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Pros and Cons of Facebook As Your Website
There is an interesting conversation happening about using Facebook in place of a business website.
With 700 million active users on the social network, it’s hard to ignore . But should you use it as your only web presence?
Let’s say you have a retail shop, with only one location, and one or two employees. Developing a site, with a content management system so you can change it every time you have a sale or a promotion might be too cumbersome.
Is it easier to change content on a Facebook page instead of trying to do it on a website?
In order to really think through the conversation, I’ve developed some pros and cons to help.
Pros
- You don’t have to take on the expense and time of building a website
- Setting up a Facebook page is free
- Using third-party apps on Facebook is easy and fairy inexpensive
- Developing new pages is very easy
- You can sell products using their ecommerce platform with PayPal
- Builds relationships with customers and prospects
Cons
- You don’t own the content or the data on the page
- Not everyone uses Facebook or social media
- Other than the Insights Facebook gives you (which isn’t a lot), you can’t measure its effectiveness
- You’re always working with the Facebook terms of service and, if violated, they can remove your page
- Facebook is geared toward brand awareness and networking, not revenues or profits for your business
- If Facebook goes away tomorrow, so do your relationships
- Someone on your team (or you) needs to stay on top of changes at Facebook, which happen multiple times a month and sometimes without communication
All of this said, I don’t think you should rely solely on Facebook as your web presence. You absolutely should use it as an outpost for your activities, but it should not be a sole use.
Website design is so easy these days, it’s silly not to spend a few hundred dollars to have something. But I also understand, especially for small businesses, it’s not an expense that is easy to swallow.
What you do is up to you, as long as you’re aware of the risks.
What do you think?
ok... so here's a plug to my company and we are about to get out of private beta later next week, but our DIY, plug and play platform builds 100% custom branded facebook pages with tons of interactive touch points that can be updated anytime and yes, have google analytics and yes will add open graph elements and yes come with real time lead generation and reports. so, for me, i think of these interactive pages powered by our platform as being a dynamic extension of your website that enables a company to contain, control and attribute their social programming in a way that is far more advanced than current modeling. And it is so simple to use. we launched at NMHC this week and the fastest time it took for someone to build a custom brand page was 25 seconds. The longest time was 1 min 21 seconds.
CarmenKrushas But you're still giving Facebook access to your customers, your relationships, and your data. What you're doing is giving businesses an easier way to build and interact, which is great, but I still don't think it replaces your owned web presence.
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If I had a baby I loved, would I dump into daycare all the time, or prefer to have at home with me where I can really help nurture and grow..?
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DannyBrown Daycare, definitely daycare. Especially you. Think about the children.
DannyBrown I don't know. If the baby were you, I'm with MSchechter . Daycare.
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I think it stems from what Molli wrote about today, people just want to simplify their life and Facebook is the "easiest" way for a normal person to create a online presence for a business. Look at all the other attempts to capture this audience, you see the commercials on TV for simple websites, etc. As you already know I am in agreement when it comes to the need to control home base. I think it is dangerous and ill advised to not retain some semblance of control over your core presence. There are just too many things that can go wrong as you pointed out.
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hackmanj I do agree we all want to simplify our lives and not having to keep multiple web presences updated sure sounds nice. But, if you want just one place, why not have it be something you own? I know you agree with me...that was rhetorical.
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I agree that swallowing the fee for a new website for a small company is hard. It was for me. I started on Facebook & saw a growing need for a website. I found Weebly.com & loved it. Its basic package is free and can be updated later for a small fee. check us out: http://vrmailsource.weebly.com/ & Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/VRM-MailSource/183215828412638
BrianaGracey You know what I love about comments? I learn something new every day! Thank you!
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I swear to you, this was my first and only response: "Cheating!" Seriously, do the really hard work to create a real web presence. There's no shortcut. (This from somebody who is struggling with just WordPress!)
wagnerwrites Is it cheating?! LOL! I LOVE WordPress, but I agree there are some things that you just have to hire someone to help you with or you'll go nuts.
