Facebook is Not Your Blog

Last week, one of the most-clicked stories from SmartBrief on Social Media was an article from Advertising Age: What Happens When Facebook Trumps Your Brand Site? It’s a legitimate concern for businesses. With millions of people using Facebook and that number growing every day, brands like Coca-Cola, Victoria’s Secret, and Oreo are getting more Facebook traffic than they are getting traffic to their home websites. According to reports, there are nearly 40 fan pages with at least a million Facebook fans, or “likes” as they’re calling ‘em these days, whatever. The point is that Facebook might not be around forever, but right now, they are securing controlling the social networking market.
And Facebook fan pages aren’t even search engine optimized.
What does this mean for you? Well, as a blogger, if you aren’t on Facebook, you’re likely missing out on connecting with a huge number of fans. At the same time, I see Advertising Age’s articles as a bit of an eye-opening warning. There is such a thing as too much Facebook success. Or rather, there is such a thing as not using Facebook success correctly.
The problem lies with not using Facebook as a way to encourage people to visit your website. That’s all fine if you’re like Coke and your main goal is to sell more soda. Whether someone visits your website or your Facebook page, they’re interacting with your company, and you’re going to sell more soda. But as bloggers, most of use aren’t selling products at retail locations. We sell products on our blogs or, at the very least, we make advertising money from our blogs.
You can’t make money that way on Facebook.
The disconnect comes when fans of your blog don’t actually need to visit it, because you repost everything on Facebook. I’m not talking about links – I’m talking about full content, contest information, updates and site news, etc. Why should they visit your actual blog if everything there (minus the ads/products) is on Facebook too?
I guess, the point I’m trying to make is this: Facebook is not your blog. Heck, you don’t even own your Facebook page if you want to get technical. If Facebook were to implode tomorrow and you were to lose access to all those “likes,” how many people would even remember your blog? Yes, Facebook is a great tool for bloggers, but we need to think of this site as an outpost to our websites, and the point behind every update should be to drive more traffic back to our blogs.