Is social media enough?

While the potential for businesses through social media is, without doubt, significant, that doesn’t mean you don’t need a website. Many marketing experts agree that the biggest return on investment, when it comes to marketing, is through your website and content marketing; not the ad hoc, constantly changing, algorithms of social media.

It depends on your business

Some businesses are just not going to find the marketing outlet they need, to help them reach their target audiences and grow their business, through social media.

Particularly if your business is a B2B one, it is likely your target customers will expect you to verify your authenticity, not through TikTok or Instagram, but with a relevant, up-to-date, delightful to use website.

Subscribers to websites 15x more valuable than social media followers

Just think about that statistic for a second. Then consider how random social media is. All that effort you put into posting regular content for it to be seen by your followers, ‘only by chance’.

Social media scrolling is a largely passive activity, whereas 92% of online activity starts with a search engine request.

While you may feel it’s relevant to have a presence on social media, there’s no doubt when it comes to business growth, a website and relevant content marketing, to drive traffic and click-through is going to advance your progress more.

Website subscribers want to interact with your business

Think of the difference between a social media follower and a subscriber, who willingly enters their personal email address into your subscribe website box because they do not want to miss what you have to say. They want to be in your club, and that relationship, if nurtured successfully will contribute to your growth.

With a website, you’re in control

Content is restricted and confined on social media. And you don’t have any control over when and who it’s shown to.

With your own website, you’re in control, and can direct users and visitors as you wish, adding the necessary content you need that fits with your strategy.

A website alone is also not enough

While we are here advocating that a website is a necessary online presence and platform for your business and means of growing your customer base and sales, it is not going to do that magically all by itself.

Your website is only part of your marketing strategy

You’ll need a marketing strategy to drive visitors to your website. Social media is highly effective for this, alerting an audience to your business offer.

Whether you’re featuring products and services on Instagram or Facebook, or building trust in your personal brand, as a figure of authority on LinkedIn, social media is great for alerting browsers to your website and prompting them how to act when they get there.

Ensure you make it clear what you want visitors to do when they get to your website. And the key point here is: they must be able to do something useful.

A non-functioning website is no website at all

At the risk of repeating ourselves, a website alone will do nothing for your business. It must ‘do’ something whether that’s offer valuable help and content, sell products and services customers want to buy or something else your customers want or need.

Organic website traffic vs social media followers

Remember that regular posting of useful content on your website will build your SEO organically, gradually increasing traffic. Whereas regular posting on social media may only increase followers, and as we know, it’s subscribers to your website where your business growth more likely lies.

Website and social media, working together

In answer to the original question, is social media enough? We don’t believe it is, depending on your business. Ideally, both website and social media would work to drive traffic to your website and result in happy subscribers who convert to even happier customers.

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