people wanting to see your content. The same research also suggested that 96% of people who like your page, will never visit your actual page again once liking it. Which means there could be a large portion of your fans not seeing the content that you are producing. Why are you making it harder for us Facebook?

At some point you will experience “unlikes” or “unfollows”, you could be a magician with social media marketing and still experience this. There are several sites you can use to find out who unfollowed you on Twitter, and if you pay close enough attention and run the test frequently enough you can have a rough idea regarding why they unfollowed you. It’s not personal but it will allow you to look into your social media practice. Very helpful, well done Twitter on allowing such things, you are making our job a lot easier and as a result marketing our business on your platform is both exciting and rewarding.

However, I have to ask this question once more. Why are you making it harder for us Facebook? If you notice your page is losing likes, you want to see who you’re losing and why you are losing them. When you click “see all” on your insights you can see the list of your posts at the bottom. If you click on the “engaged users” number for each post, you will be able to see any “negative feedback” received for the post. Which basically means that one of your facebook fans hid the post from their timeline, unsubscribed from your posts completely or unliked your page. However it doesn’t go deeper to tell you the outcome of the negative feedback and it certainly doesn't tell you who unliked you. Again this is all very helpful information for us as social media marketers, that Facebook is completely ignoring. Or at least is under developing.

Twitter continues to allow a transparency, giving you full control of your account and allowing analytic tools to help you with your strategy. Facebook has the control and the power to limit your capabilities in this regard. Which is why as a social media marketing man, I open Twitter each morning with excitement, and Facebook with dread.