Why Your Business Still Needs A Website In Todays Social World

After a friendly discussion with @socialvation and @lisadmyers (who agreed with me) on twitter today, I made a few points in 140 characters or less in regards to why your business still needs a website in today’s social world. Jon made a point as to why have a website when you can simply market your articles in the social world. My simple response was:

@socialvation @lisadmyers website = self branding, full control, ability to gain back links…why advertise a store front yet not own one?

Marketing yourself and business with only social media and not a website is like running a marathon with a weight around your ankles. Yes you can get some business that way, but you will not be able to utilize the full power of the internet without a website. Not having a website is like advertising your sales and specials, but not having a storefront for customers to walk into. Lisa Barone just wrote about the same thing two days ago at Outspoken Media entitled 11 Reasons Your SMB Still Needs A Web Site. No Lisa I am not stealing your idea, so please do not torture me to death.

Selling Tool

Your website is a great selling tool for both you and your business, so what benefit will you gain by not having one? You use twitter, facebook and other social media avenues to advertise on, yet you really cannot send a viewer anywhere to convert them. That conversion can be something as simple as collecting an email address to contact them in the future regarding specials or selling of a product down to your site actually selling products via an online store. Let’s look at it this way shall we:

John Doe posts on twitter and facebook – Receive 20% off your order by replying today!

Now John Doe could be selling his services or products, either way if you reply to his tweet or facebook you get 20% whatever it is. So you replay back

@JohnDoe John I would love to get 20% off, how do I get it? Do you have a website?

John’s response could be something like this

@JaneDoe Sorry Jane, no website. What is your email address, I can take your payment information that way!

So now Jane Doe is left with no real call to action to take. All the article marketing you did to promote yourself and using social media to get the word out has left you slowly sinking without a life jacket and the fail whale is coming for you.

Full Branding Potential

With a business website you leverage not only yourself, but your business brand as a whole to new heights. You are giving people somewhere to go to see what you have to offer, read about your company, get other contact information and see you are truly legit. Your brand should be part of your business marketing strategy, build your brand recognition and it can spread like a fire. This holds true though to both positive and negative brand awareness, so online reputation management is key.

Articles Will Take You Where Again?

So your article marketing campaign has been in full swing, but where are you directing the readers and pointing your back links to…your twitter account? I sure hope not, with a website you can be directing both to your domain name to help build authority and increase your chances to rank for keyword phrases. Like in the above example, is Jane really going to place an order via email? I highly doubt it, and like I said before you are using your website as a selling tool for the viewers.

Twitter/Facebook Goes By By

Highly unlikely anytime soon, but look at MySpace now. At one time MySpace was one of the biggest players in the social media world, now facebook and twitter have blown past them without even looking. Their is always someone or some company looking to build the next latest and greatest social media platform, facebook did and look at where they stand now. However, what would you do from a business standpoint if people stopped using facebook and twitter? All your marketing efforts will have to be switched over to something else and over the years you were not marketing your website so your starting from square one.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, it pays off more to invest in a website for your business then it does to try and cut corners. I do not care if you are a plumber, lawn company, clothing store, small restaurant, everyone is starting to go online to search. How many of you still use a phone book? I am sure their are some, but I do not even have one in my house. With more and more people using cell phones, laptops, iPad’s they are searching from those devices. Have your website be found and your sales will increase. How many times have you searched for “city name air company” or “city name mechanic” and you saw a twitter account as the first result? Your website could be in that spot, but wait, y0u do not have one so your out of luck.

Be Sociable, Share!