The importance of your own digital real estate!
6 Hours!
Facebook, and its sister apps Whatsapp & Instagram suffered the longest outage in their history yesterday evening. That’s in excess of 6 hours with no messaging, no photo-sharing and for the socially active business, no leads! All during the time most of your potential customers are most active online. In an age where digital presence is more important than ever before, that’s the equivalent of a supermarket being forced to close during rush hour, or over lunch.
Over-reliance on someone else’s platform.
If nothing else, this highlights the importance of your own “digital shop window!” If your chosen social platform is down, where do you get your business from? Or worse, what if your platform were to shut down entirely. How many platforms have come and gone over the years, and how many heavily used sites will be a thing of the past in years to come? How do you avoid losing access to all those hard-earned likes and followers you’ve spent countless amounts of hours building?
The answer is simple!
A well-written, eye-catching and most importantly optimised website is owned by you! It’s where you are best placed to showcase your products and services and direct your customers to an email address or a telephone call. Backed up with a good search ranking, you’ll be best placed to attract attention, even when social media options are not available.
Finding the balance…
We’ve said in a previous post (available here) about the importance of finding the balance. Social media is a fantastic tool. After all, chances are you’re reading this because you found it on social media. It’s a proven method of establishing a brand, and getting your name spread around. It’s a way of getting known, but your website is your way to really shout about what you can do. In the age of digital advertising, those who shout loudest, get heard… Those who advertise in the most places get seen!
So should I have a website alongside social media?
Yes, you should! The main difference is you own your domain, and no one can take that off you. With social media, you in effect “rent” the space. It’s your place to showcase everything you can offer, and it’s another outlet to get heard. We are not saying abandon social platforms. They are a powerful tool to get a message across quickly, but they are always at risk of being gone tomorrow. Use every tool at your disposal, but don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
We at TwistedWeb not only design and build our sites with the building blocks in place to help you be found, and are always happy to advise where we can! Contact us for more information or to see how we can help you get in front of your customers!
