Be in 100% Control of Your Online Presence
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?
With the first option, you’re at the mercy of the store owner. If they don’t want your business in their store anymore, then you’re now out of business until you find a new location. If they decide not to open up one morning, your business can’t reach it’s customers and your revenue will be affected.
However, if you own or lease then you have much more control over your situation. The changes in someone else’s business won’t affect whether you stay in business or how much it will cost to stay in business. The same is true for having a website that you control, rather than building your online presence solely on a social media platform.
Don’t Be at the Mercy of Someone Else
If you setup shop solely on one or more social platforms, your business is ultimately at the mercy of those platforms. You are at the mercy of their algorithms. They can make changes whenever they want and you don’t have a voice, even if it impacts your business.
A specific example of this is when many business pages were recently 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.
The same thing could happen on another social platform at any time. YouTube could start charging you to store videos on their servers. Twitter could decide to become a premium platform where business’s have to “pay to play”. In either of these circumstances if you don’t pay then you no longer get to communicate with your customers.
You have NO control on these social platforms.
Stop Spending Excess Time on Correspondence and Answering the Same Questions Over and Over Again
When corresponding with your clients, do you find yourself spending too much time rewriting the same old email messages, searching for past messages, and copying and pasting information? Your website should become your filing cabinet and administrative assistant.
Your website should house business forms, documents, checklists, and all the tools needed to run your business. So instead of spending time on the body of your message, you simply give your customers the link to these items with a quick personal note.
Taking this one step further is setting up automatic replies and email messages or "marketing automation". This helps complete repetitive marketing tasks to make sure you are nurturing sales leads and not dropping the ball on follow-through. This saves business and marketing time and effort.
Your Website is the “Hub” of Your Online Presence – Social Media is a Marketing Tool
If you have your own website, and it’s the “hub” of your business, then you have 100% control of your situation.
Like the store analogy above, you can have your own store and still setup a rack of your items in someone else’s store. Why wouldn’t you? Especially if they offer the space for free. Not only do you control your store, you also get to use someone else’s space to market your items and make some sales. If they close down then you might lose a great marketing space, but you aren’t out of business.
This is how you should treat social media.
Use social media as a marketing platform to drive traffic back to your website. Use that traffic to grow your email and customer list so you can communicate with them any time, any where. On your own terms.
At the end of the day, 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 are going to change and it could have a major impact on your business, if you aren’t in control.
This is why I highly recommend investing in a website that you own and then use social media – and it’s many benefits – to reach new audiences and grow your business.