Twitter vs Facebook

This weeks blog I wanted to try and compare two companies who use social media to communicate with their respective audiences. Twitter and Facebook are right now by far the most popular of social media outlets, but each platform really does differ from the other so I wanted to investigate two companies that I am actually involved and familiar with.


UFC and Blizzard Entertainment

Head to Head on Twitter

Blizzard stats:                                   UFC stats:

Tweets - 70.2K                                  Tweets - 59.8K

Followers - 573K                                Followers - 2.67M

Following - 114                                   Following - 19.2K

So right off the bat I noticed that the UFC tries to do their best to interact with people who tweet or retweet any and everything regarding MMA or the UFC itself. It really shows in that they return the favor and follow fans that really stay involved in the fights or fighters.

Blizzard however does little in terms of interacting with fans that tweet or promote their products. The most interaction I gathered were primarily from what look like 3rd party vendors or people with very specific complaints about the function of a product or game.

I will say that both companies however do a really good job at promoting upcoming events or releases. The advantage the UFC has though is that their many events throughout the year are still all hosted and promoted in one location. Whereas Blizzard Entertainment really is just the hub for the variety of games that they have. So if you're interested in staying up to date on all or one specific event or game you have to follow multiple feeds on twitter.

I did attempt to interact with both companies over this past week on twitter. While I didn't receive any direct responses, I did get a few 'Favorite' hits on my tweets at the UFC. (Maybe because they had a PPV this weekend)


Head to Head on Facebook

Blizzard stats:                                  UFC stats:
Likes - 2,915,945                              Likes -17,420,220
Founded - 2/8/1991                           Founded - 1/1/1993

What I found interesting about the Facebook interaction in comparison between the two companies was that there was an obvious presence from Blizzard moderators. Both companies allow open posting on their pages with very few restrictions. But Blizzard most certainly appears to prefer the interaction on facebook with fans instead of twitter. I noticed quite a few humorous replies to peoples posts.

Surprisingly I don't think I saw one reply or direct response to the fan activity on the UFC facebook page. There's also a pretty huge difference between the amount of material posted on facebook over the amount posted via twitter. Of course when it's fight weekend like it was this last week there is a noticeable increase in on both platforms.

Summary

All together I think both companies do very well with providing up to date information about their products and events. Blizzard seems to try and pull you in with nostalgia quite a bit more than the UFC, or that could just be my bias, but the UFC really uses twitter in a superior manner and it shows in their following/follower numbers. Even though Blizzard Entertainment has plenty of sublayer accounts, I.E. World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Diablo, etc., they really don't compare to the amount of fans who are more engaged on the UFC platforms.

I do like the fact that Blizzard does section off their respective games to other accounts but the overall feel between the company that provides those games and fans shows a pretty big disconnect which I believe hurts their ability to reach more audience members from those other accounts.