Facebook Is Not Your Website (And Fall Is a Good Time to Figure Out the Difference)
Fall is planning season for small businesses. The year's results are mostly in, the holidays are close, and you're deciding where the money goes. It's a good time to ask a question a lot of owners have put off: if your whole online presence lives on Facebook, what happens when Facebook changes how it works?
Rented Space vs. Real Estate You Own
Here's the simplest way to explain it. Your Facebook page is rented space. Meta owns the building and decides what gets shown inside it. Your website is real estate you own. You control what's on it, how it works, and who finds it.
That's not a hypothetical risk. In January 2018, Facebook announced it would show less public content in News Feed, including posts from businesses, and said Pages might see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic go down. The feed is Meta's to arrange, not yours.
If all your marketing energy goes into a Facebook page and nothing else, your whole online presence sits on land someone else owns. That's an uncomfortable spot to be in heading into your busiest season.
Your Website Is the Hub, Not a Spoke
Marketing Main Street thinks about marketing as a wheel. We call it the Marketing Wheel. Your website is the hub. Google, social media, video, reviews, email, community presence, events, sponsorships and merchandise are the spokes. Each spoke sends people back to the hub, and the hub is where they get what they came for.
Facebook can absolutely be a spoke. For a restaurant, a retail shop on a main street, or a service business with a tight local footprint, it can be a good one. We're not telling you to abandon it.
What we are saying is that a spoke isn't a hub. When someone sees your Facebook post and wants your hours, your full menu, your service area, or whether you take appointments, where do they go? If the answer is "back to Facebook," you're making customers work harder than they should. A website answers those questions on your terms, any time of day.
What a Website Does That Facebook Can't
Start with search. Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity, and that complete, detailed business information helps it match you to the right searches. A website gives you room to spell out what you do and where you do it. That's what lets Google send the right customer your way.
A website also gives people a place to check you out. It's where a customer can verify that you're real, that you do what they need, and that other people in your community trust you. A Facebook page can't hold all of that in one place.
And you control the story. Your website says exactly what you want it to say, laid out the way you want it, with no ads for somebody else sitting next to your content.
The two work best together. Stuart Bowl, Raccoon Ridge Music Hall and the Fremont Theatre all have websites we built, and all three keep a Facebook page too. Neither one replaces the other.
Fall Is the Right Moment to Make This Move
If you've been thinking about getting a website built, or finally fixing the one that's been sitting there for years, the weeks before the holidays are a good time to act. A build takes time, and you'll want it live before Small Business Saturday, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. This year that's November 28.
Marketing Main Street builds websites for small businesses across Iowa, from restaurants and venues to contractors and law offices. Take a look at our web design work to see what that looks like. When you're ready to talk, reach out through our contact page. And if we've done good work for you, we'd appreciate it if you'd leave us a review on Google.
Facebook is a good tool. It's just not the foundation. Your website is, and that's worth building.