If you've found yourself thinking, “why do I need a website when I can just use social media to promote my business?” It’s a great question that we intend to answer for you in this blog post – “website vs social media“, which is best for you?

Without question, having a powerful social media presence is a crucial part of any business branding and marketing effort, but social media doesn't replace the authority or power of a well built website.

Why would you want to build a website that has numerous costs (domains, hosting, designers, SEO, updates, maintenance, and more), when you could just setup social media pages for your business on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram … for FREE? Here's a better way to ask that question. As a business owner, would you rather:

A) Set up shop in someone else’s store (without a lease) OR

B) Own or lease a dedicated space for your business?

If you setup shop solely on one or more social platforms, your business is ultimately at the mercy of those platforms. They can make changes whenever they want and you don’t have a voice, even if it impacts your business. If that platform gets acquired, changed, or shut down, you may no longer be able to reach your customers. You are in effect, renting your own customers! A great example of this is when many business pages were hurt when Facebook updated it’s algorithm, decreasing the reach of business pages. There was nothing business’s could do except complain. At the end of the day they had to accept the new rules and move forward or move on. If you have your own website, and it’s the “hub” of your business, then you have 100% control of your public online persona.

Why social media only is holding you back

Having a presence on social media can be beneficial for your business because of the branding effect – you will potentially have more brand visibility. The more brand visibility you have, the more likely your customers are to see that you are a business they should engage with. If that's the case, then why is a social media only strategy a problem? Well, because you do not have full control over content or ads that will show when your customer visits your social media page on a third party social media site. For example, a visitor to your Facebook page my see a competitors adverts, which I'm sure you'll agree is not an ideal scenario. Additionally they will be confronted by an array of features and functionality that are designed to distract and detract from the message you want to deliver to your customers. A smarter way to utilise your social media presence is to use social media as a marketing platform to drive traffic to your website. Use that traffic to grow your email and customer lists so you can communicate with them any time, anywhere. On your own terms.

Social Media vs Websites

Because of the sheer number of users, social media has the most potential to reach your customer directly, even if it’s not the ONLY way. The problem with many businesses who simply setup a Facebook or Twitter account for their business is that they’re completely reliant on the platform. If that platform has a change and you aren’t aware of it, that’s your problem.

Here’s why you would want to consider building a website vs solely relying on Social Media:

• You control your online presence and content
• Your customers can find you easily through your url or a search engine
• You have a permanent web address (unless you decide to change it)
• You have 24/7 access to customers through your website, instead of having to contact them through a social media account.

Social media is NOT built to support YOUR business’s needs. Social media is very good for building brand awareness, but it’s not built to support your business in providing a great service or product to your customers, with whom you should have a relationship that goes beyond social media. At it's core, social media is a business, designed to build the business of the particular social media platform.

The benefits and importance of a website

Your website is a proprietary place that allows you to communicate your value as a business to your customers and clients. Communicating the value you deliver to your prospects, and customers is vital to the success of your business. Your website is a unique space you own and control, where you can deliver your compelling messages and vision to persuade your prospects to become customers. Research shows that customers are more likely to do business with businesses with a well built website than simply a free social media page.

With your website you also have ways of growing your audience via accessibility on search engines using SEO and other techniques that are not available through social media platforms. The higher your website is ranked in search engine results, the more traffic you’ll receive. SEO isn’t hard, you can make this happen.

Conclusion

Your social media business pages are NOT the equivalent of an actual website. There's no doubt that having an effective social networking presence is a powerful way to engage and connect with your prospects and customers. A social media presence can also drive traffic back to your website.  Increasingly, social media sites are also able to conduct ecommerce activities to sell goods and services. However, in amongst the narrative around social media followers, likes, engagement etc, it is an inescapable fact that the majority of actual business commerce happens through a businesses website, and NOT on social media. In other words your actual paying customers are more likely to BUY from you, if you have a credible web presence. 

The bottom line is, it’s much smarter to invest in something you own than to build on land that doesn’t belong to you. Some day the rules will change (as they do often on social media platforms), and it could have a major impact on your business if you aren’t in control. This is why we highly recommend that you invest in your own website and then use social media – and it’s many benefits – to reach new audiences and grow your business.

If you're thinking "that's all well and good, but now what do I do about building a website", well, you don’t need to be your own website creator. Ahumka Digital have services in our digital store that allow you to build a web presence that scales your business. Whether you ultimately decide to use us to build your website or not, we have a range of digital services designed for SMEs. Simply check them out in our digital store.