Why Your Website Should Be The Central Hub For Your Online Activity

Ever feel like you’re spreading yourself a little thin, or that you’re just all over the place when it comes to your online presence? If you’re very active online you might have lots of different places where you post content, interact with customers and carry out marketing activity. These places could be:

• Your website
• Your blog
• Email marketing
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• YouTube
• Google+

Assuming you are active on websites where your customers are also active, and you’re not spending time posting on channels that aren’t going to be useful for you, then it doesn’t matter how many of these platforms you use. What does matter is that your website is the central hub of your online presence – you may have content all over the web, but your site should be the place where it all comes together.

There is one important reason why everything should link back to your website, and that’s because it’s highly likely that this is where users turn into customers. Users can’t buy your products on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, or your blog. They can however make a purchase or submit an enquiry on your website - but unless you direct them, they might never get there.

Picture this:

You post a video on YouTube about your latest product or a testimonial from a client about one of your services. You need to share it somewhere else apart from YouTube, otherwise, your potential customers won’t see it. So, you post a link to the YouTube video on your social media accounts. Potential customers click through to YouTube and watch the video, but what do they do when it’s finished? