Alnisa Designs & Co
Web Design & SEO Agency

Website Vs. Social Media

Website Vs. Social Media: Why you shouldnt depend on social media alone

A Website or Social Media? Which one do you need for your business? Which one can generate more leads for potential customers? Which one can create a massive following that will help your company grow faster? This debate between social media and websites seems to have no end in sight. Just ask any marketing team what their stance on this topic is and which one they find to be the most important and effective in attracting the most customers or visitors.

First things first, what exactly is Social Media?

Social media is a collective term for websites and platforms that focus on communication, input, content-sharing and collaboration. Social media accounts give access to thousands of users who are interested in interacting with each other for business, social or interests. People can stay in touch with their relatives who live quite far on a daily basis and stay current with all the events that occur within their lives.

Examples of social media platforms include: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and so many others that attract thousands of users daily. Social media has now taken on the connotation of social networks simply because of its ability to easily communicate or engage with others online.

Social media has exponentially grown in popularity in the past decades, and not solely among individuals but businesses as well. This made it much easier for customers to voice their concerns, inquire about a product or leave a review on their experience with a business.

Benefits of Having Social Media

The biggest benefit of social media is that it is completely free to create an account, use their platform for collaborating with other users as well as creating pages for businesses. There are many features such having the ability to message your potential leads, have them message you, post your content as many times as you wish, interact with groups of similar interests or in similar regions of the country or the world.

These platforms are already designed so you can just access their features and post your content, such as your images, articles, business info, location(s), business hours and products/services. Social media gives you access to a much wider and global audience that is on these platforms 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and never taking off for holidays.

This reach will keep your business open and provide information like an online brochure when you are not able to, such as when you need to sleep or take time away. The biggest benefit of social media is that it is completely free to create an account, use their platform for collaborating with other users as well as creating pages for businesses.

There are many features such having the ability to message your potential leads, have them message you, post your content as many times as you wish, interact with groups of similar interests or in similar regions of the country or the world. These platforms are already designed so you can just access their features and post your content, such as your images, articles, business info, location(s), business hours and products/services.

Social media gives you access to a much wider and global audience that is on these platforms 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and never taking off for holidays. This reach will keep your business open and provide information like an online brochure when you are not able to, such as when you need to sleep or take time away.

Disadvantages of Having Social Media

Even though social media platforms are completely free to access and post your content on it may require you to pay for ads or campaigns so your posts can get in front of the right audience, after all, if potential customers don’t see your business you may as well not even exist.

These ad campaigns are the platform’s primary source of revenue and their ads are increasing in price every year which means your advertising budget will need to increase as well. You can continue to post your content without running ads or campaigns, however, it might be in vain since there wont be too many eyeballs on your products or services.

These platforms will not promote your content just because you have a business that offers great services or products because their main purpose is to get revenue from their customers who want to be on their network to promote themselves, their business or their group. They know that once customers are using these networks, they will eventually want to try out marketing and purchase campaigns to get their posts in front of those who might want to buy.

At times, social media isn’t really interested in posts that don’t get a lot of interaction from their readers and will not display your posts to others via their feed. Each algorithm update seems to decrease the amount of post-exposure and then you have to try and figure out what to change so your posts, videos or reels can be placed in front of potential leads again. Traffic dips will cause you to get extremely frustrated with your marketing strategy and lose your brand awareness if you don’t stay on top of social media posting trends.

- Losing access to your content

The most scariest thing that can happen to a popular business page that has so many followers is that page getting hacked and leaving you feeling helpless because you have been locked out of your account. Another scary and completely frustrating situation for a business is a social media platform deciding that you have no control over your content.

Meaning that if at anytime they decide they want to suspend or delete your account because you infringed upon one of their guidelines or broke one of their posting rules they can absolutely do just that. Any content – text, photos, videos, product or service information that you share on social media is owned by that platform, whether it be Instagram, Facebook, Twitter that content is theirs.

Let’s think about all your thousands of followers or connections that you have worked so hard to attract, nurture and maintain since you were able to gain their trust, only to have all of them lost because your content was removed from the social media platform.

Do you recall when Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other associated platforms went offline in October of 2021 for almost 2 days and all those business owners freaked out because they lost revenue because their content was inaccessible all that time? That meant no products or services were sold or new leads were brought in from currently running campaigns or ads.

- Sudden Cancellation of your Account

You go to log in to your account and the error message states your account cannot be found. If you have ever had this happen to you, the world can feel like it is closing in on you and you are not sure of what to do first. At any time, Facebook or Instagram along with the other social media giants can delete an account without explanation as they state in their terms of the agreement that you have to consent to when you are creating your account.

Your page can be deleted because of some of the following reasons:

You were not allowed to request Likes
Creating an account under a Fake name
Impersonating someone else
Cover photo cannot contain more than 20% of text

There can be a multitude of reasons why social media platforms can and do remove people’s accounts and that’s why you must be aware of their rules, “your content” and how it can affect your business. Social media can restrict anything they do not agree with and there is very little to absolutely nothing that you can do about it.

- Social Media Platform Trends

This can be daunting for any business trying to market its brand when they are not sure which trends to follow and implement into its strategy. Business owners may get frustrated when trying to figure out which social media network to join. With so many new social media networks popping up every day, the likelihood that unless they have a huge following they could disappear just as quickly as they arrived on to the social media circuit.

With Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at the forefront of everyone’s mind, I would love for you to ask when was the last time you heard anyone mention anything about Myspace? That social media platform came and went. My advice on this situation is never to try and keep with up every single network just to remain relevant because it will never be possible. Its best to remain with the most popular social media platforms with billions of users and stick to the most active networks, such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for business.

- Decreased Audience Due to Platform Inaccessibility

There is a growing part of the community that is not on social media or is leaving it due to it’s negative impacts on society. Many places are actually limiting access to social media platforms due to this growing concern of negative influence and misinformation rampantly spreading unchecked.

How will you be able to market your business to those individuals who refuse to sign up and use social media platforms? If potential customers can only find you on social media then you have completely lost the opportunity to market to them.

- Limited Much Needed Search Engine Exposure

The main purpose for building a website is to make it SEO-friendly so it can rank high on the search engine results page so new and existing customers can find your business. However, social media pages cannot be modified to add keywords and industry-tailored content to help you rank in Google search.

If your website has been customized for SEO it will gain much better visibility in search engine results because it will always be placed prominently above any social media pages since it targets exact match keywords.

- Limited Content Due to Algorithmic Bias

One hard truth about social media that has been difficult for some to accept, is that these platforms use algorithms to choose which posts to show its users and in which order. So there is an chance that your content wont be shown to a lot of users because (1) they don’t know your business exists and (2) because you didn’t run an ad in order to place your content in their newsfeed.

If your potential customers aren’t on social media all the time or they don’t interact with your content, then how can your content make it through the algorithm traffic police barricade? Ads are the only way to gain access to the other side where your customers are.

What is a Website?

A website is a collection of web pages that share a unique domain name or website address. Each page provides content such as information, products, or services showcasing photos or video via clickable links which allows you to move from one page to another.

If you want to visit a website, all you have to do is open a browser window and type the website address into the address bar, and hit enter. Your browser’s window will now display the website’s main page or homepage just like if you were arriving at someone’s home and you would be taken to their front door.

- Benefits of a Website

While there are many advantages to having a website, I will only cover six of the most important reasons for business owners to have one. Stating the obvious one first, is that you want others to be able to locate you online and connect with potential customers about your products and/or services. Customers go online to locate a solution to their problem.

If your business can not be found online many potential customers won’t even take you seriously and will perceive your business to be irresponsible and untrustworthy. Having a website is the new digital business card and not having one screams to potential customers that your business is not your top priority almost equating it with a side hobby.

Developing an online presence
Having a website can help customers shape the way they perceive your business. People are always looking for reviews that represent how you handle your business, how efficient you are at managing or delivering services or products to clients, and how long your business has been in operation.
Social media profiles do provide some indication that your business is operational, however, it will not carry the weight of a serious company if you do not have a website to go with it.
Target Local Customers
Targeting customers for your business in the area surrounding your business otherwise known as Local SEO places your business in front of customers who reside within a 5-10 mile radius. Most online visitors will begin a keyword search with ‘beauty supply stores near me’. The goal is to get your website to show within these results and with proper Local SEO (search engine optimization) you will more than likely get new business from this search. Coming in on top of these search results tells your customers that your website has also created brand awareness in your local business community.
You can share your address and contact info
For businesses that have a brick-and-mortar location, a Google My Business Listing can provide the complete address, phone number, hours of operation and directions to your store. This will take the guess work out of trying to get directions from a friend or neighbor and eventually getting lost and having to call the store anyway. Google Maps also show the surrounding area with streets included so you can get an exact location of where you are headed.
Educate users about your business
Customers don’t always know exactly what they want, however, sometimes they do have an idea and so they begin an online search. A website can prepare them to make smarter choices. Your website can be used as a teaching tool to educate your potential customers that you are an expert in your industry and can provide them with the very service or product they are looking for.
Promote your business on Social Media
There is a common rumor that has taken over the Internet about social media and it’s that many have a false notion that if you have social media that having a website isn’t necessary. The main goal behind having a website is to get traffic back to your website via any published social media content. However, some people just create social media platforms and only publish content to these platforms.
Email lists to stay connected with customers
Staying in touch with your customers has never been easier and email marketing completely simplifies the process by getting conversions and driving sales. The art of widening your audience occurs when you create compelling campaigns that sell your product or service without selling to the customer. The most efficient to get people to join your email list is to provide an easy form directly on your website so you never miss an opportunity to gain a potential new client/customer. People love to stay informed and up-to-date on things they are interested in. It takes time to build a list, however, once you have your audience they will always expect you to send them emails and as many as you like for any new product or service.

Conclusion

It seems this long and ongoing debate will continue my friend. So the question remains, is a website actually better for your business than social media? Can you run an effective online business with just social media alone? The verdict is now in and you really do need a website in order for your business to truly thrive. A website along with a strong social media presence works best to maximize traffic and extend your reach online. They actually work in perfect harmony because you limit your marketing efforts when you choose one over the other.

It would be so much harder to increase your organic traffic reach and boost your website ranking, making it almost impossible to move your site closer to page 1 without them both.

Contact us so we can develop an effective SEO strategy that includes adding niche-related content for your blogs as a monthly service that Google will absolutely love. Effective Search Engine Optimization Services for your business website will improve your site’s ranking.

Until next time…