Do I Really Need A Website If I Have Facebook?
Friday, March 19th, 2010
Dave Coverly
From time to time I have someone ask me something along the lines of the following: “If I have a Facebook page (or MySpace page) do I really need my own website?” The answer from me is always a strong, unequivocal, “Yes!”
FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, iLike and other popular social networking sites serve a very important purpose in the overall scheme of things, but they are no substitute for a real website. To really make the most of the online world you should use and leverage your social networking sites to drive traffic back to your main website. The goal should always be to bring as many people as possible to your main website and to keep them there as long as possible.
I build a lot of websites for musical artists, so I’ll use them as an example. Every musical artist, whether you’re a brand new aspiring wannabe or a well known, well established hit-maker needs their own website. This is the first place most people are going to look when they want to find you online. Your website should be a place where visitors can find all the information they might be searching for. New or potential fans may be looking for basic information and a place to hear music, watch videos and browse photos. Folks who are already familiar with you and your music may be looking for current news, a tour date schedule and more. Writers, disc jokeys and booking agents may be looking for materials they can download to help promote you, a new release or a tour date. All of this information (and more) should be easily available on your website and it should be easy to find. You can provide so much more information on your own website than you can at any social networking site.
Not everyone uses Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. Certainly, more and more people are engaging with these various services, but the reality is that many folks simply aren’t interested. And a lot of them become interested for a short amount of time and then gradually lose interest. You need a website that is always there, always in the same place, always accessible to everyone. This is the very foundation of a good web presence and strategy.
You should think of your website as the “hub.” Everything should lead visitors back to your website. It should always be current and “fresh” with news, tour dates, blog posts, etc. You want people to know that exciting things are happening in your world. There’s nothing worse for a current or potential fan than visiting a website that looks like no one has updating anything for months (if not years). From there you need to figure out ways to keep visitors coming back to your website. Lots of new contnet, forums, contests, free giveaways, etc. are all good ways to do that. More on how to keep visitors coming back to your website in the next post.
Bottom line: there’s no substitute for your own website. FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter (and whatever comes next) are all very important tools that can help build an audience and a fanbase. You should be using them. Smart people use them to drive people back to their own website where they can provide them with even more opportunities to listen, watch, view and read.
