GUEST BLOG by Jess Mackay, Gen Y Writer and Future Author

The names ‘Facebook’ and ‘Instagram’ should sound familiar to even the most technology deprived individuals. The two social media giants have emerged in the last decade to become two of the most popular and frequently used social networks of the digital age.

Although both providing a social service, Facebook and Instagram have been designed to serve very different purposes. So which social media craze is proving more engaging?

From a marketing perspective, Instagram has been labelled as ‘the best platform for marketers to connect with consumers’. This attraction comes from Instagram’s simplified photo/video upload feature that allows brands to connect directly with their intended audience in small, creative bursts. In comparison to Facebook, Instagram gets straight to the point, rather than producing a mixed feed of statuses, photos, videos and page sharing that can allow brand updates to be lost in the crowd.

Facebook’s engagement is within the variety of content it provides, however research has shown that the popularity of Facebook and Instagram might differ between age brackets. In a recent study of teenagers, Facebook has fallen to the third most used social network (45%) behind Instagram (76%) and Twitter. A further study has also shown 38% of teens note Instagram as their favourite marketing channel.

Despite Facebook continuing to dominate people’s daily average internet use with 1.35 billion active monthly users, Instagram’s easy-to-use features and simplified video and image feed, created only from users you want to follow, could be the new tool to engage with consumers, socialites and photography lovers alike. The social network grows by one user per every second, making it one of the fastest growing channels that has proved in recent years to engage a wider audience.

Who gets your vote?