This sequence about guiding your web designer or consultant as they set up your website, aims to help you identify the issues you encounter as you develop your site together. (All the posts about building a WordPress site can be found in the CMS category.)
There is a lot you can do on your own. You ask for help because you’re not technically minded, or you want help from someone more skilled than you are or else you don’t have the time. Whatever the reason, you need to understand what is going on.
Using Social Media
Social media may be one area where you feel you don’t need a lot of help. Indeed you may have already set up a Facebook page, for example, and used it to test your market. Some businesses seem to use social media and don’t bother with a website. This is not an approach I recommend.
Alternatively, you may be bewildered by social media. As an older person, I find I don’t have an instinct for social media. I suppose having lived most of my life without it, it is harder to add it into the natural rhythms of life.
On balance my view is social media has its uses but there are limits. Whether you are a natural user or struggle with it, you need to understand its limitations.
Disadvantages of Social Media
So, let’s start with the disadvantages of social media. They explain why I would always have a website. I’ll then go on to the advantages of evolving a social media strategy with your website at the centre.
- Never forget that social media are proprietary applications. They may be free to use but you pay in various subtle ways. This is not necessarily a disadvantage, once you understand how each social media application works, you can make informed decisions about whether and how you use it. The owners of social media are under no obligation to provide consistency of service. They can withdraw a service and material you have accumulated may be lost. Whatever you and your followers or friends put on the site belongs to the site owners; they can use your material in various ways, eg for advertising. You take part with their permission and they have the power to remove you from the site should you misbehave.
- Their rules about what you display can seem arbitrary. I’m currently building a Facebook business page. I don’t understand why their rules cannot be more flexible. So, I must display a postal address, which is not very helpful to me but there is no way I can display my website address with the same prominence as my postal address. I can understand why people might want to know where to find me. Whilst they may find the postal address reassuring, not many people are going to use it. A web address would be used by more people, which is probably why Facebook doesn’t want to display it directly, because it will tend to take visitors away from the site.
- Whilst data security and privacy is much improved, your material is no longer yours. The site owners use the data you add to their site in various ways, eg for advertising. Once you understand this it is not normally a major disadvantage but it seems reckless to build a business on data controlled by someone else.
Advantages of Social Media
- First and foremost, social media can drive traffic to your website. You can arrange to feed your blog posts directly to your social media sites. If someone clicks on the link to read your post, it takes them to your site. They may like a post on Facebook or follow you on Twitter but the most valuable thing is if they sign up to your email list on your site. Once they have done this you can build a relationship with them.
- Some social media offers valuable services, eg YouTube is brilliant if you have videos. You might not want to use YouTube for every video, eg you might sell access to some of them, but for videos you use to publicise your site, YouTube is the place to keep them. Not only is it an excellent platform for videos, if you look after your account it can be very effective driving traffic to your site.
- Advertising is a growing area and by all accounts can be very successful. Until a year or so ago, most online advertising took place via Google Adwords. Facebook has been very successful because it can offer a targeted audience. Adwords uses the search term to target ads, whilst Facebook allows you to describe your target audience, using data provided by Facebook members. I would sound a note of caution here. If you are interested, find out about best practice before you start advertising and generally it is best to build an organic following before you pay for advertising. This is something to discuss with your web consultant.
So, what has been your experience? How have you used social media successfully?
Next time, I shall show you a better way!
