Instagram vs Facebook vs Twitter (X) vs Snapchat: Which is Better for Business Marketing
December 19, 2023
Sarvesh Bagla
What has been updated from the old blog post:
- Statistics added according to the year 2023.
- Added a note on Twitter’s rebranding as X.
- Screenshots of the graphs updated.
- General correction in sentences and fixed grammatical errors.
Summary: Navigating the social media landscape for business marketing can be challenging with so many platforms available. This comparison guide of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter (X), and Snapchat aims to simplify the decision-making process. Instagram excels at showcasing products or services visually, while Facebook boasts a vast user base and diverse advertising options. Twitter (X) caters to concise messaging and industry updates, while Snapchat appeals to a younger audience. The ideal platform depends on specific goals and target demographics. Read on to know which platform will suit your business the best.
To build a strong position in the market, an organization should showcase its best, and stay regularly connected via the four most renowned social media platforms – Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat.
In today’s world, social media is the primary platform for digital marketing, thanks to the 4.72 billion social media users as of January 2023.
More businesses are expected to use social media platforms for marketing their products or services, increasing brand visibility, and enhancing engagement rates.
However, most businesses face the challenge of choosing one of the four social media platforms that better suit their needs and enable successful business marketing. In this post, we will help you overcome this challenge by showcasing a comparison between the most-used social media platforms.
Instagram vs. Facebook vs. Twitter vs. Snapchat – The Comparison
The comparison will be drawn on the basis of the following parameters:
- How they operate
- Global reach
- Rate of engagement
- Unique features
How does each social media platform operate?
Instagram and Snapchat are dedicated mainly to pictures & videos, while Facebook is inclined towards recent updates. Facebook encourages users to share fun elements, whereas Twitter (now X) is more about sharing the latest news and updates.
Note: Since July 31, 2023, Twitter has been officially rebranded as X, following its acquisition by X.com, a company owned by Elon Musk. But in this blog post, we will continue to use Twitter as it is still widely used by the audience.
You can expect your content to last for long on both Instagram and Facebook. However, when it comes to Twitter and Snapchat, a tweet lasts forever, though it soon gets replaced by another more popular tweet. Similarly, a snap disappears within 24 hours.
When we assess Snapchat and Instagram, Instagram users share their photos, reels, and videos on their walls, while Snapchat allows users to send videos and pictures directly to their friends.
If you compare Instagram vs. Twitter, the primary importance is given to photos & reels on Instagram, while Twitter is based on text and hashtags.
Assessing Facebook vs. Snapchat, the former encourages both public and private postings, while the latter is exclusively for private chats with friends.
Additional Read: Must-Try Social Media Marketing Strategies
Which social media platform has the most global reach?
Source: blog.addthiscdn.com
Instagram
This photo-sharing app is extremely effective for all forms of business as it has 2 billion active users worldwide. While the highest number of users reside in India, there are many from other countries as well. Check out the graph below to see the geographical distribution of Instagram users.
Source: StatistaSo what does this tell you?
Instagram has a global outreach, which means that you can reach out to your target audience across geographies.
Facebook
Facebook is supposedly the most popular social media platform and can be truly effective for business marketing if the posts add value to the community. At least 70% of your posts must be related to business tips, recent events, local news, or survey questions.
Around 2.91 billion active users around the world use Facebook as a means of connecting. So, if you’re looking to gain a lot of visibility, Facebook is the one for you!
Research suggests that you must post on Facebook between 1 – 4 p.m. to get the maximum clicks and shares.
Twitter
While the global user base of Twitter is lower than those of Facebook and Instagram, it is still a great platform to market your products and services.
With a user base of 396.5 million, you can figure out your target audience and direct your posts to them by using relevant hashtags. However, ensure that you’re posting news on Twitter as it is majorly meant for sharing worldly updates.
Snapchat
Snapchat is one of the fastest-growing social networks, with over 406 million daily active users and 5 billion snaps per day.
