When a Facebook Page Is No Longer Enough for a Brashear Business

A Facebook page can be useful without being the entire web presence of a business. The practical dividing line is control: social media is a third-party platform, while a website on the business's own domain gives the business much more control over structure, content, and how customers reach important information.

That does not mean abandoning Facebook. The two can do different jobs.

What Facebook can still do well

A social page can be effective for updates, conversation, sharing photos, announcing changes, and reaching people who already use the platform.

If a business already has an audience there, throwing that audience away makes little sense.

The limitation is that the business does not control the platform itself. Interface changes, account restrictions, feed behavior, and platform policies are outside the business's control. Important service information can also become buried beneath a stream of posts.

What an independent website adds

A website gives the business a stable place to organize information around the customer rather than around a social feed.

Useful advantages include:

• a domain name the business controls through its registrar account;
• dedicated pages for services or important customer questions;
• stable contact and service-area information;
• navigation designed around the business rather than the social platform;
• a place search engines and other retrieval systems can crawl directly.

A website does not guarantee search rankings, and owning a domain does not mean the business owns every piece of Internet infrastructure involved. It does mean the business has substantially more control over its primary address and content.

Use social media as a path to the website

The two systems work well together when each has a defined role.

Facebook can distribute updates and maintain community attention. The website can hold the durable information: what the business does, who it serves, how to make contact, what customers should expect, and answers that should not disappear down a timeline.

Social posts can point people to the relevant website page instead of repeatedly rebuilding the same explanation inside individual posts.

Moving beyond Facebook can be gradual

A business does not need a giant site on day one.

A practical first step is an owned domain with a small set of useful pages and clear contact information. Existing social accounts can remain active and link back to that site. More content or functionality can be added later when there is a real need for it.

For a Brashear or Northeast Missouri business that has outgrown a Facebook-only presence, Switchboard can help create that independent home base without turning the project into an unnecessary platform migration campaign.

For a related next step, see Website for a Business That Does Not Sell Online in Wyaconda and Get the Website Ready Before Paying for Advertising in Wayland.

For authoritative guidance on this subject, see Google's SEO Starter Guide.

See Also

• Building a Service-Business Website on a Limited Budget in Memphis