Why Do I Need A Website Instead Of Just Using Social Media For My Business?

Online presence is key for any business in this day and age. Social media marketing has emerged as one of the go-to platforms for most business and brand owners. Platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Instagram are now being used daily by businesses.

One may ask whether there is a need for businesses to own websites nowadays. Businesses need to make sure that the ultimate destination for their visitors and clients is their websites. There are various reasons as to why you need a website instead of just using social media including:

1. You Can’t Control What You Don’t Own

Social media platforms are owned by multinational entities. If a platform that you have been using to interact and sell your products and services changes its policies, you may be affected. The terms and conditions together with user agreements may change thereby affecting your business.

On the other hand, you have power and control over your website. No party can change policies and agreements that will end up hurting your business.

2. A Website Is The Hub Of Your Online Presence

A website is fundamental for the growth and sustainability of any business. A website acts as your online office. It affirms your presence within that space. Social media platforms can be used to drive traffic to your website. This traffic should land on the homepage of your site. You can use different platforms to drive traffic and grow your business.

3. Freedom To Monetize Your Website

Some social media platforms have restrictions when it comes to monetizing your account. You may face harsh restrictions when monetizing platforms such as Instagram and Youtube. They require a certain amount of followers or subscribers for you to access some features within the platforms.

When you have your own website, you have the freedom to do whatever you want. You can sell your services and products easily. You do not need to worry if you have met certain requirements for you to monetize your website.

4. In-Depth Web Analytics

The analytics that you get from a website are usually more in-depth as compared to those of social media platforms. You can keep track of what is happening. You are able to understand what drives the reactions of people. Such analytics shed light on what the visitors to your site are more interested in.

5. Increase Revenue Stream

You are able to customize your website to ensure that you increase your sale conversions and revenues. Selling goods and services can be done more effectively through a website. You can offer live support to clients through your website.

Shipping details, cart features, and discounts can be offered through a website. This is able to promote conversions. These features are not present on many social media platforms. The benefits of an onsite purchase experience are wasted when social platforms are used to make purchases.

6. Social Media Platforms Are Businesses

Although social media platforms may seem free, you need to note that they are also businesses. The development of features for the improvement of the user experience is done continuously by these platforms. Some of these features are not geared towards bettering the user experience. They are developed to help meet the goals and objectives of such platforms.

This means that the success of your business is a secondary goal for these platforms. There is a need for you to maintain this perspective when using such platforms.

Social media offers platforms for interaction with users. You can be able to cultivate relationships through such interactions. Social media also offers immense help when it comes to the growth of traffic to your website. It should be used to compliment your website. As a business owner, you need to ensure that you have a website as the final destination for your business as opposed just using social media.

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Video Transcript:

WHY YOU NEED A WEBSITE – SOCIAL MEDIA CAN FAIL YOU..

2018, And guess what? You still need a Website. It’s not negotiable in the era of social media. It’s very easy to get comfortable and complacent with the free traffic you get from online platforms. And the fact that, the advice of many marketers is to go where the people are. What is it they said in The Little Mermaid it was? “I want to be where the people are.” Yeah! No I’m not doing karaoke for you. Not gonna happen but I am going to tell you about why you need to build a website of your own? Why you need to have that in order to protect your voice? Access to your audience and why it’s essential to your brand even if you are a content creator or business owner in Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, whatever you’re doing for the love of god. Get your own website. Here’s why?

Hey! Everybody. This is Roberto Blake, helping you create something awesome today. Welcome back to the channel. First of all, if you’re new here, Welcome. Thank you for dropping by. Appreciate you. My name is Roberto Blake. I am a creative entrepreneur with a social media coaching business, which is actually pretty cool now that I think about it. I’m also a public speaker and I speak at events like vid summit, and video marketing world, Vid Con, and a lot of times on this YouTube channel. What I focus on is, I focus on the idea of helping entrepreneurs market themselves using social media platforms, email marketing and I also tried to talk to influencers in social media about the importance of having a business of their own and treating their brand and their platform like a business. So that they can protect themselves continue to earn money and make a living doing something they love and that they care about.

