Choosing the Perfect Way to Quickly and Easily Level Up Your Marketing
The Internet is the go-to marketing choice of most businesses because of its convenience, speed, and adaptability, but more so because that’s where the customers are. A few years ago, blockbuster new businesses used the Internet to skyrocket to the top of their respective industries and become highly successful. This year, while the possibilities are still infinite, the competition has become tougher. Internet marketing has become more sophisticated, complicated, and exciting, especially with social media marketing.
Just look at the latest figures from different B2C surveys:
- 70% of the US consumers are using at least one social media platform.
- The number of social media users is expected to reach 2.5 billion by 2018.
- 57% of users are influenced by what they see on their social media accounts.
- Social media is second most effective means toward customer retention.
The two most popular social media platforms today are Facebook and Twitter. The latest “war” between these two focuses on live videos. Facebook has FB Live while Twitter has Periscope. Which is better for your business?
What is FB Live?
FB Live allows you to post videos up to 90 minutes in length on your newsfeed. You can do live broadcasts or keep it on the feed for those who want to watch it at a later date. You can send out notifications to your network about the videos and respond to any feedback just like a regular FB post.
Recently, Facebook introduced new features such as live streaming using Android or Apple devices, a new video portal, a prominent Live tab, and a world map on current live streams. You can also use filters, which means video quality can be improved easily.
What is Periscope?
Periscope is live video streaming for Android and Apple devices, which puts it in direct competition with FB Live after its launch in early 2015. Within a few months, it had over 10 million users with thousands of videos being streamed daily. Just this year, the company added a new feature: allowing users to stream live using GoPro.
With Periscope, you can tweet links to your Live Stream, limit or disallow comments, and customize viewership. It also has “instant comments” like hearts that viewers can use to express their appreciation. However, the maximum number of hearts a video session can receive is only 500. Periscope also allows for landscape view on its videos and is developing an Apple TV app. One major issue with Periscope is copyright infringement, which the company has addressed by promising to suspend or ban any account that live streams events without authorization.
Which to Choose: FB Live or Periscope?
Pitted against each other, here are the differences that could help you make a wise choice:
- Facebook is financially more stable, with 1.6 billion users compared to Periscope’s 10 million.
- Periscope has been experiencing backroom operations problems, especially with its top management turnaround and staggered growth.
- Twitter is faster with breaking news and points of interests, compared to the laid-back style of Facebook.
- Twitter is public and still the go-to place for public figures and business leaders.
- FB Live has a new “trending tab” to break into the tweeting habits of Internet users.
- Facebook is very aggressive with FB Live and is even paying some media groups to post live videos.
- Twitter is known for suspending accounts based on what they call “suspicious tweets” not limited to terrorism or crime but more so because of spam.
The bottom line is that today, Facebook is gung ho in being number one in live video streaming and all of its decisions have been to target what can be found on Periscope and other similar apps. Thus far, they have been on point.
Periscope, on the other hand, has an established reputation for breaking news and information. For entrepreneurs, there is no rule that prevents you from using both, running an analysis, and making a choice based on the response from both apps. Ultimately, it will depend on who your market is and what their preferences are.