Facebook has become a dominant entity in website development. For the most part, I find it a great resource. Anyone with a few minutes to read a few instructions can have a website. Any business or individual now has the power to get their message out for free. Not only that, they can pick and choose who they want to interact with. It is no doubt a powerful and useful tool, so what could be the problem?

The problem is that you do not own it. You have whatever control Facebook decides you will have and that can change at will. It seems free, but you still put time and effort into it’s maintenance. Facebook should only be used as a tool to communicate and it should be expected to be useless for your business whenever Facebook decides to make it that way or whenever the public decides to go somewhere else.

One way Facebook can actually cost you money is by placing your competitors ads on your business’s Facebook page! It can happen and you have no control for the exception of spending ad dollars to put your ad on other pages. Other businesses do have the ability to look at who is participating on your page and lure them away. On top of all of this, Facebook has the ability to compile data about who is interested in your business and sell that data to other entities.

It’s a trade off, but you can get the edge if you have your own website. If a website is owned and operated by a business, they can use it in conjuction with Facebook to double the effectiveness of Internet advertising efforts. Facebook turns into a utility to gain traffic that is diverted away from Facebook and onto the business website.

The attitude I’m seeing businesses give about Facebook is, “Web developers envy that I can do for free what previously they were charging thousands of dollars for.”. With some web developers, this is absolutely true. They were wowing their customers with beautiful designs but providing little in the way of traffic generation and content development. They were providing beautiful and ineffective websites and using the attraction to the design wonders to collect extraordinary fees.

Facebook has brought about changes that are great for business and web developers.

• Website artistic design is getting more reasonable. Look at Facebook’s artwork. Graphics are minimal, ads are more discreet, and the user interface is reasonable. This is bleeding over into website design.
• Traffic expectations are more reasonable. When customers see the numbers from their own efforts on Facebook pages, they get a more realistic expectation from what a website can deliver. They’re also learning that quality and not quantity is an important factor in traffic.
• Businesses are learning the value of informative content. Facebook thrives on producing content.
• Web developers are bringing their price and attitudes in line with reality. Their systems are being streamlined and standardized.

If you would like to know more about how you can use Facebook and other social media properties to work with your website or if you’d like to explore the possibilities of adding a website to your social media efforts, feel free to contact me. I welcome comments on this article too.

Why Facebook For Business Could Be A Bad Idea is a post from:

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