Facebook Preferred Social Media Channel For Sales Lead Campaigns But Twitter Favioured For Brand Building

For UK marketers, Facebook is the social media platform that ticks all the boxes when it comes to campaign development and evaluation, the inaugural “social media scorecard” from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) shows.

The survey of 171 social marketers in the UK revealed that Facebook was their most preferred social media channel, beating other big names in the online social sector such as LinkedIn and Twitter, which were ranked second and third, respectively. YouTube came fourth and Google+ was ranked fifth.

Facebook was ranked the most marketing-friendly social platform overall, but Twitter was particularly favoured for building brand awareness. Linkedin, meanwhile, was credited for its ability to target users.

Just a few of the marketers polled said they have added image and video-based platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, Vimeo and Snapchat to their mix of social marketing channels.

Facebook is still the best platform for marketers in terms of functionality and post-campaign analysis, but it will be interesting to see whether this will continue to be the case over the next 12 months, said Lynsey Sweales, member of the DMA social media council and CEO of SocialB UK.

The scorecard was created to measure and benchmark the factors considered important in social media, including ease of use, availability of targeting tools, brand awareness and quality of analytical tools.

Last year, UK marketers boosted their social media expenditure by 71% to £588.4 million, according to figures provided by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).