If you use, follow, and even pay the slightest attention to Facebook, you know that this week Facebook released a bunch of changes designed to make the Facebook experience better. While some of these changes are actually nice, a few of them brought utter outrage, disbelief, and anger from frustrated Facebook users who called for the return (or removal) of several new homepage news features and more control over who sees their comments. Some Facebook users actually threatened to leave Facebook altogether and while business pages were not affected by this week’s updates, organizations should be concerned about what these types of changes do to their Facebook following.
Whether you actively use Facebook or not, this community uproar serves to highlight an important concept… you need to have a HOME on the web that YOU control.
It’s clear that with over 800 million active users, Facebook is not easy to ignore and has become somewhat of an online necessity for most organizations. But most organizations should treat Facebook as a path to their own websites and not as the ultimate destination for their brand. Abandoning your website for your Facebook page is a really bad idea as this relinquishes control of your brand to a platform that tends to make unannounced changes at their whim.
But by viewing Facebook as a path to your website, you can actually get the best of both worlds. You can tap into Facebook’s 800 million users, start relationships that bolster your business or organization, keep your Facebook followers informed, and direct them (and potentially other Facebook users) to your website where they can get better understanding who you are and what you really do.
So… are you in control of your website? Do you treat it as your organization’s home on the web?
Do you need a little help along the way?
Leave a comment and let us know.
Mike,
I agree, Facebook pages should not be used as your website. It’s more to keep yourself in touch with people who, because they know you, tend to trust and use you for those things for which you’re suppose to have expertise. Mona and I try to be consistent on FB and Twitter. But our website http://www.AnnapolisHomeInfo.com and http://www.MonaLaCovey.com are our main sites. If interested, you might want to see what we’re doing on our new site at http://www.annapolishomes4u.com which we’re hoping to move to the first site I mentioned in a couple of weeks. Once there, this is what I’m looking to have you help us do a better job of promoting to get more people to connect with us.