SMC Ed.
Latest posts by SMC Ed. (see all)
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- Solutions for a Noisy World - May 10, 2013
Facebook is great at many things. As the No. 1 social network, it’s a prime way to easily get in front of a targeted customer base. But with recent changes to Facebook that, in short, force brands to now pay to reach the same audience they were once able to reach for free, Facebook is not great at being a brand’s hub on the internet.
A recent article by Mars Dorian published on the social media marketing website BusinessGrow.com explains why your company should not rely too heavily on Facebook — or any other platform other than your self-hosted company website — to be your portal to the rest of the internet. While Facebook is attractive because it sells itself as a free and easy way to connect with its one billion users, after you sign up your experience is completely at the mercy of Facebook, who can taketh away just as easily as it can giveth.
Thus, Dorian warns that you should always be suspicious of offers from brands (like Facebook or Google) that aim to make your business heavily rely on them.
“You can actually WASTE years of building your brand on someone else’s platform and then lose out when the tide changes,” Dorian writes. “Nothing, nothing and I mean NO-THING is more important than channeling your audience attraction to your self-hosted platform.” Rather, use the various social platforms — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, newsletters, etc. — to extend the reach of your website.
This falls in synch with a concept we refer to as Social Gravity, which shows how sharing the content you curate and create on various social networks forms a kind of virtual wheel that will get your message out to as many people possible, enticing them to join your community, check out your website and eventually become customers. By focusing on making your own website continually better and more valuable, you’ll be safe from any major changes in store from the leading social platforms.
By Will Silvey Simons • @silveywill
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