Two issues: Vision and workflow.

Until an Operator begins to recognize the greater ability of an Anchor Website site to support, aggregate and consistently “Brand” content of all kinds, they won’t use it. The default is to just dump stuff to Facebook.

The impact of working from an “Anchor” site is an orientation to focusing attention — Specifically that the site isn’t full of all of the extraneous, distracting baloney that Facebook foists on viewers.

An Anchor Website site becomes the source for all of the Social Media “Channels.” So, which of those receive automated notifications from the site with pictures and links back to the site – depend on the kind of post one is “producing.” SM is used to drive visits back to the web pages you control. Collecting followers there permits all sorts of direct marketing opportunities — even via email.

There are specific occasions where one would prefer Twitter for certain things… and even less so, Facebook. Increasingly however, these are less SM channels (focused on engagement) for NPO/NGO and businesses — but more like simple media outlets. There is some capacity for “engagement” but a website is much more powerful.

Rules of thumb: Estimating the maturity of an Operation.

First: Until distinctions exist within a content vision — News, Press Releases, Member announcements, Documentation, Events, Updates, etc. — That each of these is a format and type of it’s own, in which one strategically overlays images, sound and video…  Until an Operation reorients toward “Producing and Publishing” content, there won’t be any drivers for controlling distribution.  If you don’t mind that you plaster FB with all of your stuff, don’t bother reading further.

So: If for now FB serves as a repository for unorganized and often unrelated or even conflicting information (like when one posts a time and a place — only to repost that it’s changed) and you don’t care.  You needn’t fuss with anchoring your Web Presence with a Web Site.

Any “mature” operator today, realizes they doesn’t actually “control” what happens at FB. How people see Branded info, and where it’s placed into user feeds is dictated by FB. FB (In particular) kind of places a FB Wrapper on everything.

Second: And this is killer/chiller – is that content listed on FB isn’t even close to being optimized for search. In fact, you can’t view the details unless you’re a subscriber. I’m often stunned that operators don’t intuitively Hate FB. Engineers and Content Producers almost universally dislike FB/SM because any effort there doesn’t result in much cross-channel availability of the content.

Time one spends posting to FB results in content that lives inside the perimeter of FB – with only certain caveats of “public” visibility. In any case: Search Engines really don’t optimize results for FB content.  Search Engines prefer a devoted, focused page – something that correlates interest-wise very highly with the query they are solving for.

Whereas: Content that I invest my scarce resources into that I produce on my Site — lives on the INTERNET. And oh by the way, it can be set to post to SM without additional effort by me.

An Anchor Website is a powerful tool.  But be wary — if your expectation is that “if you build it they will come” — you’ll be disappointed.  Any community requires active participation.  We are in the dawning years of Web 3.0 … and “living” websites associated with SM Channels are powerful tools in Business.