Recently, I’ve seen some articles stating Facebook can represent your business instead of building a company website. Facebook vs. Website. What’s the difference? Here are five aspects comparing Facebook and your own business website. What do you think?

Facebook Business Page –

• Facebook does well in search engines
• Can create polls and email marketing
• Interact solely with Facebook users
• Facebook owns the website
• Can add special welcome pages with html or iframes, etc.

Business Website –

• You can do the same things Facebook can do
• You can create an e-commerce site or blog site
• You own the site and can customize it to your liking
• You have access to many more people on the web
• You can optimize each web page for search engines

When you compare and contrast the differences between Facebook vs a website, you see there are a lot of similarities. But the crucial difference is that you are limited to the fact that Facebook can delete anything it wants since it owns the website! What does that mean? This week I noticed Facebook deleted the “discussions” tab. I saw some comments from business pages asking Facebook what happened to the content that was there.  

Remember, it’s Facebook’ s website!

Having a website in addition to a social media presence offers several advantages that can help businesses and individuals achieve their goals more effectively. Here are some reasons to have a website alongside your social media presence:

1. Brand Control: A website provides full control over your brand’s online presence, allowing you to customize the design, content, and user experience according to your brand’s identity. This level of control is not always possible on social media platforms, where branding options are limited.
2. Professionalism: A well-designed website conveys professionalism and credibility to your audience. It serves as a central hub where potential customers or clients can learn more about your business, products, services, and achievements in a structured and organized manner.
3. Content Ownership: On your website, you have complete ownership of the content you publish. This includes blog posts, product descriptions, videos, images, and more. Unlike social media platforms where content can be subject to platform rules or algorithm changes, your website allows you to control and archive your content independently.
4. SEO and Discoverability: Websites are crucial for search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. By optimizing your website for search engines, you can improve its visibility and rank higher in search results, attracting organic traffic from people actively searching for your products or services. Social media platforms can complement SEO efforts but do not offer the same level of control over search engine visibility.
5. E-commerce and Transactions: For businesses selling products or services online, a website provides a platform for e-commerce transactions. While social media platforms may support some e-commerce features, a dedicated website allows for more extensive customization, payment gateways, inventory management, and customer relationship management.
6. Analytics and Insights: Websites offer robust analytics tools that provide valuable insights into visitor behavior, engagement metrics, conversion rates, and more. These analytics help you understand your audience better, optimize your marketing strategies, and make data-driven decisions to improve your online presence and performance.
7. Long-Term Asset: A website is a long-term asset for your business or personal brand. Unlike social media posts that may have a limited lifespan in users’ feeds, your website content remains accessible and searchable over time. It can serve as a valuable resource for customers, clients, partners, and stakeholders.
8. Diversification and Reach: While social media platforms are essential for reaching and engaging with a broad audience, having a website adds another channel for reaching potential customers or followers who may not be active on social media. It diversifies your online presence and extends your reach across different platforms and audiences.

In summary, a website complements your social media presence by offering brand control, professionalism, content ownership, SEO benefits, e-commerce capabilities, analytics insights, a long-term asset, and diversified reach. Together, these advantages contribute to a more robust and effective online presence for businesses and individuals alike.

Facebook is a good way to market your site and an added bonus in representing your business. Take advantage of this great marketing website! Think of Facebook as another mini site for your company that you can use to increase your branding, customer service and linkback optimization. But you also need to consider this…do you want your business represented entirely by someone else’s site? I don’t think so!

What conclusion did you come up with after reading the differences between Facebook vs. a website? We’d love to hear your opinion! If you have social media or SEO questions, feel free to comment and ask!