According to Statista Stats, 48% of all internet users aged between 15 and 25 years use Snapchat in the USA. If your target audience does fall in this category, you should use Snapchat for business marketing as it has its users spread evenly in different countries.
Check out the graph below to see the number of Snapchat users in different countries.
Image Source: Statista
Twitter vs. Instagram vs. Facebook vs. Twitter: As you can see, Instagram has the best global reach, and Facebook has the most number of users. So, both Instagram and Facebook are excellent choices in case you’re looking to target users from several countries at once. At the same time, crisp and concise content on Twitter would do wonders for your business. And in case you can nail images, Snapchat is the one for you! So, depending on your marketing needs, you can use any of the above platforms.
Instagram vs. Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Snapchat – Monthly Active Users (MAU)
| Instagram |
2 billion |
| Facebook |
2.91 billion |
| Twitter |
396.5 million |
| Snapchat |
347.3 million |
Instagram vs. Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Snapchat –Daily Active Users (DAU)
| Instagram |
500 million |
| Facebook |
1.93 billion |
| Twitter |
206 million |
| Snapchat |
97 million |
Instagram vs. Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Snapchat – MAU Growth from 2019 to 2021
| Instagram |
+16.0% |
| Facebook |
+19.0% |
| Twitter |
+8.0% |
| Snapchat |
+17.0% |
If you look at Instagram and Facebook users, you will find a huge difference. Every month, Facebook receives more than one billion active users, while Instagram receives only 500 million. On the other hand, figures for Facebook and Twitter users vary even more. As compared to 1.93 billion users of Facebook per day, Twitter only has 206 million active daily users.
Snapchat is quickly gaining popularity, and the well-established Instagram continues to draw five times more daily traffic than Snapchat.
Which social media platform has the best engagement rate?
Instagram and Facebook
Different facts and figures on Facebook and Instagram recently reported that the engagement rate of Instagram is higher than that of Facebook. The average engagement rate on Instagram is between 1% and 3%, whereas that of Facebook is only 0.18%.
Twitter
When it comes to Twitter, the engagement rate ranges from 0.09% to 0.33%. Tweets encourage businesses to innovate and show only the important facets of news and updates to their audience. However, Facebook provides ample space for businesses that want to give a detailed analysis of each event.
Snapchat
Snapchat videos get more than 10B daily views, and its engagement metrics suggest that an average user uses that app almost 30 times a day and spends 30 minutes on it. That’s enough to get your business idea through!
The focus area of a business should be the target audience. Twitter can help you reach a wider audience in one go, while with Snapchat, you can reach only one person at a time.
If you compare the popularity of Instagram and Snapchat, Snapchat may be lagging, but its stories and live video features can create a higher engagement and recall rate. On the other hand, Instagram helps a business add multiple photos, reels & IGTV videos to engage with the audience.
If you compare Snapchat and Facebook, posts on Facebook add value to the community more quickly, while Snapchat adds value among friends and followers.
What are the unique features of social media platforms for business marketing?
Instagram
There are several new features marketed by Instagram recently. Some are:
- Meta rolled out the 3D avatars feature for Instagram users in the US, Canada, and Mexico.
- Instagram added the chronological order of the feed.
- Link stickers in stories are available to all users now, earlier it was just for the users with 10,000+ followers on Instagram.
- Instagram added new safety features like Take a Break & Parental Controls.
- Instagram enabled users to update their walls through the desktop.
- Instagram Shopfronts: Instagram offers its users the opportunity to add a URL of their website.
- Instagram Ads: Intending to increase views, engagement, traffic flow, and high conversion rate, Instagram has introduced the ad facility through Facebook Ad Manager.
- Instagram Analytics: Though Instagram doesn’t have in-built analytics, it offers detailed analysis with the support of third-party services, like Sprout Social or Simply Measured.
