Should I have a website vs a social media business page?
One of the most asked questions in groups I see is “I have a business page on Facebook or Instagram, so do I need to have a website?” What’s the difference between having a social media business page versus an actual site of my own? Is it worth the money?
So, I thought we can take today’s blog post to chat about the benefits of having a website versus just running a business page of some kind in a social media platform.
The simple answer is that you need a website that you own so when the Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, or any other social media platform goes down, gets removed, or you get hacked on your socials, you still have a virtual storefront up and running.
What happens when the platform disappears?
A quick story: Remember when Google Plus was still around?
(Honestly, I totally forgot about this one until I came back to rewrite this blog post. But this goes to show you just how ephemeral everything is in our world today. Back to the story…)
Remember when Google Plus was still a thing? I remember having a client who wanted to work on that facet of their digital marketing, but two months later, Google had announced that they were shutting down Google Plus for good. Well, what happens then? What happens if Facebook disappeared tomorrow and literally all your content is only on your Facebook page? You would probably be scrambling to move or save all your content…just think about the anxiety.
You own your site not your socials.
You don’t technically own your Facebook or Instagram business page. These social media platforms get to make the rules, and you have to play by their rules when you run your business page on their platform.
I like to describe the Big Picture marketing to my clients like this: your business page is rented real estate. You don’t own it, and it is increasingly becoming a pay-to-play landscape, more on this later.
At the end of the day, the goal is to create a funnel of sorts that leads your target audience from the social media platform to your website, to get them to learn more about your brand, your products and services.
Check your site ownership.
The key here is having a Self-Hosted Site.
While platforms like Squarespace and Wix, are great and easy to use, you forfeit the ability to own your own site. I might have to look into the details of this and report back, but if I’m not mistaken, services like SS and Wix control the rights to your content. If they don’t like the content you’re putting out, then they might take your site down, somewhere in their Terms and Services you might see this in their fine print… Similar to the problem of a social media platform, if the website platform is down or disappears, you’ll be in deep sh*t, for lack of better words.
WordPress, on the other hand, is the best option in this case because it is a self-hosted site, which means a few awesome things:
- One, you have complete freedom in what content you get to put up in your site.
- Two, you get to own the site.
- Three, the customizability of the site means that it has the potential to grow with your business.
Think of your WordPress site as a house you own and you get to decide the décor of the entire house inside out. You can break it down, and reconstruct it from a small cabin to a giant mansion; this is what I mean when I say the site can absolutely grow with you and your business.
Business pages on socials are great for starting out…
The flip side of this, is that if you are just starting out and you need a place for potential clients to see your work, collect testimonials, create posts to build an audience, and/or for potential clients to connect with you, then this is definitely a way to do it.
Just keep in mind that as soon as you are able to, create your own site, that you own, so that you can set the foundation for your empire when you build it.
What are your thoughts on business pages on socials vs having a site?
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