If you have a small business and think
that you don't need a dedicated web site of your own, think again.
I have noticed in my research that a
great many businesses--most of them mom-and-pop-sized, though some
surprisingly large--have no web site to call their own. Their
business name, when put into the address bar, is often either not
taken, or takes me to an entirely unrelated business, sometimes with
the same name, but hundreds or even thousands of miles away.
A Google search often reveals that they
have no site of their own. Over and over again, I have looked up
local businesses in a search engine and scanned the results, only to
find everything but
a web site. Now, granted, in a few cases, a URL (Uniform Resource
Locator) for that company does
turn up, but it's not the same as the business' name. Obviously this
can't always be helped, since there might be another business with
the same in another state, or even another country. It happens.
It's unavoidable: their ideal URL had already been taken. But you
find a way around that, and you move on.
What
I mean to address here
is those businesses who don't even bother.
I understand how a business-owner can think that a site of their very
own, with their own domain, isn't necessary. If I were a small
business person whose company was coming up in searches and listed on
Yelp, or Urbanspoon, or Citisearch, perhaps I would think that's
enough. I might think that between that, and the fact that I have my
own Facebook page, I don't really need my own domain. Because, after
all, those are complicated, and expensive, and I don't really know
how to go about doing all that. I might think that.
And
I would be completely and utterly wrong.
The
reason for that mistake can be summed up in one word: control.
You
see, while a Facebook page may seem
almost like your own domain, it's not. While it's great to be listed
on yellowpages.com or Dex or Manta, like Facebook, they are very
different.
You,
the business-owner, have no
control over them whatsoever.
Yes,
some of them offer a way for the person whose business is listed to
contact them and add information, or even correct it when it's wrong,
these processes can be long and drawn-out. If they make even a minor
mistake--say, in your business hours--anyone who is viewing that
information may think you're not open when you are,
and that can cost you business. But say a customer who, through no
fault of your own, was unhappy or dissatisfied with a product you
sold them or a service you provided, and out of spite (because there are
people like this) posts a bad review or says something bad about your
company. There may be a way to request that it be removed, or to
post a response with an explanation. But while you're going through
that process, there is often no way to counter that. You have no
control over it. And if you rely on one of these sites to promote
your business, you're stuck.
Having
your own domain and site may not counteract that bad review, but it
does give you the advantage of being able to post the positive
comments and feedback you receive. Also, since often when your
potential customers search for your business, your own site is the
first to come up (aside from the paid advertisements), they will
likely see your
own
site first. They may never get to that other site to see the false
bad review.
You
might be asking yourself at this point what this has to do with
Facebook. Facebook, it turns out, seems to many people like it's the
main part of the internet. But it isn't. It's a business like any
other. And while it's great to have a place you can put information
about your small business, it shouldn't be any
company's main place on the internet.
Again, you have no control over it.
Yes, you can add and delete information. (I won't go into the
every-changing rules and privacy settings here; if you use Facebook
at all, you're familiar with that.) But as a very large entity,
Facebook has to automate many things. And sometimes people get
caught up in that. You can have your account suspended without much
notice, if any, for any number of reasons. If their automated
systems believes for any reason that you have violated the TOS (Terms
of Service), you can be suspended.
This is not unique to Facebook, of course; they are simply the
largest entity with this issue. A friend of mine had this happen
with a blog site she uses. Some automated subroutine looked at her
blog and, for whatever reason, decided that it resembled a pattern of
spam. Like me, she is a writer, and uses her blog to display her
writing and keep her followers interested. But one day, she just
couldn't log in. She was informed of the supposed issue, so she made
the prescribed report, and was told that a human would have to check
her blog and determine if it could be restored.
It took nearly six weeks.
She had absolutely no control over this process, nor could she even
tell any of her regular readers what had happened, that it was all a
mistake, and that she would return . . . eventually.
This sort of thing happens all the time, be it with my friend's blog
or with some poor person who was either accused of posting something
inappropriate or against the TOS on Facebook.
This, above all other reasons--and there are many!--is why you, as a
business-owner (small or otherwise) should have your own domain and
your own web site.
Often this isn't as expensive as you might think, depending upon how
elaborate your site needs to be. But for a small business, having
that control is absolutely vital!
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