Are Facebook Fan Pages Replacing Websites?

Have you been noticing that your company Facebook page is receiving more attention than your business’s official website? Facebook is big for consumer brands, but why does it seem like Facebook pages are getting more attention than your official website?

Let’s take a closer look. Starbucks, Oreo, and Coca Cola all lead the charts for gathering millions of “likes” on their Facebook page. They win with Facebook, but if you look at the traffic Starbucks, Nabisco World, and Coke U.S receives from their company website, you’ll notice its decreasing considerably. Why? A recent research by digital consultancy Beyond has shown that consumers actually prefer receiving brand information from Facebook (23%), rather than brand’s website (21%) or company blog (3%).

From this information, it seems Facebook newsfeeds are the future of product marketing and promoting. So, is it time to abandon your company website? Not quite yet.

Although Facebook is becoming the biggest marketing tool for brands, from an SEO perspective, using Facebook pages exclusively will drop your search engine results significantly. Less search engine results means a lower amount of quality leads. It is easy to think Facebook is taking over, but promoting a product or service from one social platform decreases your chances to reach all potential customers. Becoming soley dependent on Facebook and removing your official homepage from its secure place limits your brand. Facebook has controls and restrictions that will not give you the flexibility you want for your campaigns as your own website will.

A great way to integrate your business website and Facebook company page is to drive traffic to the website from Facebook. Having a strong Facebook page will give you the attention you want, and the website link will build your site traffic. Look at Facebook as just another way to promote your official website and platform your brand.

Here are a few tips to use Facebook to drive traffic to your official website:

• Create a Facebook competition which requires finding clues around your website, and announce that you will publish the competition winners in your official website.
• Tell your fans about special offers they can downloaded from your website.
• Integrate e-mail marketing with social media to increase your brand’s own customer database.

Do you have any other tips you’d like to share?  Please do so here for our fellow start-ups!