It never fails. A customer, or a prospective customer will come to me and ask, “Why aren’t more people coming to my website? What can I do to promote it more?”
The first question I always ask is “Are you on Facebook?” And the answer I usually get is “No, I don’t like / trust / care for / know how to use … Facebook.”
Well, to be honest, I have some issues with Facebook myself. But the fact of the matter is that that is where the people are.
Imagine for a second … there’s a big gathering of people in New York City somewhere (disregarding for a minute that New York City IS a large gathering of people.) You want to get the word out to those people that you have something they want and you feel they’ll pay you good money for. So what do you do? Do you go to the middle of Passaic, New Jersey and wave your little sign around hoping that someone will see it in passing? No, you go where the people are. And right now, online, Facebook is where they are.
That being said, you still want to protect your brand, and you still want to drive people to your website. Especially if you have an online shopping cart, your sales aren’t going to be made through Facebook. Your sales are going to be made by people coming to your site.
Here is the second thing I say to people: “Where’s your content?” I can’t beat that into people’s heads enough: Content, content, content; interesting content to attract people to your site and changing content to keep them coming back.
There have been many times where I’ve gone to someone site and seen a dearth of content, but then gone to their Facebook page and seen pictures, updates and all sorts of information. So, it makes me wonder, if these people are so all fired hot about getting people to visit their website, why isn’t all of this information … on their website?
The trick is to use Facebook to drive traffic to your site, not the other way around. Advertise your content on Facebook, but make them go to your website to get it. For example, some of you are reading this post because of an email blast that I sent out. But I’d bet you a lot more are reading it because of the Facebook link I posted. So, I’ve used Facebook to drive you to my own website.
Why is this so important? On Facebook, you’re competing with hundreds, maybe thousands of posts and, if you’re lucky, you’ll get a little “Oh that’s nice” as people scroll on by and see what else is on their feed. Here, I have your complete and total attention.
So, get used to Facebook. Used wisely, it can be your friend. And if you’re on Facebook already, use it to drive traffic to your site.