Building Your Business On Your Website VS On A Social Media Platform
First, let me be clear on my opinion. To me, building your entire business on social media is like building a brand new million dollar home on rented land. It makes absolutely no sense to me at all. If you're going to make the investment of time and money, you should make darn sure that whatever you are building is on a strong foundation, one you own and control.
Although a business cannot get away with not showing up or being part of social media in today's world, you need to understand why you're there, what your goals are, how to use it to your benefit, how to capture its organic traffic and who you're speaking to and how.
But in this article, I will focus more on the benefits of having a website versus using social media platforms to build your business:
You're in control.
You’re in control of your website. You can choose the look and feel of your site, which helps you convey the message you want to send out. You can also decide what content will go on it, meaning you have total control over what people see when they visit. You have complete freedom to manage how people interact with your site too, whether that means giving them access to features such as live chat support or an online store where they can purchase products from directly from their browser.
You’re also able to decide who sees what information about yourself and how they navigate through it—you can make sure important information goes up front without being buried in pages of text or images that may not matter as much for someone visiting your website for the first time (like social media sites).
You can create deeper relationships with your audience.
There are a few reasons why you should be building your business on your website, rather than on a social media platform. First of all, it's easier for you to build trust and relationships with your audience when they're coming from the same place as you—your website. You can get to know them better by looking at their behavior data and then tailoring content specifically for them. By doing this, you'll be able to speak directly to them in a way that feels more personal than if they were just another number on Twitter or Facebook.
The Wix platform, which my site is built on, has some amazing features and apps that make it really easy to build an engaged community. The group feature really mirrors the FB groups that many are used to. You can create multiple groups so that your members have numerous options to choose from and to engage with. They can also build personal profiles and follow and engage with other members. Wix even has a live chat feature where members can talk to each other...just like they do on Messenger. Love it!
Secondly (and perhaps most importantly), building an audience through social media is difficult because there are so many other voices vying for attention in those spaces. People don't want advertisements; they want something real! That's why it's important that businesses offer up quality content that adds value or solves problems, instead of trying too hard at being "likeable" or witty just for the sake of generating clicks or likes—this will only end up hurting the brand in the long run because no one wants an advertiser masquerading as an actual person!
It creates more opportunities to share your story and your mission.
As a business owner, you know that all of your hard work isn’t just for the purpose of making money. You want to share your story and mission with the world. Well, guess what? On social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook, there are limitations on how much you can share with followers at once or even what you can share. The censorship that most of us navigate through social media can become intolerable. If you don't say the right thing in the right way at the right time, your account can actually get banned and shut down and then what do you do? Years of work, content, and files lost without so much as a notice. I know because it's happened to me multiple times with Instagram and Facebook. The last time it happened to me, I promised myself I would never put all my eggs in that basket again.
Now, I use social media to generate traffic to my websites and offers, not to manage my business.
On websites like WordPress and Wix (my personal favorite), there are no limits on how much content or information you can share with visitors. The only limit is yourself! If you want to post 1 new blog post every day for an entire year without repeating topics or ideas—you could do that!
This means more opportunities for people who visit your website to learn about who they are working with and why they should choose them over others in their industry.
The algorithm doesn't prevent people from seeing what you post.
Another thing to note is that the algorithm doesn’t prevent people from seeing what you post. You see, algorithms are exactly what they sound like: a set of rules that determine what content is shown to users. They’re used by social media platforms to show users the most relevant content, and they can also be manipulated by those same social media platforms to show certain content—which is why we see so many memes on Facebook, even if we don’t care about them at all!
The algorithm determines which of your followers see the content you post (and how much). For example: if one person unfollows your account because they don't agree with the things you say on there anymore (for whatever reason), then their account won't see any new updates when they log back into Facebook again later because it thinks "Oh hey! This person isn't interested in following anymore so I won't show them updates from anyone else either." On top of this, these algorithms also have access to information about other things like sales trends or goal conversions between different demographics—if someone bought something based on an ad shared through LinkedIn's platform then maybe LinkedIn will decide to not even bother showing ads related specifically towards purchasing activity anymore since it knows there's no point in focusing efforts towards those types of people anymore; this would mean fewer clicks overall across all products sold online based solely upon being shared across multiple channels simultaneously except when directly linked within each channel itself such as Amazon Prime Day where everyone shares exclusive deals only available. But, I digress...
Your messaging and branding is consistent.
You’ll also want to be sure your website and social media platforms share the same messaging, so that users can easily find what they’re looking for. If you have a Facebook business page, but your website is all over the place with its branding and messaging, then you may confuse people who are trying to contact you or learn more about your business.
As we mentioned earlier, it’s important to have consistency across all of your platforms because it builds trust with potential customers by showing them that there's no confusion about who does what when it comes down to communicating with someone from your organization.
You can generate revenue directly on the website itself.
You can generate revenue directly on the website itself.
Your website acts as an online hub for all of your business’s digital products and services, allowing you to offer products and drive traffic to where they can be purchased.
You have complete control over what goes up on your site, how it looks, when it appears, how much it costs and who sees it—you don’t need approval from anyone else.
It's easy to get started; there are plenty of free tools out there that will help you set up a blog or landing page in no time.
These are just a few of the many benefits of building your business on your website versus through social media platforms.
You can build a website for your business, you can build a website for your personal brand and you can use these websites to generate revenue. You could also be generating leads from people who visit your site and then selling products through it. The benefits of having a website is that it’s permanent, you own it and you control it. It doesn’t disappear or get deleted like social media accounts do sometimes without warning!
Building your business on social media platforms can be helpful, but it's more of a temporary solution. The best bet for building a business that lasts is to focus on your website. It might take some time and effort at first, but once you're up and running with an established site, it will be much easier than starting from scratch on social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram.
If you're interested in developing a website for your business or need a small upgrade, make sure you visit this page for ideas and services I offer on this topic.
Some of the links in this article may be affiliate links, which can provide compensation to me at no cost to you if you decide to purchase a paid plan. These are products I’ve personally used and stand behind. You can read my affiliate disclosure in my privacy policy.
