It's no secret that many companies are looking to other channels for selling their products or services due to the recent COVID-19 Pandemic. Facebook has become a popular option for many small business owners because it's free and relatively simple to setup. Does it really help your company thought? Do you get noticed by anyone other than your friends and family? Let's face it, our friends and families get sick of us promoting our products and services and don't always support you because they have already bought three of every kind.😒

Fact #1 hurting small businesses - Facebook is not optimized for search engine optimization. Typically, without a large social media following to begin with you aren't even reaching half of your audience unless they like your page and share, share, share!! A Facebook page is reaching your family and friends and then possibly their families and friends if they are kind enough to help promote your page/posts.

As a fellow business owner I know how tough it is to do it all, run the business, accounting, sales, marketing, organization and all the above then rinse and repeat! I quickly realized how much a website can help funnel all of my channels into one point of contact, which is huge when you are running a 1-man (or woman) show!

Facebook is free, yes, and I agree it’s a great place to start. Even Instagram where you can use hashtags to increase your followers in certain niche’s is useful in promoting your brand, products and services. However, Google has rolled out 3 new criteria for evaluating businesses and unfortunately social media platforms don't do much to help rank you in popular search engines.

I will go into more detail about those 3 criteria in a moment, but I want to ask one question first. If you are selling on Facebook, Instagram, etsy, twitter or Pinterest - all of these social outlets require constant and consistent posting, right? What if I told you that if you’re selling products on a website it could funnel your sales to all of those channels including E-Bay & Amazon? ONE website with sales funneled to one central place, while still offering your customers the flexibility to shop and find you through multiple channels, why would you not want that simplicity?

I can't image the headache of processing orders coming from 4-5 different directions! It would be worth the investment if you ask me 🤷‍♀️.