While having a dynamic web site is something most businesses should have, if you’re a small company just starting out, it might look more like an additional expense than a genuine resource.
For companies facing that decision, let me remind you that while Facebook is at its heart a social platform, it also serves all of the same functions as a very basic web site.
If your company trying to develop a web presence in the most cost-effective way possible, consider taking the amount you would have spent on a web site and apply it towards developing your business’s Facebook profile.
Here’s why:
On Wednesday this week Steve Jobs and Apple announced a number of new products and concepts at an Apple event in California. Among them was the launch of Apple’s first foray into social media, called iTunes Ping.
I was listening to the event on my iPhone and following the commentary online via Twitter. There were lots of interesting instant-reaction Tweets by industry types. I found this one, by Kara Swisher, columnist for AllThingsD.com, to be quite interesting:
Apple Ping is “vertical Twitter” says Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky, sitting next to me at launch event in SF
At the time of reading, I hadn’t used Ping yet. My first thought was, Oh, I’m Not Sure This Is A Good Idea. Apple is an utterly closed company, making its living off of closed platforms. There is no sense of openness, of encouraging sharing, that is required in today’s social media landscape.
You’ve got a Facebook profile, claimed your business on Google Maps and Foursquare, and you may even have a Twitter account. So far, your businesses is well situated to use the internet and social platforms to generate business and raise awareness of your brand.
But there is one other platform where your business is absent: Blogs.
The natural inclination of businesses is that blogs are time-consuming and labor-intensive. I won’t dispute that — blog posts require time and effort to write and publish.
But the benefits to maintaining a company blog are considerable. Consider the following:
Back in June I wrote about how restaurants can use social media on a daily basis to drive customers in, and generate conversation online. My example breaks the day down into different parts, and offers an explanation of what could be done for each.
Today I came across a broader explanation, in the form for a flowchart.
It was developed by Spork Media, a New York-based consultancy that caters (no pun intended) to the restaurant industry, to help restaurant owners develop their business’s digital and social media footprint.
Today Pace Communications released a breakdown of where most of the major grocery store chains in the U.S. stand with regard to total number of followers on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.
The results were surprising in part because it painted a clear picture of how little this industry has invested in social, outside of major players such as WalMart and Target.
While the retail and food service industries have been quick to jump into social media, food retail (grocery stores, etc) appear to be more hesitant.