- Geofilters – Instagram has introduced a unique feature, Geofilter, where users can easily share their current location, without specifying their exact geographical location. Currently, it is available in selected places. It is a brilliant tool for business marketing.
Facebook
Facebook has many unique features that are rarely available on other social media platforms. Some of them are:
-
- Facebook Cards: It is a unique marketing tool designed by Facebook in partnership with Moo.com, a printing service. In this, you can order to print a Facebook card with gift coupons or other promotional offers on 16 pt stock paper. It looks similar to your business profile and includes your cover photos, profile pictures, and contact details.
- Pages to Watch: This feature is basically to watch and keep track of the competitors’ pages. Currently, it lets you monitor five competitor pages and view the number of new likes every week.
- Invite Email Contacts: In the ‘Admin’ panel under the ‘Build Audience’ tab, Facebook has the option to invite email contacts to like the business page. This can be done by many email providers and through Mailchimp, Constant Contact, iCloud, etc. The limit count set for inviting contacts is 5,000.
- Liberal ad Exchange: It helps Facebook and app developers earn profit by displaying ads on mobile phone screens.
- Facebook Messenger for Business: This new feature has been added to Messenger. Consumers can ask questions about anything while shopping, or send notifications to the seller in case the product is defective. As per the latest update, Facebook Messenger supports sharing 360-degree photos and HD videos of 1080p or more to both iOS and Android users. This update is a great opportunity for video makers.
Without video SEO, your videos will not rank on any video search engine platform like YouTube. Higher rankings of your videos will help people find your content easily, thus making it viral.
- Detailed Analytics: Under the ‘Posts’ tab, Facebook gives the option to get a detailed analytics report of the audience, posts, engagement, etc. This helps a brand evaluate its success rate and bring the necessary changes to the posts.
Twitter
Twitter has unique features to help a business in the long run.
-
- ‘Go Live’ Button for Periscope: Twitter acquired Periscope, which allows seeing a “go live” button while composing tweets and broadcasting them directly through Twitter. Users can use live streaming to compile and publish long-form thoughts and responses.
- Native GIF Search: You can even share your thoughts with the help of GIFs. Posts with GIFs get 55% more engagement!
- Uncropped Image: Twitter has come up with an uncropped photo update and a new view for multi-photo displays. This makes the platform more engaging and visually appealing.
Anti-harassment Features: Twitter has taken some serious steps against harassment and threats through a series of features and services so that the platform is secure to use. These features are:
-
- Bold functionality for blocking, muting, and reporting abuse
- Launched Twitter Safety Center
- Clear definition of abusive behavior in Twitter’s terms of service
Snapchat
The most appealing feature of Snapchat is ‘Self-destruct’ – where shared elements disappear within a few seconds after viewing them. There are many more features that are exclusively available in Snapchat:
-
- Scores: A score will be rewarded under Snapcode after equating all the number of snaps sent and received, stories posted, and other activities. A friend’s score can be viewed when a friend on your contact list posts in the story feed, or chat area. People use Snapchat just to get their scores up. You can use this to your advantage while promoting your business.
- Snapcode: Snapcodes are scannable codes. This can be used to add new friends. Once you click on the ghost icon on the top of the camera screen, you will find Snapcode on your profile screen.
- Snapstreak: It is another unique feature of Snapchat that shows different emojis next to Snapchat names on the chat screen. This denotes you have snapped with your friend within 24 hours for more than one consecutive day.
- Lenses: It helps add real-time special effects and sounds to snaps.
- Filters: Snapchat is known for its fun elements. It allows jazzing up the snaps by adding a filter to them.
As far as unique features are concerned, each of these four platforms has its own set of features that are ideal for business marketing.
Instagram vs. Facebook
If you compare Instagram and Facebook for business, you will find Facebook has a Liberal Ad exchange feature, and Instagram Ads utilize Facebook Ad Manager to offer an ad service.
Facebook vs. Twitter
Facebook offers a Live Streaming feature, whereas Twitter gives Periscope, which helps you add a ‘go live’ button.
