With the meteoric rise of social media, several business owners have been wandering away from their own websites to focus on what they perceive to be a cheaper, easier solution to Internet marketing. That’s like leaving your shop unattended to hand out fliers urging potential customers to visit your empty shop. While funneling hours into tweeting or status updating, their own websites have been gathering dust, leading the customers that do turn up at their actual URLs to wonder, “So what’s the big deal? This site hasn’t been updated in 2 months!” There are several critical reasons to keep the old website fresh, and savvy business owners realize that balance is the key to successful Internet marketing. A certified internet marketing agency with a certified SEO consultant can help you figure out that balance, and here’s why:
1. Social media is fickle
Sure, someone may choose to follow you on Twitter or “like” you on Facebook. But according to the Facebook statistics page, the average person has at least 150 “friends” and is connected to at least 80 community or business pages. Who in the world has time to visit the pages of all 150+ friends in one week, let alone the other 80 community or business pages that a person may have “liked” even two days ago? The math is against you.
2. You get lost in the crowd
Speaking of mathematics, the challenge of staying visible on social media takes a cost-prohibitive amount of time and effort. With over 800 million people posting updates about their cat’s declawing trauma, their trip to Des Moines, or their attempts at Thai cooking, your posts can very easily get lost in the morass. A tweet or a status update about your special offer is golden only for a few moments until it disappears down the river and you need another one to take its place.
3. Social media outlets are out of your control
You don’t own the platform, and are therefore subject to any change the owners of the social media decide to implement. On the other hand, an established, SEO-optimized website is not as susceptible to someone else’s whims as social media, and can even become more valuable over time as your established web presence.
4. You look just like everybody else
You are very limited in what you can do to customize your social media presence, and in the end, your profile page looks pretty much like everyone else’s. This makes it difficult for you to build your brand or differentiate your product or service from the competition, which can lead to lost sales.
5. You can control your own website
On the other hand… your website is your own piece of real estate in cyberspace. You own it, just like you own the other capital resources of your business. You control what it says, how it looks, and the message it delivers. You can build a brand and a loyal customer base with it. With the help of a certified SEO consultant, your website can actually become more valuable over time because that loyal customer base will tell their friends all about you.
6. What good is my website if nobody shows up?
Good question. This is why it’s so important to hire a certified internet marketing agency to help. A certified SEO consultant can optimize your website so that when somebody searches for your product or service on a search engine, your website beats the competition to the top of the search results. You can’t do that with Facebook or Twitter.
7. Where does social media fit in the grand scheme of internet marketing?
It is certainly one facet of a well-rounded marketing plan, but it isn’t the keystone. That’s your website. In its proper perspective, social media can help generate interest that leads people to your website, but again, it’s just one piece of the pie. This is where hiring a certified SEO consultant is critical to making the most of your efforts with social media so you don’t waste all of your time and money on something that is out of your control.
8. Your Website Closes the Deal
A balanced approach to internet marketing makes your website the central focus. All other considerations are merely vehicles to drive your potential customers to your website so that you can make the sale. Search Engine results, social media, banner ads, press releases… those are all very useful in sparking intrigue, but if your website is in disrepair, you’re going to lose customers fast. A certified SEO consultant can bring everything together in an integrated campaign that gets the job done.
So don’t waste all of your precious time and money tweeting your business into oblivion. A certified SEO consultant understands the intricacies of internet marketing and can help you create a balanced, multi-faceted strategy that gets you noticed and generates more sales. Sure, go ahead and send someone out into the market square to hand out fliers (status updates and tweets) for your shop. Just make sure your website is ready to make the sale when those curious customers stop by.