I don’t care if you are an individual, a business or a band, you should all read this post about why you need an official website and how it should interact with all your various social accounts and sites.
I had been working on a blog about why you need an official website and why that website should be the center of your online world; that all your social website accounts should be driving traffic into your official website. But guess what… someone else has hit the nail on the head. Why duplicate a great effort? Instead, I will just comment and expand on it.
As Facebook (though you could replace with any number of social websites) continues to grow, I encounter more people who wonder why not just make Facebook their online home. I will give you two examples why you shouldn’t: AOL and MySpace. Remember way back in the dark ages of the Internet when AOL was the king of everything? Everyone was setting up shop on AOL. Where is AOL now? Remember MySpace? It was the “it” place to be. Everyone had to have an account. You weren’t cool if you didn’t. Now you’re not so cool if you are still making MySpace your primary online home. Does anyone know where Facebook will be in five years? Nope. I do know that in five years your official website will still be live, active and at the same URL. Get the picture. The latest and hottest sites come and go, but your brand should be constant on your URL.
You still NEED to be seen on Facebook, but use it the right way. I will give you one simple example on how to use it. Since I have managed many band sites in my career, I will use that as an example.
You have just issued a press release about your new album, tour or whatever. The first place it should be posted is your official website and better do everything possible to be the first to post it. If you are smart you built your site so each news story gets picked up as a RSS feed. The next thing you should do is post an excerpt of the news on your Facebook Page. NOT the entire story. Why not? You want your fans on Facebook to click a Read More link to go to your official website to read the entire release. If you post all of your news in full on Facebook, your fans will have no need to visit your website. If you post every photo from your official website on Facebook, nobody needs to visit your site. Just post enough to give your fans a taste, so they click to see the rest on your official site. Does this really happen or is it just a concept? It happens. I used to visit Kissonline.com, the official KISS website, daily for news updates. But I have not visited the site in the last six months because I can get all their news from their Facebook Page. I have talked to other fans who have said the same thing. Once the fan is on your website you have the opportunity to sell them your music, t-shirts, tickets, and other merchandise. Maybe you get them to sign up for something. You can sell advertising or sponsorships around your own content. Collect as much money money as possible for yourself. Don’t let Facebook make the money off your fans.
Many companies are seeing traffic to their websites going down while visits to their Facebook Page goes up. They are putting all their efforts into driving people to Facebook and then stopping. Get your fan or customer back to your site!
Be sure you read the 16 Biggest Reasons to Have Your Own Website below. This list is right on the money. If you need help with your strategy or how to set up an inexpensive site that interacts automatically with social sites, contact me.
However, there are still very compelling arguments for maintaining a personal website these days. Constantine Roussos, a music industry entrepreneur, is trying to create a .music domain extension. His recent “16 Biggest Reasons to Have Your Own Website” list created a tremendous amount of buzz amongst industry insiders as he has relentlessly toured music conferences around the globe while advocating his cause. Here is his excerpted list — it’s thick on marketing speak, but it makes a lot of sense:
- 1. You own your website.
- 2. You are branding your artist/band name, not a third-party website.
- 3. You never know if that third-party website will exist in the future or be as relevant (for example, MP3.com shut down). All your “friends” left MySpace, and unless you captured their email through your official site, you are in trouble.
- 4. You control your search engine results. It is easier to get ranked #1 for your artist/band name if you have your own dedicated domain name. You can also add search “juice” or “pagerank” to your official page by linking to your official site from social sites, as well as others linking to you.
- 5. It is a long-term strategy.
- 6. Visitors to your website have a much higher sales conversion ratio than third-party sites.
- 7. You control all the content and brand image.
- 8. You portray professionalism. Would anyone in the press take you more seriously if you had a website versus not having one? First impressions count.
- 9. You can funnel and aggregate all your social media and widgets in one location, where it is convenient for your fans to find information about you.
- 10. Flexibility. You can create polls, add any programming, widgets or modules of your choice without third-party restrictions.
- 11. You have no fear of being deleted because you are being too “commercial.”
- 12. You can own your shopping cart and keep more profit from your sales.
- 13. You can add your own advertising and sponsors on your page.
- 14. You can offer product bundles and competitions for your fans.
- 15. You can build credibility with your fans, create a fan club area for your superfans, as well as dedicated message boards to interact with your fans.
- 16. You are investing in yourself and not others. Websites are like cheap virtual real estate.
While owning your own website will cost you for the domain name and web hosting, there is a lot you can do with minimal expenditure.
This is a wonderful post and may be one that can be followed up to see what the results are
A mate emailed this link the other day and I am eagerly looking your next write. Keep on on the fabulous work.
Michael:
Thanks for all the cogent points and relevant information.
My questions here pertains to your flow chart. I only see a few “double-headed” arrows.
As both ReverbNation and Facebook now have commerce in place (even if a redirect and/or third party), and with the arrows in mind, would you essentially change those pertinent arrows (back to website) from being one-way to two-way? If no, why not?
I see another double-header on the website to video path, although “sell” is not mentioned there. Can you enlighten me please?
(BTW, referred by CD Baby mention)
Cheers!
Christine,
Thank you for the comment. First let me state the flow chart was not created by me, I was commenting on a post by DJ Techtools. Yes ReverbNation and Facebook could become double arrows. All these other sites should be looked at as extentions of your site, not a replacement. Therefore they all might offer benefits for traffic you send to them. Of course they should all be looked at as traffic sources. I like to tell people that whatever you are doing and whatever site, just think about the traffic flow and make sure you are taking advantage of everything you can drive traffic back to you. I will add that it does get a bit more complicated when you use a tool like CommerceSocial that lets you embed your online store on nearly all sites. So you are not driving traffic anywhere, you are let it purchase wherever they are.