Twitter vs. Snapchat
The most significant feature of Twitter and Snapchat is that Snapchat has the ‘self-destruct’ feature for security, and Twitter has an anti-harassment feature.
Facebook vs. Snapchat
While Snapchat offers a Snapcode feature, Facebook has no QR code through which you can add a friend.
Snapchat vs. Instagram
However, while comparing Snapchat and Instagram, you will find that Instagram offers a unique feature, ‘Geo-Filter’, to share the current location without specifying your precise geographical location. Whereas, there is no such feature on Snapchat.
Top Strategies to be Followed for Effective Business Marketing on Social Media (Platform-wise)
Source: revechat.com
While June 30th is celebrated as Social Media Day around the world, for businesses, each day should be social media day, to attract more customers, engage them, and drive sales.
Business marketing on social media is dependent on three foundation elements: valuable content, a solid and analyzed strategy, and know-how.
Let’s check out how you can develop a social media business marketing strategy using the above elements and turn your business into a known brand.
Instagram
For effectively marketing your business on Instagram,
-
- focus on the unique qualities of your brand’s audience,
- tell a story with your caption and photograph,
- run some interesting and engaging contests,
- collaborate with popular influencers or micro-influencers of your niche, and
- use Instagram ads to target ads to your target audience.
As per the study conducted across 475+ global campaigns, ad recall from sponsored posts on Instagram is 2.9x higher than Nielsen’s norms for online advertising. Adapt the above-mentioned strategies so that users are able to recognize your images instantly and engage in liking and commenting. This will help:
-
- Increase traffic flow
- Improve sales graph
- Enhance brand awareness
- Increase branded hashtag mentions
Facebook
As per the terms of service, anyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address can create an account on Facebook. This is important because a business marketing strategy should be youth-centric. Teenagers are likely to spend most of their time on Facebook, so you can target your ads to them. More so, Facebook is now even more popular among middle-aged adults too.
An ideal Facebook marketing strategy should include:
-
- A recognizable profile pic that
- A maintained company account
- An explanatory “About Us” section on the company’s page
- Consistency among cover photos, posts, and profile CTAs
- Tailored organic posts
- Set timings of posting, without posting too often and too much
- Proper usage of multimedia posts
- Instant responses to messages and queries
- Usage of insights to analyze page performance
You must also use Facebook advertising to amplify the reach of your posts to your target audience.
Twitter
Here’s what you can do to market your business on Twitter.
-
- Say ‘Thank you.’ 1 out of 4 profiles will follow you back if you thank them
- Search for influencers and micro-influencers, and interact with them regularly to carry out micro-influencer marketing
- Optimize your Twitter bio
- Track mentions and likes using Hootsuite – a popular social media tracking tool
- Provide special offers to followers
- Use images, videos, GIFs, etc.
- Integrate Twitter with other marketing efforts
- Tweet regularly, retweet, and like tweets
- Follow popular and relevant trends/hashtags
- Use promoted tweets
- Use Twitter analytics to track your success rate
By following these points of Twitter Marketing you can grow your brand presence and community on Twitter.
Snapchat
Snapchat is perfect for real-time social media marketing. Here’s what you should do:
-
- Provide access to live events
- Deliver personalized content
- Take people behind the curtain
- Conduct contests
- Interact with influencers
Strategies adopted for each of the four social media platforms are distinctive, and none can be replicated by the other. One of them may be better for a short, engaging post, while the other is necessary to engage your audience in a fun manner.
Today, all the platforms are using distinctive features to maintain their followers, and it should come as no surprise that each of them is picking up a likable feature from its competitor and adding it to its own set of features. For example, snaps or stories, which were the brainchild of Snapchat, are now also a part of Instagram.
Similarly, both Twitter and Facebook allow posting multiple images in one post.
When it comes to collaborating with influencers or micro-influencers of your niche, all four platforms are equally important. Hashtags, sharing leads, and effective CTAs, are necessary on all four platforms for better engagement.
