Do I need a website if I have a Facebook page?

Yes. Longer answer below.

The 3 Critical Components to your Successful Brand

Many businesses are not sure if they need a website when they have a Facebook page.

It’s because of this that I often get asked the question, “Hey Rob, do I need a website if I have a Facebook page for my business?”. Logically this inquiry makes sense. After all, Facebook is a hugely popular social media platform with millions of users, it’s straightforward to set up, and it’s free. What’s the point of investing in a website then if everything you could want is on your Facebook page?

The big problem, however, is that Facebook belongs to Facebook. On the other hand, your website, if you have one, belongs to you.

Facebook is always changing the rules of engagement on their platform, and while this annoys and aggravates many business owners, they have every right to do so. It’s their platform. Additionally, Facebook’s primary objective is not to help you grow your business, but to make money off of you.

I always recommend that despite the benefits of Facebook, you are not doing your business any good if your company doesn’t have its own website. Even a simple, one-pager is better than no website at all.

To sum-up why you need your website, think of it this way. Imagine that your Facebook page is a stall at the local farmer’s market. You pay rent for that stall for the privilege to show up and use that space to sell your goods. But the booth is owned by the market organizers. You have to play by their rules, you can’t take up more space than allocated, and you have to close when the market closes. To top it off, if you piss off the market organizers for some reason, they can kick you out. It’s their market; they can do what they want. Once they do, you lose access to your customers, the ones who have come to know you well and keep you in business.

Now, think of your website as your own store. You bought it; you don’t pay rent. You can do what you want, make your own rules and do as you please. You don’t have to worry about getting kicked out and losing business.

My recommendation, however, is to have both. Use Facebook for connecting with your customers, and use your website as your “store-front,” where you send customers. Include your site on your business card to draw traffic, but from your website, include links to all your social media channels, including Facebook.

Do you have a website and a Facebook page? Or do you only have a Facebook page? Let me know how you use the two together to grow your business.

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Blog

A little bit of this. A little bit of that.

The following is an ongoing list of some of the top Social Media Management tools that I’ve found on the web. To fall into this list, the tool must be able to manage multiple social media platforms, not just one. If you have others to add, please mention in the comments and I’ll add them in. As I review the services, I will have a link to the review page as well. I plan on reviewing all of them eventually. Enjoy.

Sprout Social

From their website:

Create an Exceptional Experience Across Networks
Sprout’s collaborative platform ensures smarter, faster and more efficient social communications.
ENGAGEMENT
Find opportunities to engage and join social conversations.
PUBLISHING
Publish messages to Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.
ANALYTICS
Measure performance and analyze all your social efforts.

Socialoomph

From their website:

Boost your social media productivity — it doesn’t have to be a manual time-consuming process! Twitter, Facebook (profiles, pages, and groups), LinkedIn (profiles, groups, and company pages), RSS feeds, blogs, Plurk, and App.net! Easily schedule updates, find quality people to follow, and monitor social media activity! Join hundreds of thousands of satisfied users today!

Hootsuite

From their website:

Grow and engage your audience using Hootsuite’s robust social media listening tools. You’ll always be up-to-date, and truly connected to your customer base.

Edgar

From their website:

Meet Edgar: the only app that stops social media updates from going to waste.
Most social updates are seen by only a
teensy fraction of your audience.
Time of day, social network algorithms, and a wide range of unpredictable factors limit
the number of people who see any given update.

CoSchedule

From their website:

Save A Ton Of Time With Social Media
Sharing blog posts with social media used to be a pain. Now you can create your blog and social media content at the same time—before you publish.
Get More Traffic Than Ever Before
Customize your social media sharing schedule to get up to 75% more traffic than you used to. All while saving more than an hour per blog post.
Plan Ahead To Balance Your Life
When you plan ahead with your editorial calendar, you can blog more efficiently. That gives you time you could spend doing other awesome stuff.

Buffer

From their website:

Buffer is the best way to drive traffic, increase fan engagement and save time on social media.

That’s it for now. If you have used some of these, leave a comment and tell me which ones and how you liked it. If you have others to share, leave a message and I’ll check it out.
Cheers,
Robert Scozzari