It’s Time To Take Your Brand Beyond Social Media

While social media will help you grow your business, using it alone is a risky business decision. Here are the main ways it can hinder your progress:

• Algorithm changes: Social media platforms change their algorithms all the time, which can make or break your visibility overnight.
• Lack of customization: Beyond your bio and post cover photos, you’ll struggle to customize your page with your unique branding.
• Loss of profit: If you’re selling products on social media, expect a portion of your profits to go to the social commerce platforms. TikTok Shop, for instance, takes 6% of each sale.
• Long-term instability: When your livelihood is in the hands of a social platform, things can quickly become uncertain. Take this year’s potential US TikTok ban or the unexpected changes to YouTube’s monetization policies – nothing is guaranteed.

In a nutshell, using social media alone puts your business in a vulnerable position. It may feel like you own your social media presence, but you’re essentially renting a space on someone else’s platform, which is subject to their changes.

To clarify, there are plenty of benefits to using social media as a business. It’s a way to get in front of your target audience and build a community.

Plus, there are some things your social media channels can do that a website can’t, such as act as a direct and instant communication line and promote your business to a highly engaged audience. This is why social media works best as an extension to your website, rather than a substitute.

For the reasons I covered at the start of this article, using social media as your only online marketing tactic may be limiting to your long-term brand strategy. Sure, using a handful of social media platforms is better than using one, but you’ll run into similar problems on each. This is why your business still needs a website. 

A website is a space you own and have total control over. You can enhance your branding much more than you can across your socials, thanks to custom fonts, colors, layouts, and transitions. Plus, you can use pages, like FAQ, About us, and product pages, to house plenty of informative content without appearing cluttered.

When you have a website and social media, you can use the latter to build brand awareness and to increase traffic to your website. From there, you can easily guide your customers to take the next vital step, such as buying a product, learning more about your company, or signing up to your email marketing list.

The good news is that it’s never too late to build a website, even if you’ve focused on social media so far. If this sounds like you, I’d recommend using Wix or GoDaddy. Both of these website builders have great social media tools, are safe for beginners, and have free-forever plans so you can dip your toes in risk-free.