Your own website on your terms – why it's important for businesses

“Don’t build your house on rented land.”

That’s a phrase I’ve heard a few times since the Facebook IPO occurred.

I’ve had a few prospective clients in the past tell me they didn’t need a website because they had all their business information on Facebook.

Now Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Google+, LinkedIn and other social media networks are wonderful for connecting with customers and fans – but these sites belong to other people, not you. If you’re totally dependent on them to house your business content, what happens if they delete your accounts? Or if their business model changes, they raise your fees or they start losing business and go away? They don’t know anything about you or your business, and really don’t even know who you are. 

Build Your Base of Operations First…

This is why it’s so important to have a place that you own as home base for your business – your own professional website on your own hosting account, not someone else’s like GoDaddy or WordPress.com. Your own blog, or your own gallery if you’re a photographer or artist. Use social media to support your marketing and relationship-building efforts, but don’t rely on it to support your entire business. You could be risking everything you’ve worked so hard to build.

…then Share The Content.

There are a few ways you can use your website to share content with social media networks.

• Put links to your social media pages in a prominent spot on your site – in the header or near the top of a sidebar.
• Add social sharing buttons to every blog post (like the ones below this post).
• Automatically send new blog posts to Facebook, Twitter or other social networks.

These methods make it easy to connect your website and various social media presences.