When it comes to marketing through social media, both Facebook and Twitter can help you or your business accomplish the same goal – get your message out to the world and build large audiences to follow it. But, believe it or not these similar media outlets need to be approached very differently and with separate strategies.

Sure, they have similarities. They both include usernames, profile pages, status updates, photos and tagging, but when you’re ready to post your message to your audience, be careful how you approach posting if you want to reach the right audience.

Facebook pages typically post in the public feed only one or two updates every day. Your goal with Facebook should be to obtain the most likes and comments, which drive people to re-share, which will expose your message to more of their friends and followers. There is also no limit to the amount of information you post at once. You can upload videos, photos, links, and more without being cut off. This creates more of a blog atmosphere, where you can easily look back at new and old posts from one particular Facebook page at any time.

However, Twitter profiles typically post much more frequently, sending out about 10-12 tweets a day on average at only 140 characters per post. Because of this, followers are only going to see the tweets within a small timeframe after something is published. Since this tool is more time sensitive, you will want to publish as much valuable information as possible to catch your audience while they are online and reading. Hitting the right people with your tweets will also ensure that your information is re-tweeted, which will send your content out to other audiences and hopefully generate more of your own followers.

While trying to manage your Facebook and Twitter activity, HootSuite is a valuable tool to use. HootSuite is a social media management system for businesses and organizations to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one secure, web-based dashboard. While there is a lot of ground to cover through both of these outlets, HootSuite allows you to schedule your postings, so you can be sure to release your information at the right time in order to reach the right audience as well as providing social analytic tools for measurement.

Happy Facebooking, Tweeting, and HootSuite-ing!