Why build a website for your business when you could use free social media platforms to market your business online?

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The answer… with a website you are TOTAL control.

 

You Need to Be in 100% Control of Your Online Presence. 

As a business owner, would you rather:

A) Set up shop in someone else’s store (without a lease) OR B) Own or lease a dedicated space for your business?

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With the first option, you are at the mercy of the store owner. If they do not want your business in their store anymore, then you are now out of business until you find a new location. If they decide not to open one morning, your business cannot reach its customers and your revenue will be affected.

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However, if you own or lease then you have much more control over your situation. The changes in someone else’s business will not affect whether you stay in business or how much it will cost to stay in business. The same is true for having a website that you control, rather than building your online presence solely on a social media platform.

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Control your own destiny!

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If you setup shop solely on one or more social platforms, your business is ultimately at the mercy of those platforms. They can make changes whenever they want and you do not have a voice, even if it impacts your business. If that platform gets acquired and changed or shut down, you may no longer be able to reach your customers.

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A great example of this is when many business pages were recently hurt when Facebook updated its algorithm, decreasing the reach of business pages. There was nothing businesses could do except complain. At the end of the day they had to accept the new rules and move forward or move on.

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The same thing could happen on another social platform at any time. YouTube could start charging you to store videos on their servers. Twitter could decide to become a premium platform where businesses must “pay to play”. In either of these circumstances if you do not pay then you no longer get to communicate with your customers.

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You have NO control on these social platforms.

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Your Website is the Grand Central Station of Your Online Presence – Social Media is simply a Marketing Tool. If you have your own website, and it’s the center of your business, then you have 100% control of your situation.

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Like a store- you can have your own store and still setup a rack of your items in someone else’s store. Why wouldn’t you? Especially if they offer the space for free. Not only do you control your store, you also get to use someone else’s space to market your items and make some sales. If they close down then you might lose a great marketing space, but you aren’t out of business.

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This is how you should treat social media.

Use social media as a marketing platform to drive traffic back to your website. Use that traffic to grow your email and customer list so you can communicate with them anytime, anywhere. On your own terms.

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At the end of the day, it’s much smarter to invest in something you own than to build on land that doesn’t belong to you.

 

Someday the rules are going to change, and it could have a major impact on your business, if you aren’t in control. This is why we highly recommend to our client’s that they invest in a website that they own and then use social media – and its many benefits – to reach new audiences and grow their business.