Casino affiliates who’ve been dabbling in social media know that there is a world of difference between Facebook and Twitter that goes far beyond character counts and likes.
The two social media giants cover some very different demographic territory and each one has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. For examples, Twitter’s mobile advertising is bit more robust than Facebook’s, but Facebook reaches a much larger audience.
If you’re looking to add paid social media marketing to your promotions portfolio this year, here are few the advantages and disadvantages of each platform.
Advantage: Facebook
Facebook is the big daddy of social media with an astounding 1.26 billion users; 728 million active daily users; and around 22 billion likes or shares every single day. That’s a lot of potential eyeballs for your sites and/or products.
For casino affiliates, Facebook is also very friendly to the gaming industry as a whole. There are plenty of real-money Facebook gambling apps and the revenue hungry site has few qualms about working with gambling sites.
Would-be Facebook advertisers will also be encouraged to hear that gaming advertisements do pretty well. According to a recent report titled, Facebook Advertising Benchmarks, these kinds of ads offer high click throughs and reasonable cost-per-click.
So what’s the downside? Facebook’s demographic profile is slowly trending towards the older side, which could be a disadvantage for poker and sports betting affiliates. (Though maybe not such a bad thing for bingo and slots affiliates.)
Advantage: Twitter
Twitter advertising doesn’t reach nearly the massive numbers that Facebook offers, but with 213 million active monthly users, it’s still nothing to sneeze at.
What Twitter lacks in active users it more than makes up for in mobile users. Some sources suggest that as many as 75% of all Twitter use is done from mobile devices. (Less than half of all Facebook visitors come from mobile, but that number is growing rapidly.)
Besides its mobile advantages, Twitter offers an aesthetic value to advertisers as well. Promoted Tweets don’t really look like advertising and show up a lot better on mobile devices.
Twitter users also tend to be a bit younger than Facebook users and some demographic segments are especially active on the microblogging. For example, a full 22% of African-Americans are active on Twitter and that number is growing rapidly.
Sports betting affiliates will be particularly interested to see that sports fans and punters are very active on Twitter, especially ahead of big events.
Despite Facebook’s efforts to clean up its byzantine advertising options, Twitter’s ad platform is a lot easier to use and understand.
Split the Difference
Of course there’s no reason why you need to focus all of your social media optimization efforts on one medium. Plenty of companies employ distinct strategies on a variety of different social media advertising platforms.
If you really don’t want to hassle with it at all, you can outsource your social media ad buying to companies like Affiliate Media that specialize in helping affiliates make the most of this new medium. They’ll craft a specific strategy that works towards your specific goals.
Finally
No matter which social network you’re looking at, social media advertising is a medium that casino affiliates should be watching closely.