Challenges in Social Media Platforms
Source: socialpilot.co
Instagram
Some of the greatest challenges are:
- Building or retaining the position on Instagram as the most reliable brand
- Searching where your followers are and then building a presence
- Interacting with your brand and creating a stronger community
- Make users/followers use your services.
Facebook
The greatest challenge you may face while conducting Facebook marketing is mapping the topics of the post. Choosing some boring facts or posting too many posts can negative image of your brand.
Another challenge is to meet the expectations of the consumers in terms of response time. Research shows that many consumers write a complaint on Facebook and expect a response to their query within 60 minutes.
Twitter
Despite adopting a proper marketing strategy, businesses may still face various challenges, such as:
- Twitter has limited operating experience. It also involves certain complexities of laws and regulations regarding privacy and security.
- Twitter often becomes the subject of bad press, so it may affect the reputation of your brand.
- It is a race to stay ahead of user growth and meet their expectations.
- It involves a slow growth path.
Snapchat
It is tricky to cope with this fun messaging app, which is why brands face various challenges while conducting business marketing on Snapchat.
- It is difficult for users to know whether a snap has sound or not.
- The look and feel of the platform not very unprofessional.
- It is hard to identify what and when to share.
- The platform may not be apt for your followers.
Both social media platforms and businesses using social media are struggling to retain their market positions. The major challenges a business faces while trying to master these social media platforms are mapping topics or limited characters and building a presence.
Challenges include meeting response time, slow growth, and when to share. In the case of look and feel, Snapchat is considered less professional as compared to Facebook and Instagram because 63% of its user base is between 18-34 years.
Snapchat vs. Instagram vs. Twitter vs. Facebook: Challenges
Both social media platforms and businesses using social media are struggling to retain their market positions. The major challenges a business faces while trying to master these social media platforms is mapping topics or limited characters and building a presence.
Challenges include meeting response time, slow growth, and when to share. In the case of look and feel, Snapchat is considered less professional as compared to Facebook and Instagram because 63% of its user base is between 18-34 years.
Instagram vs. Facebook vs. Twitter vs. Snapchat: Cost of Ads
Instagram
It is a brilliant idea to use Instagram adverts on images, videos, carousals, and stories. They offer 2.5 times more clicks than ads on other social media sites.
It has impressive targeting capabilities and higher CTR, and the cost of ads on Instagram is a little cheaper than that of Twitter and Facebook advertising. The estimated CPM of Instagram is $6.70. But, it is expected to reduce, as more and more companies are using the platform. Instagram can provide:
- 97% lift in ad recall
- 16-point average ad recall lift
- 7x higher Nielsen ad recall vs. other study data
Facebook
The advertisement cost of Facebook ranges from $0.25 to $3.30 on every click. It varies from one industry to the other, based on the size of the audience and ad quality.
The cost is reasonable. That is the main reason 1.5 million businesses spend money on mobile advertising, out of which 92% use Facebook ads.
Twitter
Twitter has three types of advertising options
- Promoted tweets,
- Promoted accounts, and
- Promoted trends.
The cost of promoted tweets and promoted accounts ranges between $.50 – $4.00 per engagement and promoted trends cost around $200,000 per day.
Clicking, replying, retweeting, or favoriting paid tweets and ads costs between $.50 – $2.00, depending on your targeting. For local campaigns, this figure is $1.35 per engagement.
Snapchat
Snapchat advertising is a bit costlier as compared to other social media platforms. However, it’s worth it as the swipe-up rate of Snapchat ads is five times more than the average CTR for other platforms. The cost for Snap ad campaigns starts from $10,000/month.
Snapchat-sponsored lenses cost $450,000 per day from Sunday to Thursday, $500,000 for Fridays and Saturdays, and $700,000+ for holidays or special events.