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I feel for you Gini! I did a blog post on this subject back in October and am in total agreement with you.
In addition to your very wise reasons listed above, BrandGlue did an analysis and found that "On average, 96% of Facebook fans never see the content from your fan page."
BrandGlue analyzed their client fan pages and found that for every 200 comments on a status update, 199 of them originate from newsfeeds on their home page, and 1 of them come from a fan commenting on a status update (not a wall post) from the fan page itself.
See my post here: http://lynnruby.com/blog/?p=137
You go girl!
LynnRuby DANG! I wish I'd seen this comment two hours ago. I just quoted it in a keynote, but i couldn't remember where I saw it. Thank you!
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LynnRuby This is precisely why I'm in the process of giving up the pages I built and preferring to either befriend those fans and/or turn them into subscribers of my profile. Baby Boomers in particular may understand how to click a Like button but they don't understand how to comment/like page updates but they're very willing to do it to a profile name.
For starters - Love your blog! Thanks for the daily insight!
Second - I agree with you ( No chance for a good spirited debate here, which I know I enjoy and it seems you do as well!)
What always raises a flag to me as a marketer is focus on tool verses objectives of the effort.
Context matters. FB does prove to be a good augmentation to a more comprehensive marketing mix for B2B in the technology industry from my experience, but ONLY when it is targeted carefully based on the following:
* Audience: Who is actively using FB that matters to influencing your customers buying decisions
* ROLE in Decision making for your product/service: Are they influencer, decision maker, can they say yes to a decision to buy your product/service, or are they an influencer that cannot say yes, but has a powerful ability to say no?
*Content Relevance - based on the above, what is engaging content that matters to them?
Sort of sounds like marketing 101, huh?
kathryn For starters, love YOU for saying so! Secondly, can you come back another time and debate me? Pllllleeeeeaaaase!??!
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kathryn great. You are encouraging ginidietrich and I bet she read your comment and bet she went home and ordered Mr. D around the house now that you made her a big shot. Sigh.
Great comment Kathryn!
I agree with you Gini - I don't want Facebook to own all my content and nor is everyone on Facebook. As far as Insights go, our new product http://pholiofy.com allows you to publish your custom contetn into your Facebook business page and apply Google Analytics to it. So even if people don't Like your Page, you'll be able to track the interactions.
Pholiofy I fully realize you left this comment BEFORE I spoke tonight, but I'm mad I didn't have time to check the blog beforehand or I would have totally given you a plug tonight. I'll definitely check it out.
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I see it both ways. On Insights in particular, you're a lot better off paying a little $$$ and using Pagelever. Much better stats.
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JayBaer So would you suggest someone pay for Pagelever and get better stats than to build something they own and use analytics (assuming the business is very small)?
ginidietrich The real answer is that you probably need to do both. You need the SEO and "home base" benefits of a "real" website. But there's no question (at least in my mind) that the future is distributed web presences, making your company dot com far less important than your platform presence on Facebook, G+, Google Places, Yelp, and whatever comes next.
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JayBaer That is what I was saying, but was shot down yesterday. I absolutely think you should be using the outposts, but using them to drive back to something that you own.
On kind of a similar note: Did you see the article in Inc that talks about Siri driving PPC and search down because she gives you information from apps and not the web?
ginidietrich Absolutely. Love that article. Retweeted and h/t'd you.
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I'm new to this social media thing but WHAT?
The only Pro is it's free. But it's not free. AT ALL.
You dump tons of hours producing content (your hours cost right?) to put on someone else's platform.
You give them traffic thanks to your valuable content.
You can loose it overnight if FB feels you are not following the rules and decides to shut you down.
What is there not to like?
John Falchetto Hmm...Nothing? :)
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John Falchetto My hours don't cost anything. Your hours cost?!
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ginidietrichJohn Falchetto In France everything is free Gini including Baguettes!
