Trends come and go at light speed these days. Businesses often find themselves following these trends. It’s hard not to with countless books and blogs telling you what you should do to get more business. Whatever everybody else seems to be doing is what we should be doing right?
Since the rise of social media, I have seen businesses and organizations put overwhelming time and effort into their Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media profiles. Though there is nothing wrong with focusing on social media, most of them have walked away from the one online presence they have total control over, their website.
The issue with focusing more on social media than your website is that you do not have control over your social media profiles. They are only useful so long as their platform continues to be popular. What effect will the content of your Facebook page have when Facebook is no longer the center of the universe? Think old Myspace. What about the following you created over this time and the energy created by the conversations? The situation gets more challenging when social activity is active in multiple places, leaving your content and metrics completely fragmented.
So how do you manage your online presence in a world every so demanding of your time and marketing budget?
Your Company Website
As many businesses have put their focus on social media, they’ve lost sight of what they have complete control of, their website. The correct use of social media is to harness its energy to direct traffic to your website. Social media should never take center stage. I am not discounting the importance of social media in today’s marketing strategies but I believe that these platforms should be used to direct traffic back to something we do have control over.
What about sharing?
You have probably become accustomed to sharing things on Facebook and Twitter, such as photos, specials, promotions and the like. You can post this kind of content on your website in the form of a blog and then share the links on social media.
Unintentional Disconnect
Countless times I have seen a business post about a deal or special on Facebook without sharing a link to direct the user to more information. The post often looks like this: “Free shipping on all of our gift baskets this week!” This should be followed by a link to the gift basket category or to the announcement on their website that explains the details of the promotion and the fact that it’s an online special for their online store. Businesses often leave it to the customer to open up a new browser window, Google search for their business website and find their own way to the gift basket category. Had the post contained a link back to the website, the process could have gone down with a lot less effort on the customers behalf. Perhaps this would make for another article, let’s finish talking about the importance of your website.
Don’t forget the Search Engines
It’s unclear as to whether or not Google is crawling Facebook page content, considering you have to physically Like a page before that content becomes visible. In my own tests, I have been unable to get specific content I posted on Facebook to show up in the search engines. This tells me that the only people who are seeing the content I post to Facebook are those who have already Liked my page. I am not the only one who has came to this conclusion. Though I want to continue to provide value to my existing customers the only way I will be able to scale my business is if I can reach people who have yet to hear about me. Placing your content behind a wall seems counter productive if you ask me.
Everything is good in moderation
My Grandmother used to tell me that everything is good in moderation; and I think that this holds true when it comes to social media. Use it to further the reach of your brand. Obviously it is absurd to think that people will come to your website every day looking for updates when Facebook and Twitter is where they spend their waking hours. You can use Social Media to get your updates seen more often but the only way to reach a lot of potential new business is to pay big money to those social networks. If you are going to pay social networks for traffic, it should lead to something you have total control over, your website.
In Conclusion
Beefing up your social media presence when your website is lacking is like putting the cart before the horse. Don’t be that company or organization whose website can’t live up to their social media hype. People expect social media to be more of a conversation and the company website to contain the meat and potatoes. It’s easy to focus on social media because it’s mostly free and easy to start up, but less of an investment often returns less as well.
