Now this is as tough question.  Facebook vs. Twitter…which one is best to use as a social media promotional tool for your organization’s website (if you could only choose one)?

Let’s preface the rest of this post quickly now by saying that there are, of course, major differences in using social networking as a way to keep up to date with your family and friends and using social media as an online marketing tool to promote your business or website.  So, depending on how you’ll actually use social media, one option might be significantly better for you in general personal use, and the other might be best to use for more focused marketing.

But this still doesn’t exactly answer our question—if you had to choose either Facebook or Twitter, which would it be?

The Benefits Of Facebook

• Facebook has a huge user base. By far the most popular social media option around the entire world right now, the chances are pretty good that even grandma uses Facebook.

• This popular social networking platform attracts a huge spectrum of users. Again, these days it’s not at all uncommon for everyone from grade-schoolers all the way up to their great grandparents to have a Facebook account.

• Facebook has lots of media options. Beyond text-only blurbs, using Facebook makes it a breeze to share multimedia like photos and videos.

The Benefits Of Twitter

• Twitter’s user base seems to be more professionally-oriented. This is most likely due to the age group of its users—which happens to be mostly the post-college crowd.

• There are fewer privacy concerns. The Twitter crowd seems to clearly grasp that their “tweets” are intended to be public by default.  It’s a more open public platform because of this.

• Twitter seems to be a social environment that’s open to the little guy. In other words, when implemented with some creativity and ingenuity, even a micro-business owner can attract the same global attention from their tweets as major world-wide corporations can.

There Are A Few Drawbacks To Each Service As Well

With Facebook, there are ever-increasing privacy concerns that have been causing a little bit of a backlash among once-loyal users.  Also, some people find it kind of amateurish when businesses and organizations use Facebook (this is an unfair stereotype that probably derives from the fact that Facebook began as a way to stay in touch with friends).  And at the same time, people who use Facebook strictly as a tool to keep up with family and friends sometimes resent and turn away from any other derived use of the service—including marketing & promotional uses.

The drawbacks to Twitter are kind of similar in some ways, but totally different in others.  First things first, it’s important to realize that Twitter’s base of users isn’t anywhere near that of Facebook.  And those who do use Twitter regularly tend to be a little bit more technically or professionally inclined (which can also be a positive if this is your demographic target).  The other important thing to know about Twitter that could potentially cause issues is the fact that no one is exactly certain as to what direction the social networking service is going to grow—it could be drastically different in just a year or two from now.

So, if you’re going to focus your time and energy on just one social platform, which one will you choose and why?