Gini - I've been lurking on your blog for a while, often forwarding bits to colleagues. This particular post and topic compelled me to jump into the conversation. I agree with your list of pros and cons, and the great additions in the comments. To me it comes down to the basic question of control. I'm always puzzled when businesses are wiling to give that up. In addition to small businesses, large brands struggle with this too. Maybe not dropping their corporate site for a pure FB presence, but how to allocate resources between their 2 online presences. We just did a webinar w/ Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group on this topic if anyone is interested; it's ungated content: http://www.janrain.com/resources/for-marketers/webinars/webinar-owyang-tips-to-extend-social-to-site
pdxlmh I'm so glad you decided to come join the crazies. But you do know what that says about you now, do you not?? :)
Thanks for the webinar link. I'll definitely check it out!
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I think it depends on the type of business and where they are at as a company. I agree that most of the time a Facebook page is a poor substitute for a website. ESPECIALLY if you're doing any e-commerce at all. But there are cases where I think it makes sense, at least in the short term.
For example: a friend of mine owns a small vintage clothing store. She works by herself most of the time. She has a quickly rotating inventory and doesn't sell or take orders online. She uses her Facebook page to post new things she finds and costume ideas she puts together, and as a place for people to ask her about things they're looking for. She doesn't have the budget for a website yet, has admitted that she probably wouldn't update her photos on both a website and a Facebook page anyway. So her website would essentially be her contact info. Right now it makes sense to stick with Facebook and a well filled out Google Places page until her business gets to a point where she could utilize a website.
makammerer I think the way your friend is using Facebook is a good idea...as long as she's eventually going to get a website. And it totally creates a visual way to engage people, which I love.
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To me it is crazy to have your only web-presence as Facebook. Sure it is cheap, but what happens if Facebook is down or customers migrate to a new service? Well you are left with a whole lot of noting and have to start over from scratch. You also don't own all the data.
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jeffespo Which is precisely my point. Guess I should admit I really do heart you.
ginidietrich Well you do know that at times you just have to walk away from the irrational.
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ginidietrichjeffespo How do you feel about websites such as Mashable which insist you have a Facebook account (or Twitter account, for that matter) to leave a comment? Is the comment section different than the content section when the control lies somewhere else?
Obviously the guy was crazy. Good luck to him.
I agree with your Pro's and Cons. But the Pros are little and the Cons massive. Now if you run a small side business fine. But a real website with just as much functionality is really cheap!
ginidietrich I don't hate Facebook at all. I hate the Management for being slimey and exploitative. I hate the overhype/spin. Have you seen how they have scrubbed almost all relevant stats now from their stats page. They even took down time spent because they know they can't lie! And I hate that a whole collective of leeches in my industry have made a bundle schilling false promises.
But those aren't Facebook itself. I can come up with a ton of problems with the network itself from the UI to frilly APPS. But I don't hate the site.
Some people are going to view Facebook as being similar to a playground for children. That leaves you with poor analytics, lack of ownership of content and a smudge on your reputation.
You know that the internal analytics that Facebook has access to is far more detailed than what we have. One could argue that using Facebook for your website is not unlike an affiliate program. You might make money from it but as the affiliate you earn less than the main business.
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TheJackB And I can gain far more data about my customers and prospects on something I own than on what piddly information, that I can't measure to real return, Facebook gives me.
Man on man were you nicer on the than I would have been... #1) You get to be cheap #2) You get to inevitably get screwed when a rule changes #3) How would using MySpace have worked out for you in the long run...
MSchechter And his argument was that Facebook will be around for at least five more years so why not use it while you can. What do you say about that?
ginidietrich you can't fix stupid
When I first started my business, I had absolutely no capital. Facebook was a good way for me to go. I knew it couldn't replace a website, and I actually ended up creating a blog shortly after creating the Facebook page. Once I did have the revenue in place, a website was one of my first steps. I believe it's essential. It's something you own. The only reason it will crash and burn is if your server dies for some reason or if you didn't spend the time to have it built correctly.
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John_Trader1 yeah. me too.
ginidietrich LiveFyre says there's an error w/my comment about pros/cons of FB/Web. Here is my .02: http://t.co/6L0CkRnu
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