We are all a little guilty of over-using social networking sites. When this is for pleasure, there is no real harm. After all, you are not really hurting anyone if you are chatting on Facebook rather than cooking dinner (except your stomach perhaps). However, when using Facebook for professional purposes, you could end up destroying your business by relying too much on Facebook and not enough on other marketing tools.
Facebook Fever
While there is no denying that Facebook is a hot marketing tool right now, there is still a lot of danger in putting too much effort into making Facebook the center of your marketing campaign. Facebook is easy to use and it seems like almost everyone and their dog have a page now. This means you can reach a wider audience with one simple marketing tool. Furthermore, Facebook is actually fun and addictive to use. Even so, it is important to spread out and see what’s out there. Relying too heavily on Facebook could result in complications and controversy down the road.
Facebook should most certainly be used in your marketing strategies; however, it should be the only thing that you focus on. Why? Because, essentially, you are giving control of your business to someone else. When you allow your pages to be re-directed to another site, such as Facebook, you are giving the power to another Web 2.0 company. You are under their control, their guidance, their regulations and their terms of service. This means that if Facebook suddenly closes its cyber doors, you are left with nothing.
Facebook is getting bigger and bigger by the day. However, eventually, it will all come crashing down. There are already a number of rumors suggesting that Facebook will shut down, that people will need to pay for its services and that Facebook will be governed more strictly. Furthermore, Facebook could soon be competing directly with Google which could not end well for Facebook. In fact, you may have heard about the recent de-activation of several high profile Google engineers Facebook account. This was no accident. Both Google and Facebook want to rule the World Wide Web, and, unfortunately, this is one war that Facebook cannot win.
Stepping outside the Facebook Circle
Instead of putting all your marketing efforts into Facebook, it is a good idea to take a number of publishing paths and tailor your content to a few different websites. That way, if Facebook does take a turn for the worse, you still have a number of other marketing tools to fall back on. The reality is you cannot control the fate of Facebook so don’t let Facebook control the fate of your business.
Interested in establishing your web presence outside of your Facebook page? Contact us today for more information on how we can improve your business or create your company a web presence that will dominate the search engines and deliver results. Call today at (612) 558-1020 for a free phone consultation.
