If you’re asking this question, than I applaud you for trying to understand the difference between the two online marketing tools.  Each online strategy serves a different purpose in your online marketing campaign.

Pros and Cons of a Website

Pros:

  • A website contains all the facts of your business. The main menu provides easy and quick access.
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Each page of a website has keywords which, when formatted properly, increase your SEO and your ranking on major search engines like Google and Bing, making it easier for people to find you online.

Cons:

  • A website is cold. As much as it may look nice, it doesn’t really have a personality; just the cold hard facts.
  • While it’s good to keep it updated, you simply can’t change the basic facts that often.

Pros and Cons of Social Media

Pros:

  • Let your personality shine! A proper social media presence builds a rapport with fans and followers, and lets shows the warmth of the business.
  • You can post as much as your heart desires! You can send out a range of posts from Community involvement, to inspirational/humorous quotes, and pictures of the daily goings-on at your business.

Cons:

  • Events and Information gets lost in the chronologically ordered timeline. Potential customers won’t spend hours, even minutes, scrolling through to try to find out if you’re open on the Holiday Monday.  A website has that information more readily accessible.
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO) doesn’t really apply to social media streams. Having these accounts active minimally impacts your SEO. The only real way to increase SEO organically is through a properly formatted website and blogging.

What is better? 

Having both an active social media presence and an up-to-date website representing your business is the best online marketing strategy.  The two work hand in hand to help you get found online, interact with fans and followers and provide the information necessary for those potential customers to reach you.

As a social media marketing specialist, I highly recommend you keep both your website and social media as updated as possible.  There are many ways to streamline content from one to the other.  I would love to discuss the options that will have the best return on investment for your business.

If you are looking for help building your online presence and awareness through social media marketing, I invite you to contact me by telephone or email, or through FacebookTwitter, or LinkedIn.  I look forward to helping you help our community!

Until next time,

Deanna

Online Marketing for Small Business in Newmarket, Aurora, Georgina, Keswick, Uxbridge, Markham, York Region, Web Designer

How to Get Found Online: Putting It All Together

It’s time for the final segment in my three part blog mini-series “How to Get Found Online”.  Now that you’ve established your target market and created an online presence on social media, it’s time to wait.  Once your online presence is established, it may take upwards of 6 months to start seeing results.  I know, it sounds like a lot of time to wait for something that you’ve invested time, effort and money in, but there is not much in the way of short cuts around this issue and I will explain why below.  During this time, many people can get discouraged that their efforts were wasted, however I URGE YOU to be patient.  If it were quick and easy to obtain these results instantly, everyone would have done it, and than we’d be back at square one with the problem of an overload of companies and posts on Google fighting for the front page. Read more

Business man drawing target with chalk

Part 1: Establish a Target Market, and Stick to It.

We sometimes don’t stop to appreciate the seeming simplicity of online search engines. Have a question?  Just type it into Google, Bing, or Yahoo and you’re rewarded with thousands of answers from sources around the world.  But how do you get found online? As a small business owner, you need to think about the questions your prospective clients will be asking these Search Engines that will lead them to your business.  In this 3 blog series, I will be giving away some tips that will help you increase your SEO, and in turn help you find the people that are trying to find you online! Read more