If you follow the latest Facebook fan page statistics, especially for organizations and small business then I am sure you may have asked yourself this question – ‘why would anyone invest and need a website anymore?’ I have enclosed some statistics that can be freely accessed in the ‘FB page statistics leaderboard’ section of the ‘All Facebook’ site. Looking at the figures it’s very evident that the numbers of Facebook pages and fans that interacting on them are just growing exponentially, which begs for the argument that Facebook fan pages are now a very serious threat to traditional websites.
A Facebook page does have its own advantages over a traditional website, some of them are
- A Facebook page is easier to set up and manage and Facebook by itself offers various tools and insights that help make pages look somewhat unique and measurable.
- With simplistic content sharing tools, Facebook page makes it really easy to share content and facilitate a two way conversation.
- A Facebook page takes away the fuss and time around SEO which can take up high resources if maintaining a site.
- It’s good enough platform to run promos, contest and other go to market initiatives.
- It’s easy to localize by having different Facebook pages by region or country.
Now it’s a fact that general company website traffic is decreasing and people are opting for Social Media platforms like Facebook to interact and get information about the brand. But I wouldn’t necessarily write-off a traditional web presence just yet.
To me a traditional web presence for more of a ‘Hygiene factor’ whose presence may still have its merits but absence would be detrimental.
Some of the things that I can quickly think of in favor of a traditional website
- A well oiled SEO website is still king if you believe ‘Google’ is here to stay.
- Facebook is not going anywhere but you never know when they change their page policies on layout, # of fans, promos etc. You are essentially at their mercy.
- You can always complement your Facebook page and website by making your web-page social media friendly and promoting seamless sharing of content.
- With so many Facebook pages around a good webpage will still give personality and character to your organization.
In summary I wouldn’t write off websites but would definitely do some resource allocation adjustments to have a healthy social media presence strategy and make sure that there is seamless integration of content between the two.
U still should, but reasons are dwindling.
@Ryan Agree! especially for smaller home businesses ..