It’s easy for our clients to become captivated by Facebook and Twitter, as it is clear these platforms hold incredible potential for many organizations in reaching, growing, and engaging their target audiences. Our clients’ initial captivation though, is often misled.
Building a suitable digital marketing and social media strategy doesn’t begin with a Facebook Page or a Twitter account—it begins with finding and understanding your audience online, reaching them where they are, and inviting them back to your place.
Find and define your audience
Where does your target audience live online? What sites do they visit? How do they interact on these sites and with each other? Are thousands of your supporters already on Facebook, or have they created their own niche network on Ning? These and other more tactical questions will help you define where your organization should live and how it should interact with its customers or supporters online. It can be difficult to figure out where to begin, and market research—especially online—is not a simple task. Having a partner to help you answer these questions can be key to a successful, strategic plan.
Share quality content and converse
The content you share and, perhaps more importantly, the conversations you have are the cornerstone of a sound social media strategy. What type of information does your audience want from you? Make sure your website has it all. Think of your site as your “content hub;” your presence in social media will serve to initiate, support, and enrich conversations surrounding that content.
Invite everyone back to your place
There are millions of people on Facebook that may be interested in interacting with your organization, so it makes sense to create a presence there—but that doesn’t mean you no longer need your website. Your website should be the core experience of your organization on the web. It’s where you share your best content and house what your customers or supporters want or need from your organization.
Facebook will continue to change and evolve; as you have no control over these changes and how they may affect your organization’s Facebook Page, it’s important to have a secure place on the web to call “home” for your organization. Ensure that your friends, fans, and followers on other platforms are aware of your website and what’s available to them there—the longer they linger on your turf, the better you’ll get to know them (and vice versa). And as we all know, knowing your customers or supporters well always serves to improve business.
Now it’s your turn. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic: do you think a branded Facebook Page or other social media presence can replace an organization’s website? If so, why?
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Katie – Thanks for some excellent thoughts. I would be surprised if anybody said yes.
I was a little surprised by the title though
. But for @treypennington’s link to this page, I am not sure if I would have read your post. But I am glad I did.
Lesson#1 for me: Titles are important.
#2 SM channels help funnel traffic to your website by engaging with your target community. That is your moment of truth – the home page or the micro-site. Most rejections will happen there. This is where you need to become the perfect host, and make it so easy for them to hang out (read: navigable), so that they either don’t want to leave, or keep coming back! The same would be true for a personal brand.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Cheers,
Prince,
@treypennington’s “party” analogy serves this topic well. As you mentioned above, your home on the web is your “moment of truth” – and its a moment that you should have complete control and ownership of (which Facebook can’t provide). Thanks for your comments. I look forward to reading the next post on your blog.
I agree that titles are important, and admit that the one above could have been more clear. Glad you found the post though
I enjoyed the conversation with Mike and others on the SMCDSM Ning site that sorta started this conversation and I’m happy to throw down here on the Cathfire blog to continue the theme a bit and go a little deeper.
I agree that in an ideal world, a business should have a standalone website/blog to house it’s deeper and richer content. I’d like to play devils advocate though and see if I can convince you to broaden your stance a bit.
There are many small businesses out there who ride a very thin margin in terms of selling their products and services. I’m thinking about the bakers, bike fixers, mechanics, snow plowers, and coffee shops. These folks are typically not connected to technology in any meaningful way right now. Many are not using email. Fax is still a big channel of communication for them. Most don’t have high-speed Internet access. If they own a computer, it’s an older model with a slow processor and an AOL email address. Some have never been on a computer in their lives. They still do good, solid business that keeps our economy going. They employee people and buy supplies and try like Hell to stay afloat.
Let’s call this point “0″ on the online scale. “10″ being a fully integrated online marketing strategy with multiple touch points and rock solid and responsive analytics providing real time feedback. I like the 10 point as much as you and wish everyone could reach that point. A stand alone static website is 5 on my mythical scale.
I see a few points between 0 and 5 that may be a solution for some of these folks. A Facebook Business Page might be a 3 and that might be all that this business can handle as a presence to stay in front of their customers. If they had a website or blog – who is going to maintain it and keep it fresh? They can’t afford to pay an agency or a consultant with their thin margins. There is a high likelihood though that one of their staff or family members is an avid Facebook user and, with some good initial guidance, could maintain a Facebook Page.
Perfect? No.
Doable? Yes.
Ben,
Thank you for sharing here. I appreciate your thoughts, though I don’t agree with your logic. I would argue that there’s just as much, if not more to understand and implement, in setting up and utilizing a Facebook Page (successfully) than building a simple site or microsite. From Farmville to new privacy options, the platform can be overwhelming. Simple, easy to use “off-the-shelf” sites are plentiful these days. What’s the real advantage to the client, and their consumers/supporters, for having a Facebook Page over a simple, even static, site? There is none.
Regardless of the potential client’s comfort and understanding of technology, encouraging the use of a Facebook Page (w/o any other “home” on the web) skips an incredibly important and necessary step in helping that client to understand the basics of the web, the power of SEO, owning a domain, etc.
Also, and perhaps most importantly, Facebook can change at anytime without regard for the users. Businesses don’t own the content that they’re sharing there. If Facebook (or any other social media outpost) dissolves, where does that leave the business?
Thanks again for your thought-provoking comments and insight.
I am with you on businesses needing a website for the SEO, content depth, capturing of data reasons you laid out in your post. I will always recommend that solution to companies as a cornerstone of an online presence. Not every business owner will accept that answer and FB offers at least a “knowable” and familiar option when they won’t pull the trigger on a website.
RE: Your question: What’s the real advantage to the client, and their consumers/supporters, for having a Facebook Page over a simple, even static, site?
My reply: Pretend I have one of the small business I have described in my original comment above. Very little or no web budget. No current web presence (haven’t even captured my customer’s emails). Low tech skills. I use Facebook to connect with my friends a little bit and I can handle that OK, but that’s about it. All three of the customer service people I employ use Facebook all the time and they are bugging me to get online.
Now your assignment as my professional web person: Get 300 local people to see my online presence on a regular and repeating basis. I want them to see my weekly specials, news about a few events we do every month, and I might share some expertise about my industry on occasion. That’s not 300 hits, that’s 300 of the same people who I can count on to see my information every week or even every few days. Thumbnail that process for a standalone web site and then do it for a Facebook Fan Page. (If you say that you can find 300 consistent site visitors to a standalone site in small town Iowa, I’m going to have to ask to see your math.)
Ben,
If the situation is just like the above (exactly as you’ve described it), a Facebook Page would be a good solution…though I’d still recommend that the client have a website (something simple, WordPress) where their core content can live, and via RSS, feed into the appropriate social media outposts. The issue remains that Facebook is someone else’s camping ground – we’re just pitching tents. Having all of an organization’s content live on someone else’s real estate is, by no means, a long-term strategy.
Thanks,
Katie