Your website and social media work better together
As a busy small business owner, it can be tempting to see digital marketing as a distraction. In most cases, it’s not what you went into business to do, is it? Okay, your customers spend a lot of time online — but does that really mean you need both a website and social media? Isn’t one enough?
Well, yes. And no. In that order. Here’s why.
Why Small Firms Need a Professional Website
As you know, whether you sell online or not, a website represents your business 24/7/365. Most consumers check traders’ websites before buying from them, and judge your professionalism based on how much effort and investment you’ve put in. So not having a website at all undermines sales. So do sites that clearly use cheap DIY platforms. The more professional your website is, the more it boosts your brand awareness and credibility, helping you to stand out among your competitors.
Yet well-built websites offer much more than that.
Professional websites give you access to lots of stats about your visitors and customers to help you analyse trends and plan for the future. They can help to automate business processes, including gathering leads, taking orders and bookings, and the many forms of e-commerce. Smart businesses also use them to attract and persuade potential customers by publishing helpful insights and information.
To make sales, you need your market’s attention. That’s what everyone is competing for. With a professional website and effective SEO, organic (unpaid) search results can help you reach potential customers who know they need what you offer. However, not all of them do — and even those who do will prefer to buy from brands they feel they know, like and trust. While paid ads can build brand awareness, people don’t trust them much. Online reviews can build trust but rarely offer much information or build a personal connection.
Social media platforms fill the gaps between these strategies, boosting brand visibility, improving audience engagement, and generating leads. That’s why you need to be visible on the social media channels your audience tends to use. Again, some consumers expect professionals to maintain at least one or two social media channels, so you’ll lose sales if you don’t.
Still, there are dangers to relying too much on social media channels…
Social media channels are generally funded by ads, subscriptions and/or donations. They play by their own rules, mostly to their own profit. Those rules, their promotional algorithms, and their appearance can change, with little notice, at any time — and often do.
More importantly though, as ex-Google engineer Andrew Lewis and others have said, “If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product.” Publishing content directly on social media promotes those channels as the primary information sources rather than your brand. Like it or not, you’re donating your hard work to boost the brand and profits of corporations.
Worse, if they decide to shut down your account for any reason, you may lose everything you’ve posted on that channel, overnight.
A Smarter, Safer Approach
The smart approach is to use your website as a marketing hub. That means publishing your best content on your blog first, then sharing links to it on social media channels to attract more traffic. That way, your brand is better positioned as the authoritative source, able to display your content in the way you intend. Your site, your rules. Plus, should anything happen to your social media account, your content will still be available on your blog.
In turn, websites can let you embed social media feeds. That can help to grow your followers on those social channels, so that more learn about your latest blog posts. It can also extend the reach of any smaller posts that you may still choose to add directly on the social channels.
What if You Can’t Spare the Time?
You’re not alone. Regardless of how profitable it can be, many small business owners either haven’t got the time or inclination to spend hours on blogging and social media every week. The good news, though, is that you don’t have to.
That’s partly because social media posts — and folks’ memories — are short-lived. So once you’ve written a few dozen really helpful blog posts, you can keep re-sharing them for quite a while. You can also bulk-schedule such shares along with other social posts, using one of the popular scheduling systems available. Personally, I prefer Buffer, as I can link my small business web hosting clients’ blogs to that for automated sharing, but other services like HootSuite can be effective, too.
Still, if you’re struggling to find time even for that, my content marketing and social media marketing services can help.
Maintaining both a strong website and active social media presence is essential for small business success. Your website serves as a permanent, controlled space for your best content, unaffected by the shifting landscape of social media platforms. Social media, in turn, can drive traffic to your site, amplify your reach, and foster deeper customer relationships. Combining the strengths of both can significantly enhance your digital presence and business growth.
