Is Social Media Pushing Out Traditional Websites?
There’s an irony to this, one you’re not going to appreciate if you’re someone with a professional Internet presence and depend on your website to drive up your business and boost your profitability. There was a time when traditional businesses who refused to have anything to do with the Internet were forced to go online if they wanted to keep up with the times and avoid losing their customers to the competition. Today, the tide is changing once again and many companies with websites are being forced to go down the informal route that social media is taking them on.
They do so reluctantly, because they know which side their bread is buttered and where the majority of their customers lie. So this begs the question – are social networks like Facebook and Twitter driving traditional websites to obscurity? Do companies no longer need their own sites and would do better by setting up shop on Facebook and/or Twitter? The answer to these questions depends on a variety of factors including:
- The size of a business
- The number of years of experienced it has in the industry
- The kind of products and services it sells
Now obviously, the smaller a business and the lower its experience, the more it will benefit from a presence only on social media because of the lower costs. Also, if it sells products or services that are targeted at the younger generation or those who are more likely to spend most of their time on Facebook, then it benefits from social networks and may not need a dedicated site of its own. However, there are many advantages that are associated with having a site to call your own, some of which are:
- Your own website address gives you more credibility in the industry.
- You can establish your identity uniquely on the web through your own website.
- It allows you to provide more detailed information about your business and arrange the information in ways that are easily accessible to visitors.
- A web address that is not hosted by a social media or blog service provider is an asset on your business card and on your stationery.
- Customers believe in your experience and know you’re a reputable organization when they have a website to go through and physical addresses and phone numbers they can contact for more information.
But when most of the world is on social media (500 million and counting according to the latest statistics from Facebook), it would be the worst possible decision to omit social media from your marketing strategy. So the best way to tap the potential of sites like Facebook and Twitter is to use these social networks to create your own pages and profiles, allow customers to interact with you through these pages, and use them to ultimately drive customers to your site when they need more detailed information. In short, don’t make social networks your base of operations; use them instead as a catapult with which to hurl your customers at the real target – your own website. And as long as your traditional website satisfies customer needs and demands, social media will never really replace or push them into obscurity.
By-line:
This guest post is contributed by Bailey Digger, she writes on the topic of web design degrees. She welcomes your comments at her email id: baileydigger189(@)gmail(.)com.
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