Facebook may have recently passed MySpace as the most-visited social networking site in the US, but it’s facing stiff competition for the attention of social media marketers. By some metrics, Twitter is more popular in the marketing world.
Burson-Marsteller, in a July 2009 study of Fortune 100 companies, found that more companies had a presence on Twitter (54%) than on Facebook (29%).
According to the study, which looked at corporate blogs in addition to Twitter and Facebook profiles, about one-fifth of Fortune 100 firms only used one of the three channels. Those companies were overwhelmingly likely to choose Twitter (76%) over Facebook (14%) or blogging (10%).
Companies that used two of the three channels were most likely to have a blog plus a Twitter account (64%).
Burson-Marsteller found that these top companies were using Twitter for several purposes: company news, customer service, marketing promotions and employee recruitment.
Twitter is also beating out Facebook’s popularity among e-mail marketers. Email Data Source found that among the US e-mail campaigns it tracked, links to Twitter became more common than links to Facebook in March 2009.
Links to both the social networking giant and the microblogging site rocketed in the first half of 2009, but Twitter’s rise has been more dramatic.
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