This post initially appeared on PR Daily in May of 2018.
Is it time to stop browsing for the best platform?
From time to time, a viewpoint piece will emerge with confidence stating that hosting your material is a wild-goose chase since MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram or Medium is where your audience is hanging out. The argument is that it’s more efficient to host your content where individuals currently are.
It’s an engaging argument, but here’s why you should desert platform hunting and merely host your content on your own website:
1. You have actually got full ownership of your future.
If your material technique focuses on a social networks channel or channels, you’re at the mercy of the next algorithm modification. Things can be going fantastic when all of a sudden 80 percent of your audience disappears for reasons you have definitely no control over. That’s not likely to take place if you’ve got a balanced strategy in place with content hosted on your own site and promoted utilizing the PESO model, which integrates paid, earned, shared and owned techniques.
2. Social network patterns are simply that– trends
Facebook’s popularity among youths– once its lifeline– is declining, and now it’s simply where your aunt’s go to sleuth into your life. Instagram Stories is killing SnapChat with a little help from Kylie Jenner and Rihanna. Twitter constantly fails to capture the creativity of a lot of consumers. Who knows what the next big thing will be– and how long it will last? If you host your material mainly on one social networks channel, you’re screwed when your target market carry on.
3. It does absolutely nothing for your online search engine rankings.
Somebody may have told you that seo (SEO) is dead. Well, unless people have suddenly stopped using Google to find responses to their questions, that’s clearly not true. Getting found through Google is one of the best ways to reach individuals who are researching the products and services you offer, but who do not know you exist yet.
Hosting content by yourself website and driving traffic to it stays one of the most basic methods to improve your SEO rankings.
4. You improve analytics.
Compared to the stats you get in Google Analytics, the majority of social media analytics suck.
You can get some very basic group details but that’s about all. By comparison, you can connect Google Analytics to your website free of charge to learn a wealth of info about your site visitors including demographics, their interests, the length of time they spend on your site, whether they’re visiting from phones or desktops, whether they’re new or returning visitors and much, much more.
Yes, it’s a little weird when you understand how much information these men have– but if you’re going to look at your audience’s habits, you may as well get the complete image.
5. Your business will have more control over the information gathered in your name.
Unless you have actually been hiding under a rock for the last couple of weeks, you’ll have heard about the debate around how Facebook allowed Cambridge Analytica to make use of information from potentially 87 million users. Reducing your reliance on business like this and ensuring you have strong data defense policies in place by yourself website is necessary in regards to protecting yourself and your customers.
6. It’s a much better way to create a long-term relationship with your audience.
On a social networks website, you’re constantly competing for attention among memes, friends’ status updates, cat photos, news stories and ads. Getting your clients on to your website rather suggests that for a minute or 2 (if your material is really great) you’ll have their full attention. You can use that time to tempt them into offering you their email address– and that’s the start of a long-lasting relationship.
Also, e-mail transforms to sales at a significantly greater rate than social networks anyhow.
7. Organic reach on social channels is pitiful.
It’s progressively hard to get your message throughout to your social media audiences and get engagement without spending great deals of money. Back in the day, if you posted something on your Facebook page, all your fans would see it. These days, you’re lucky if 10 percent of those who follow you see your posts. Facebook charges you to promote your page so it can get more likes, and then when you have actually got the likes you desired, it charges you once again to promote your posts so individuals actually see them. A lot of social channels operate likewise, and it makes it really difficult to get great value for your money.
8. You don’t require to be omnipresent.
The truth is you don’t require to “be all over”. You never ever did. If you’re offering important material to your target audience, they will keep returning. Strive to make your brand name’s material remarkable, and then use every channel you’ve got to promote it.
Social media still has a role here, along with e-mail, paid ads, influencer marketing, media relations and more. Social network is a promotion tool– not the rock on which to construct your business. Select the very best opportunities to promote your material based on the audience and what’s on trend– but host it right there by yourself website where you have complete control over its future.
Katie Harrington is a Communications and Material expert based in Dublin, Ireland. Katie has actually worked with international brand names including EY, Emirates Airline Company and Allianz, in addition to in the Irish parliament and Qatar’s semi-government oil and gas company Nakilat. A version of this short article originally appeared on her blog site
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