Most businesses in UK favor Twitter over Facebook to interact with their customers, a new survey from Virgin Media Business has revealed. While this particular survey was restricted to UK only, Twitter rules over Facebook in a large number of business markets worldwide.
Virgin Media Business Survey Findings
The survey conducted across 5,000 businesses in UK indicates that 33 percent of the companies that use social media to engage with consumers use Twitter, compared to 32 percent who use Facebook. MySpace ranks third (29 percent), followed by Blogging (19 percent) and YouTube (17 percent).
In demographic terms, London (47 percent) and the South East (44 percent) top the charts for social media adoption followed closely by 42 percent of businesses in the South West and Wales, but the region least likely to engage with consumers through social media was Northern Ireland (21 percent).
While the business share of Twitter is marginally more than that of Facebook, it is growing at a quicker pace than the latter.
Twitter is simple, period
Twitter works on the golden rule – “If it ain’t simple enough, it won’t be used enough”. Thankfully, using Twitter (personal or business use) is easy as you like. Unlike some of its social media counterparts, there’s no rocket science involved in tweeting.
Signing up on Twitter is easy and the user interface is intuitive so there’s lesser risk of users losing their way. In contrast, newbie users can often find the Facebook interface overwhelming and it can take them a while to figure out how certain things work. I had to watch a handful of videos in order to figure out how to create and modify my Facebook page in order to get any real benefits from it.
Twitter thrives on simplicity. Unlike Facebook, it does not mess up your privacy and it’ completely secure. Therefore, it’s hardly surprising that a large number of business and enterprise users are now flocking Twitter as compared to Facebook.
Of course, there are exceptions to everything
While I’m a staunch social media loyalist, I don’t recommend businesses to jump on to the Twitter bandwagon without giving it a thought. The Virgin Media Business survey also provides similar findings. It indicates that Twitter isn’t very popular in the financial banking sector.
Understandably, banking is a sector where face to face communication works better as compared to tweets. While tweeting remains a viable communication media to reach out to customers, it is not the “primary” mode of communication in the financial sector. UK has nearly 5 million Twitter users but there are only a handful of financial institutions using the micro-blogging site to get in touch with customers.
Twitter isn’t a magic wand for businesses and it isn’t meant to be. However, it’s one of the best ways to “instantly” reach out to your customers. Happy Tweeting!
