How does blogs, business websites compare to Facebook pages, Google+ pages or even Twitter? I don’t have an answer or even an opinion but I wanted to put my thoughts in print.
I have spoken to a few business owners that have just Facebook pages and no websites. Some of my webhosting clients have Facebook and a website. Here to some people use their facebook page more than their website. They promote it more and it is a primary means of advertising instead of a secondary means.
The most important aspect of a web presence is communication. Communication can take many forms from advertising, to support to displaying opinions and facts. The aspect of communication varies greatly by industry and businesses.
Knowing what the meaning of a web presence is(Define stage) should help determine which form of communication to use. Whether it is a blog, facebook, online site or combination, it is important to choose the right one.
Here are my concerns about having just Facebook or Twitter. The biggest concern I have is the control aspect. Who really owns the data on that page? If Facebook or Google or Twitter decides to change their privacy policies the next day they can. The scary part about this is all these companies on numerous occasions have done just that. My second concern is about entrusting this information to a company that may or may not be around or may be less influential 5 years down the line. We saw this constantly in the past with social networks. Things do seem to be settling down but it doesn’t make me feel better.
One could say that this view of privacy policies goes against my cloud technology push. In one small aspect I may agree with that but Amazon and Rackspace and the others out there are making no attempts to change their policies every few months. Plus a company can have their own private cloud if they so choose to spend the money.
I use a business website which this blog is part of and these posts flow to my Twitter account. I sparingly use Twitter. I have a Linkedin account since they originally formed along with a Facebook and Google+ pages that I haven’t looked at for an eternity.
While these thoughts may be all over the place I would like to leave one other example here. I use the Nike+ Running app. Recently Nike came out with a ‘game’ where you use their “Nike Fuel” that you gain by exceeding to go up against other players. First I couldn’t sign up. The problem was because I didn’t have a first and last name setup in my Nike account. Second, I don’t know how many threads I had to open but Nike only offers Twitter and Facebook as support options. The Facebook support was a disaster. From not being able to post attachments without starting a new thread, starting a new thread because someone new answered, waiting hours for a response when it turns out to be ANOTHER canned response, not even finding the right spot to ask for help on the facebook page…shall I continue or do I sufficiently make my point here. Total disaster and waste of valuable time. If they would just offer a support ticket or something more concrete I would ask them for some more help since I still have issues.
For now I am going to stick with hosting my own website.