Can Facebook Replace Your Business Website?
Many business owners are understandably confused by the sheer number of digital platforms.
There are Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and Snapchat, to name just a few. The media often praises their ability to help companies reach thousands, if not millions, of potential customers through targeted advertising.
In contrast to these social media giants and the hype around them, investing in your own business website can sometimes sound a bit like yesterday.
However, there are many reasons for your website and social media to coexist, as both have advantages that the other does not.
What are these advantages how can they be leveraged to save time in your workflow?
Social Media's Endless Feed
If you are an avid social media user, you are probably accustomed to the endless feed from your friends' posts that are intertwined with news and advertising. The more you scroll down, the more posts will appear, feeding you a continuous mix of your friends' comments and world events sprinkled with ads you might like.
However, if you want to return to an interesting article, it has probably disappeared.
The reason: social media flourishes in the present.
What is new news now is old news the next moment. Social media wants you to be glued to your device, giving you more of what you like and less of what you don't like. Therefore, each new post tries to be more exciting and more engaging than the last.
Your Website - The Forever Repository
Websites are very different from social media. Instead of displaying a series of posts, websites focus on presenting information in a way that is easy for a user to find.
If you write articles regularly and publish them on your blog as I do, a website is a perfect place to store them.
After Google and Bing have indexed your site along with all of your articles, potential customers can use the Google or Bing search engines to find a link to your website and blog posts. If the preview matches the information users were looking for, they can click the link and read more about the topic. Unless you delete your article from your website, it will be there forever, like an eternal repository.
When you think of a website for your business, think of it as a marketing hub.
▶ Turn Your Website Into a Powerful Marketing Hub
The information in this marketing hub should be well laid-out, written without jargon, and offer the reader a lot of insight.
If you wanted to share your blog posts, photos, or news about your products and services with potential or past customers, you could send them a newsletter.
▶ Are Email Newsletters an Effective Marketing Tool?
But what if some of these customers are not into reading emails?
You could reach them through another channel, such as Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest.
▶ How to Succeed on Social Media
If your website uses the Squarespace platform, you are well prepared. From Facebook you can link to any article on your website.
Create an Efficient Workflow
When you run a small business like me, you often feel that there are not enough hours in the day. You are under pressure, and every hour and every minute counts. And then there is this marketing campaign for the new product you have been working on. You have no time to waste. And wasting time means sitting at your computer, converting your campaign to fit another social media platform.
The key to an efficient workflow is to know the strengths and weaknesses of each software tool you use. As I mentioned above, the main advantage of a website is that they are perfect repositories for your content. But how can you turn this strength into a timesaver?
Many of my clients, including me, see a website as a marketing hub where the content is stored. In contrast, social media and email marketing are channels through which different customer groups can be reached.
The workflow
Create your content primarily for your website.
Plan ahead. With Squarespace and Shopify, you can plan on which day and at what time that material will be published. This day can be days or weeks in the future, giving you the much-needed flexibility to work on your marketing campaign on weekends or less hectic days.
Schedule your newsletter. If you want to send out a newsletter, you can schedule it in advance.
Facebook and Pinterest also allow you to schedule your post or pin. In Facebook, you need to go to Publishing Tools. In Pinterest, you set the publication time when you create your Pin. With Pinterest, you can choose a time up to two weeks in the future.
When the scheduled day and time arrive, your newsletter or Facebook post will be published without you needing to do anything on that day. And here is the best part: Since the content is still on your website, you can reuse it at any time.
So, Can or Rather Should Facebook Replace Your Business Website?
I would advise against replacing your business website with Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or any other social media platform, but, instead, use their strengths to reach thousands of potential customers through targeted advertising.
For that, I would recommend upgrading your website to a modern platform like Squarespace for informational websites or Shopify for online stores.
We like both platforms for what they do best.
You can also choose one of their competitors. Just make sure that the platform you select comes with features that make it easy to reach your customers.
These integrated features can become real timesavers for entrepreneurs who would rather spend their valuable time growing their company.
