I was talking to a small business owner last night. They are in the middle of a very costly redesign of their B2C website and I couldn’t help but ask if they had plans to set up on Facebook as well.
Right now, I have Facebook on the brain. As you may recall I am in the middle of writing a book called Facebook Marketing for Dummies (Wiley) due out at the end of the summer. This book is in collaboration with long time friend Rich Krueger who is the CEO of AboutFaceDigital – an agency devoted to helping companies setup and optimize their marketing efforts on Facebook. Something they call – Facebook Marketing Optimization.
Anyway I found myself thinking – why does any business need a website any more?
With Facebook Fan pages you can build your own website on the Facebook “Platform”. A website that is totally FREE of hosting and server costs, public and indexable on all search engines, with unique URL’s for individual landing pages that you can tune based on if they are Fans or Non Fans, where you can host all your video (so long as it is under 10mb) and upload your product catalog with detailed descriptions (and get feedback from Fans), where you can throw an event or show presentations on a Slideshare ap, run a contest or a survey, host your blog or retweet your status updates (or better yet – just use Facebook instead of Twitter). Oh don’t forget send emails to your Fans for FREE and if you want to buy targeted ads you can do that too.
With all that in your favor – Why would any business need a website anymore?
Tags: Facebook, Social Media, Social networking
Well, now a days there are many ways introduced for internet marketing in which social networking is also a very popular way amongst all. There are some other ways for SEO like blog posting , forum posting but i would also prefer social networking like face book and twitter and many more as they are quick and popular.
Facebook is a marketing tool and a social networking forum thats it, combined with a quality website it can generate traffic and buzz but alone you are mixed together with 5 million other users. Not to mention it does NOTHING for SEO or email marketing systems.
A basic website would be good only to capture those not on Facebook. I view website as only a springboard to point to all the business’ social sites.
What an interesting discussion! FB has shopping carts now. Thanks to Payvment.com
Personally, I need both: a good presence on the social media platform and a good website. Both should compliments each other.
Cheers from faraway Malaysia.
Hi my name is Jake and im 26 years old and living in philadelphia. I realized the multifaceted marketing benefits of Facebook long ago and began to market facebook as a service for setting up a “Virtual Business Front” for local businesses, as well as operating facebook accounts for high profile individuals/ celebrities. This is not the death of websites in my opinion……I still see the benefits of operating both facebook and a website in accordance with each other and even doing a twitter account, all to increase internet visibility by linking them together. I have turned all of this into a monthly paycheck that all of my clients are happy to pay me. If you are interested to see what i do please take a look at Kenny Gamble’s, of Gamble and Huff fame, facebook page. I am open to all inquiries and look forward to helping others benefit from this. Thanks. -Jake
Jacob,
Can you please add me on Facebook would love to have a chat with you as I am really into Facebook Marketing.
Kind regards,
Suzie Parkus
Great discussion, just wanted to add that using the facebook platform on fb pages lets customize different type of html therefore you can add discount and product catalogue banners through the box app but we can also track every single click that comes through making facebook pages a great online marketing tool
do you guys know any other options for static fbml?
Thanks
I think it would be foolish for most businesses to opt for using Facebook as their only web presence. Sure you have some control, but not total control. And don’t get me started on the ever changing social media landscape. A few years back, some companies thought it would be a great idea to only have a Myspace page. We all know how that has turned out. The odds of another player coming in and supplanting Facebook as the social media platform of choice in the next few years is pretty high, which would then leave companies that made that choice without a web presence.
Also, there is no guarantee that Facebook does not adopt a policy of making users pay for the service at some point in the future. Do you really think your prospects want to pay to visit your “website”? Facebook is a great tool and a terrific compliment to a company’s website, but by no means is it a replacement.
Rule #1 on the internet – OWN YOUR OWN CONTENT!
The question of website versus Facebook fan page has been bothering me for the past few days, I’m glad to have found your blog. You’re right about MySpace. Facebook’s flexibility and ease-of-use make it a tempting alternative to a website. I’d be a lot less nervous about relying solely upon Facebook if FB didn’t have the security breaches and we didn’t have to constantly monitor our information. Thanks for the discussion.
yes.. facebook is slowly absorbing internet! some guys have even started to sell facebook page templates.. like here for instance – http://www.flashmint.com/show-type-facebook.html
it’ll gonna kill google
[...] his article on Marketing Profs Daily Fix, titled With Facebook Pages, Who Needs a Website?, Paul Danay argues just that. He outlines all the amazing features that come with setting up a page [...]
Facebook are gaining leading positions at the internet. Some internet marketers are making big cash using Facebook fan pages as their landing pages. Simple using FBML templates http://facebook-templates.net/ helps you driving additional traffic and customers to your website.
Almost everyone that makesan income on the internet (even the millionaires) do so through affiliate marketing. Being successful in affiliate marketing involves applying the formula that makes other affiliate marketers successful. For instance, autoblogging. Autoblogging is one of the least well-known forms of making money online for quite some time… primarily because it’s quite difficult to make a good auto-blog. Yet, when done right, it can provide you with a constant passive income with the only real work required being the setting up process. Video Marketing, and several other marketing strategies are all designed to drive traffic to your site, can be incorporated gradually in order to raise the position your site appears in the SERPs when someone searches for a term related to your site. And yet, even this can be totally automated.
Facebook is the best social network nevertheless the profile is boring. I spruce it up using Chameleon Tom it makes your profile match your individuality.
The bottom line when it comes to social media like facebook and myspace, these places can change in popularity. Years ago myspace was the place to be and everyone flocked there. Now its facebook and twitter, but you don’t know how long their popularity will last. At the end of the day your website is your hub where you want the action to be and that you want people to go to. Its best to use Facebook and Twitter to announce news about one’s own site and perhaps interact with people, but remember one’s own site is there own.
I don’t have or want a facebook account, and I’m starting to come across situations where I cannot access content or participate in some discussion because the event or business decided to be lazy & cheap and just use Facebook to host their online presence. Also many news websites are using Facebook to host their in-page discussions on an article, so I cannot participate. I believe they simply do so out of cheapness and lazyness and have no idea they alienate people.
It’s also a pain in the ass trying to find basic information about an event when all they have is a Facebook page for the event. Why can’t I quickly hit a URL or do a Google Search? Instead I have to navigate a trashy page and perhaps login (if I had a Facebook account) to find basic information.
What about security risks and being wholly dependent on some outside international corporation to host my online presence?
Facebook is quick and easy, but it’s trashy and has no value. In this way, it’s more like MySpace.
[...] en marketinggoeroes gaven al aan dat een website voor bedrijven (Zowel B2B als B2C) eigenlijk al overbodig is. Men baseert zich vooral op de mogelijkheden binnen andere kanalen zoals Facebook. Toch kan ik deze [...]
[...] are a bunch of websites and consultants advising that companies skip a website in favor of a Facebook Page.But it’s a really bad idea.You should have a Facebook Page, and a [...]