Market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research released a study recently that says a fan/follower of a brand on Twitter or Facebook is more likely to buy from or recommend those brands than they were prior to following the brand. Though Facebook and Twitter were both effective, the difference in the percentage between the two sites is, at the very least, interesting.

Chadwick Martin Bailey - iModerate Research Technologies Study

Twitter followers are far more likely to buy or recommend a brand to others.  They’re 19% more likely to recommend a brand than a Facebook follower.  So, obviously Twitter is the superior marketing tool.  Or is it?

Facebook has far more users (over 400 million compared to Twitter’s 75 million), and is much more user-friendly.  It even looks non-threatening, like a little, social networking puppy.  Twitter’s #hash tags, on the other hand, are ugly little monsters.

But when you think about it, hash tags and retweets are part of what makes Twitter cool and different.  Twitter has always been the beautiful-on-the-inside social networking site.

Having an online presence on both sites can be beneficial in different ways.  Twitter is all about the simple text and/or link post.  Short, sweet, to the point.  Facebook has become a great place for many types of media, links and information to be posted.

Think about the strengths of each site to determine which one might be better for whatever content or message you’re posting.  If you want to share a new video, Facebook is going to allow you to post it straight to your profile, whereas with Twitter, you’ll have to provide a link to it.  If you want to let people know that you just posted dates for the new tour, then post it on both sites.  There are even applications out there that will allow you to post to both Twitter and Facebook in one post, like Twitter on Facebook.

No one approach is going to work for everyone.  Depending on your brand, your target market, and the content you’re posting, one site may be more effective than the other.  But the most important thing to understand is they’re both pieces of a holistic marketing approach.