If we compare these four platforms in terms of users, growth, and ad revenue, Facebook has a dominant lead in the social media space.
It is important to compare the costs of these four platforms before investing money in promoting posts.
Instagram is costlier than Facebook, though Instagram has started using Facebook Ad Manager to facilitate PPC ad services for businesses.
Twitter ads are cheaper than Instagram ads.
The unique feature of cost variation in Snapchat on different dates can be helpful while planning your ad placements in comparison to those on Twitter or Instagram.
As of today, Facebook is the cheapest platform, while Snapchat is the costliest among all.
Some Important Facts About Each Platform
Instagram
On average, users spend 28 minutes per day on Instagram. A study conducted by Simply Measured found that 85 million top brands are now using social media to grow their audience base, and most of them prefer Instagram over other social platforms.
Facebook
Research shows that visual content usage in Facebook campaigns can generate 65% more engagement within a month.
20% of Facebook posts are based on promoting other business events, tagging others, or sharing others’ content and 10% of posts are promotional, displaying discounts or sales.
Twitter
Twitter ads containing videos are much cheaper (50%) in terms of cost-per-engagement. 2 billion videos are watched on Twitter every day. Using videos is going to be a great option for you!
Moreover, Twitter users spend 26% more time looking at ads than other social media users.
Snapchat
Snapchat stories last for 24 hours only. These are a thread of snaps used to create a video narrative.
There are over 5 billion snaps created each day on Snapchat, and almost 60% of viewers skip ads on Snapchat. So, in terms of ads, Snapchat might not be such a great idea for business marketing.
Conclusion
The fact is that you cannot deny the specific contributions of each social media platform to excel in business marketing.
If you look at the bigger picture, you will be able to find that:
- Twitter has the largest penetration potential as it is spreading slowly and steadily.
- Facebook is the largest platform to communicate with consumers effortlessly.
- Instagram is a better platform to use hashtags and post pictures.
- Snapchat seems to be a non-professional platform but has the maximum capacity to grab the attention of users.
- In a nutshell, you can choose any of these platforms but make sure that your brand’s postings follow the thumb rules of social media marketing:
- Maintain consistency while posting content.
- Maintain the right frequency. Do not bombard your followers with too many posts.
- Follow the timezone of your followers while posting.
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FAQs
-
Which is better Twitter or Instagram?
Instagram is focused on visual appeal while Twitter is centred around texting, copy, stories, and conversation. Instagram is currently the most popular social media channel around with a billion monthly active users. Instagram is better for brands with a visual appeal such as fashion or luxury, while twitter is great for having direct conversations and updating frequently such as news websites.
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What is the difference between Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter?
Snapchat is aimed at younger audiences and content only lives for a day. Instagram is designed for sharing images and videos, while Twitter is focused on text posts and polls. Instagram and Twitter can be either public or private, while Snapchat is for mostly private conversations between friends.
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What’s more popular Instagram or Snapchat?
Instagram has overtaken Snapchat in terms of popularity. It is easier to use, offers short-lived as well as long-lived content, and is more engaging and smoother.
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Which is better for business Twitter or Instagram?
Instagram will allow you to create great content quickly and easily, while Twitter is great for engaging with your audience and even providing Customer Support. Instagram has a larger audience and higher engagement. Both offer paid forms of advertisement as well, but we recommend going with the platform that works for your business, audience, and objectives.
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Is Facebook more popular than Instagram?
While Facebook still has more users than Instagram, its popularity is dipping. Instagram is much faster than parent Facebook and advertisers see 4 times as much engagement on Instagram than they do on Facebook.
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Is Twitter better than Facebook?
While Facebook has a wider reach than Twitter, higher engagement, and more targeted advertising opportunities, the short answer is, it depends. Tweets encourage businesses to innovate and show the important facets of news to an audience but Facebook provides ample of space and bandwidth to give a detailed analysis of each. The demographics of each platform’s audience vary as well – we suggest making brand decisions based on your objectives.