I made over a thousand videos here on YouTube. I’ve done over 1000 live streams across multiple mobile streaming platforms, some are still alive today and some have passed away, unfortunately, and are no longer with us like blab and like mirrorcat and so many others. I’m still pulling for you Periscope but I don’t think you’re gonna make it. And even if platforms don’t die on their own. That doesn’t mean that they can’t limit your access to an audience with their algorithms and the way that they change things or that they can’t make their terms of service or their guidelines in such a way that it no longer fits your content. If you want to play by the rules of the platform and that’s assuming they don’t revoke your access to the platform entirely. If you do break one of these rules even if it’s unintentional.

So, with all of these crazy things that are happening in the world and the landscape of social media. If you don’t want to lose your voice, if you don’t want to lose the branded business that you’ve been building on this platform. If you want to be able to essentially protect yourself and still have that reach then the only real answer is to build something of your own and to have your own Website. I also would recommend that you build an ancillary business and consider even doing local events. There is nothing wrong with still doing that and having the access to be a part of your community in the real world instead of just the digital one. So, these are things that I really believe in and I think you should do.

I’m gonna give you some advice about starting your own website because I think you understand why you need one now? But you also need to consider growing an email list. Starting a website can feel intimidating. So, let’s get through some of the basics.

You need what’s called a domain name. This is when you type in something like www.awesomecreatoracademy.com. Which is one of my websites and it’s where I host my coaching business. And you need a hosting platform that usually is going to come from the same company that provides you with the domain name. So, what I like to do is. I like to get a domain, setup professional email addresses, and then also you need on your Web hosting to be able to post content.

Now, if you’re not a coder then worry about it. You can use WordPress, Where you can use some other platform. For my coaching business, I use a platform called Kajabi. They’re not sponsoring this video. I do have a link to them down below. If you want a 28 day free trial, they’re actually really cool. So for my coaching business and selling online courses and products and a group program it’s phenomenal. It actually helped me build a six figure business outside of YouTube which means that if YouTube shuts down tomorrow, I’ll be OK. I can triple down on my podcast as far as content.

And let me doing some videos and I’ve done a video by the way on step by step how to start a website of your own? So. I’m going to link to that in the info card because it will be a great walkthrough for you. But I’m also going to link down below and maybe in another info card to bluehost because our community has a fantastic deal with them that gets you a massive discount. If you need to start your Website.

And if you need to start an email list, mailchimp is a free way to start. I also recommend convert kit and constant contact. Some of my friends use a Weber which I think is phenomenal. So just pick the email marketing platform use like a free trial or something that feels the least complicated to you because I know that that can get overwhelming. But make a newsletter and make some cool freebies or downloads or an e-book or a free exclusive video or something to grow your email list. So, that you can you know connect with people because the worst thing about a lot of this is that even if you don’t get banned from a platform their algorithms decide who you have access to in the first place.

Prime example. Three hundred and fifty thousand of you guys are subscribed to the youtube channel but while people don’t know is that when a video is uploaded to YouTube. YouTube samples it against a small portion of your audience which is why? Unless I make certain videos or certain titles just right, which pulls in completely new people because I can see and analytics that majority of my views. A lot of times come from non subscribers which is why I keep growing which is why my subscriber count is so high, Is that I’m reaching completely new people. Everytime I upload a video, I get new subscribers. I get hundreds of new subscribers each and every day. But what YouTube is not doing is giving each and every one of you who hit subscribe, my videos. It only does it for people who hit notifications and say they want every video and sometimes not even then. And on top of that and this happens not just to me but to almost every single creator. On top of that because youtube only sends videos to your most active subscribers. People who don’t skip your videos. If you don’t do exactly the same type of video over and over or the same type of topic over and over and over then, YouTube considers someone and an active subscriber and they don’t see your videos in the home page. They’d have to go to the subscriptions feed and then if that’s in chronological order. It’s based on whoever they’re subscribed to that uploaded most recently. And YouTube is not the only platform that does things like this.

Instagram changes its algorithm all the time and so does Twitter. Facebook has limited organic reach and that’s why a lot of marketers are upset with Facebook. So, at the end of the day we’re left with going back to the way we used to do it in the internet, the old school way. I’ve been around for long enough to remember this that you build a Website, you post blog content, you try to make sure you rank in Google, you consider buying ads online, In this case Google, Facebook, Instagram, and you also try to siphon a little bit of traffic for your own Website from social media, even though they penalize you for that. But they’re hitting you anyway. So well yeah. What’s the difference? And you also try to grow that email list because email is the most direct access to you know your audience in a way.

