COMMENTS
This is very helpful. However, I'd be more interested in how Facebook and Twitter perform for leads and conversions.
The Civil Engineering Consulting profession does not make the list
I agree with Joanne. If "reach" is the metric that's one thing. If leads and conversions (and dare we even say "sales"?) are what we're after, then I don't think the chart tells the whole story. But I also HEARTILY agree with Rick that it's not an "either/or" situation. How can we leverage both (and more) to get the results we're after. Still a very helpful posting--and one of the right questions to ask!
This is very interesting data, thanks for sharing, more great cannon fodder to share with my current and potential clients as to why they can't afford to ignore these channels. I regularly hear from them that "my customers don't use those services" the more numbers and information like this that I can share with them the better! Keep up the great work.
Excellent post! This resolves the hour long discussion I had with my marketing guy yesterday!
I would think that the Twitter stats are much more skewed than Facebook simply because of all of the automation in the Twitter world. In other words, so many people and business are following anybody and everybody with the hopes they'll be recognized and followed also, which really inflates the numbers. Facebook on the other hand is more of a 'legit' follower number, at least in my opinion. Thus far, FB has managed not to be nearly as spammy as Twitter......But either way, they both deserve attention from businesses because they are here to stay. Nice job on the study Rick.
You are comparing apples and oranges. I would argue that a Facebook fan is worth AT LEAST ten Twitter followers. Any given Tweet you send on Twitter has a much, much lower likelihood of being seen than a wall update.
Assuming you normalized the data to account for apples and oranges, there is another problem: not all eyes are created equal. The social graphics of Twitter and Facebook are very different and would, therefore, have very different "reach" as a result.
But I don't understand why you would show these numbers at all when your conclusion is that they don't matter. You say that Facebook's influence means you can't ignore it anyway.
"But this data from HubSpot customers shows that you can't dismiss Twitter." Your data shows nothing at all, actually. There isn't nearly enough context to draw any conclusions.
This sort of stuff is dangerous. Hubspot is extremely influential and when you pronounce baseless conclusions like this, people often eat it up without questioning the underlying data, statistical significance, logic tests, etc... They trust that you've already done that. Many business owners are going to read this and make decisions about where and how to spend precious marketing resources.
You make an interesting and passionate point Jon. As a client of Hubspot, I come here on their blog each day to stay up to date, and although I agree the merits of this study can be argued, I know that Hubspot's ultimate goal is to have informed, self-reliant clients who have a clear idea as to how to tackle the information age and everything that comes with Web 2.0 and social media. No study comparing FB and Twitter will be perfect, so general trends and suggestions are worthy of mention in my opinion.
Great article Rick. This should really strike home with people. On top of this it would be great to see which tool (twitter or facebook) has a better conversion rate.
I love it when a prospect tells me - but my industry doesn't use social media. I tell them this is a perfect opportunity to take marketshare and put your company as the leader in your industry. Not everyone buys into this, but it is so true.
These tools added with your blog do a great job of pushing you to the forefront and really help establish you as an expert in your industry. All it takes is a little elbow grease to churn out remarkable content on a regular basis. If you are passionate about your industry this is very easy to do.
Jon, I agree that that there is different value in Facebook and Twitter fans -- but the point here is not to assess the impact of the fans, it's to compare the pure reach. Also, I think the value of Facebook and Twitter reach varies across businesses. For example, some companies would be able to get more value from 400 Facebook fans than 400 Twitter fans; for other companies it would be the other way around.
Why share this data? The main reason is to show that lots of companies in mainstream industries are building traction (reach) on both Facebook and Twitter. Data like this makes it harder and harder to make the argument that "my industry isn't on social media."
Rick - I would agree with that conclusion, it's some of the others I dispute.
My comments were in part made because of several other posts in the past (by other Hubspotters) that made outrageously flawed conclusions based on laughable data. There is one person in particular who does it consistently and drives me insane. I'm speaking up because I respect Hubspot (I'm a Certified Inbound Marketing Professional) and 95% of what you guys do is gold-plated. I just hope that in your rush to create content quantity you don't skimp on content quality. So I'm not picking on you particularly or exclusively - I just chose today to say something for whatever reason. This is what you get when an engineer morphs into a marketer; math debates. :)
And the more important point is that once you reach the status the Hupspot has, you enter the territory of thought leaders and influencers which brings with it a certain level of fiduciary responsibility. "First, do no harm." That's my opinion, anyway.
Jury is still out for me. Both are great for networking, but actual clients are coming from FB. Twitter hasn't converted any...yet :)
The comparator used - i.e. "reach" - is probably skewed because your hubspot customers may have spent a great deal more time/energy/focus building their Twitter reach ? - A more interesting and useful analysis would have been measurements of the results of using those channels
Does it really say "pluggins" in the first sentence?
Awesome data Rick. It pretty much confirms my opinion that Facebook is better fro B2C and Twitter for B2B.