Social media has been around for several years. I remember when Facebook first came out there was a restaurant where I lived and the manager used his college email to create an account. Not for his personal use, but for the restaurant. He started posting updates like food and drink specials and all kinds of things. Lots of people followed it.
So right from the start, businesses have been using social media for promotion. And not just promotion, but interacting with customers and getting more exposure to more potential customers.
Today, it’s pretty common for a business to have a social media presence. Some businesses don’t even have a website.
Maybe that’s you. Maybe your social media presence is your main online platform. But you still want to use a website to complement your social media efforts.
Here are a few things to consider.
1. Tell The Full Story
Some, not all, but some social media is short and sweet. Twitter kind of started things with the character limit. But even with Facebook people weren’t really posting longform text content. You can certainly find longform content on social media, but short is the common theme.
A website can tell a fuller story for whatever you’re talking about. Maybe you’re talking about a new product. You can list the three best features on social media. On your website you can have the full page product information and specs and all that good stuff.
Maybe you’re a B2B business and someone asks how your onboarding process works. You can give them the surface level rundown on social media. On your website, you can go through all the details and includes images and maybe even a video and things like that.
2. Keep Old Content Relevant
Many social media platforms are designed to be current. You see what’s happening right now and then new content comes along and it pushes the old content down the feed to be lost forever. That part of social media can be frustrating. And there are ways around it like pinning and things like that.
A website allows you to have more control. If you have a product, for example, you can share details on social and after awhile it’s lost. On a website, you can feature it on the homepage and leave it there for as long as you want.
Maybe you have an important company update. You can share it on social. You can not post new content for awhile so that if someone visits your page or profile they see it right away. You can pin it and all those things. You can also post it on your website as a header announcement or something like that so people see it for as long as you want them to see it.
3. Include The Sales Funnel
Social media hasn’t really been about selling since the beginning. It’s more of a personal medium. You discuss hobbies and life and that kind of thing. It’s not really about hard selling.
It’s great for a business to share photos and answer questions and post updates and all those kinds of things. You want to do that to attract people to your brand. But if you try only talking about your products then people will probably tune out.
When someone visits your website, though, they are showing at least some early interest in buying. And that’s where your website becomes your online salesperson. So make sure your website takes visitors through your sales funnel until they call you or make a purchase or that kind of thing.
Conclusion
Some businesses use social media to complement their website. But it can work the other way just as well. If you’re killing it on social then use your website to give your audience more information that they want that isn’t as easy to share on most social platforms. And also use it to sell, which also doesn’t usually happen on social media.