Why do I need a website when I already use Facebook?

This is a common question. “We post everything to Facebook because that’s where the people are. Why do we need to to get home website?” Marketing on social media is not enough for your business and here are the reasons why:

Website is equal to Home Base

Your website is your home base while social media resources like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are embassies on rented soil. On a rented soil they might be restrictions in that you have to abide by the rules of the social media. If you have a website of your business you can post anything about the business without any restriction.

You Don’t Control Leased Ground

Most of the people ask themselves this question, “What does a website do for me that Facebook doesn’t?”
The leased  ground where your Facebook embassy resides is just leased from someone else. Someone else can change the rules you live by. Someone else can evict you.
Sure, Facebook needs you. They need as many followers as they can get because otherwise they don’t have an audience. But as they get more and more to the big fans (big businesses) of the world, the little business (like yours and mine) tend to get crushed between the wheels of progress.
Which wheels, you ask? The advertising wheels. As your small business uses the free aspects of social media to promote itself, the big players fork over money to Facebook (or Twitter) to drop their messages into the mix. Who does Facebook listen to? The businesses that are showing them the money, of course.
For example, how many of your fans on Facebook actually see your status updates? According to research done by Pagelever it could be as little as 7.5% or as much as 16%. How can you improve that? Allow Facebook to boost your post, of course! But what does that involve? You handing over money, of course! And if you don’t some bigger business will.

You are In Control at Home

Home is where the heart and the control is.
So what does all this mean about advertising? It means that Facebook is here for a profit first and foremost. Therefore, they could change the rules at any time and dictate how your lease on their ground works.
By having your own website, you have a slice of real estate, a home base as we saw earlier, that is yours to control as you wish. If Facebook changes, your website remains. If Facebook begins to lose favor with the masses or goes away entirely your website remains and can begin working with the new form of social media that emerges.
If you want to add a new page or add any style to your website, you can do that on your website. You might be able to do it on leased ground and to some extent you might not. Of course, just because you can do it now doesn’t mean that Facebook, or some other social media landlord, won’t change the rules on you.

Conclusion
Facebook is great! So is Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagram and so forth and so on. But don’t build your online presence solely upon someone else’s property. Keep a website as your home base and then market that website through your social media embassies.