And there’s also things, I’m looking at where there are Facebook chat bots and things of that nature that are appealing and interesting. But there’s other things that make me uncomfortable about it. So, I’m gonna be running some experiments with that. I also think having a Dischord server if you’re a YouTube is actually really cool because it then means your community can interact with each. These Dischord servers remind me a lot of how community forums used to work but I I like that they’re much more mobile friendly. And again in this world in 2018, 2019, 2020. Mobile first sometimes mobile only is exactly the right thing to do.

So if you’re gonna build a Website make sure that’s mobile friendly and use something like WordPress. If you’re doing courses and a coaching business, good jobs mobile friendly as well and the website that it generates for you is mobile friendly. And I would also say that being in things like discord that are a mobile app that brings the community together are amazing. And I think you should take advantage of them in fact if you want to join my Dischord server. We have a freelancing community there we’ve got YouTube content creators there and we’ve also got people that just share interest creatively as artists. So I would love for you guys to join the conversations happen over there and whenever I have time. Whenever I’m in the Uber, I like the hop in there as well and talk about things even if it’s just what movie I’m watching right now.

Like I keep saying these platforms can do whatever they want. So you need to protect yourself. You can see a lot more people building their own Website, posting a podcast. There which they also distribute across multiple platforms. And I would encourage you to not abandon social media to leverage it but also use it for free traffic. Use it to build your email list. I’m going to link down some resources for that for you down below. I’m going to link to a few of my other videos about online marketing. You guys need to do that. And if you’re a content creator on a platform like YouTube and you’re making your money that way. You need to build a Website and you need to do things like affiliate marketing, sell your merch with a Website because you need a way to make money in case something happens. YouTube could have problems or if you’re with a multi-channel network. They could be late on payouts for you. They could be like two or three weeks late and if you’re relying on that money for a living then that sucks you can’t pay your bills, if you don’t have something saved.

You know so that’s important. YouTube shut you down. This happened to a lot of friends of mine especially in the anime community not even people talking about politics but they got shut down because a media company started copyright striking like everybody who is like a manga or anime reviewer. It was like a big deal and nobody talks about it because it’s not politics. It’s not them. They live in their bubble they think that YouTube has an agenda politically to screw them when hate to break it to you. There are plenty of content creators getting screwed and they have nothing political to say whatsoever. They just wanna talk about movies or cartoons or sports. Even I’ve seen sports channels that have been completely demonetize. So guess what? It can happen to anybody. Don’t think for one minute that you’re safe because you’re on this side of the fence or that side of the fence, you’re not.

So, the best thing you can do for yourself is to take ownership of your brand by having your own Website. So, for me, I’ve got a discount code for you guys. You can use any hosting company you want. But if you want a discount then checkout Robertoblake.com/bluehost. I’m going to link it down below. I think I’ve linked it up in the info card. Yeah, it’s an Affiliate Code. Its is not sponsor. I do get something from that but if Bluehost doesn’t work for you then consider using squarespace, if that’s easier. Whatever, you do just build a website. I don’t care who you build it with. If you’re happy with it and if it’s working for you and if I never make a dime from it that’s cool too.

Anyway, I hope this gave you guys some perspective on why you need to build your own website? Why you need to build your own email list? Question of the day. This one’s gonna be fun. Question of the day. What’s a business you’ve always dreamed of starting for yourself? I think that that’s a really interesting idea. If you could build any business that you wanted and know that it was gonna be successful what would you build? What would you create? Would you create you know an energy based green energy based company is that something you want to do? Would you create a movie studio? What is it that’s really burning in your heart to build into bring into the world and what would you make If like you know you knew that you were gonna be successful no matter what? I’m super curious about this. I want to hear from you so drop that in the comments section.

Like this video if you like it. Don’t forget to subscribe check out the other awesome stuff on the channel. It’s here to help you. As always you guys thanks so very much for watching. And don’t forget go out there and create something awesome today especially if it’s your own Website. Take care.

*The information above does not constitute legal advice or opinion, nor is it a substitute for the professional judgment of a qualified attorney.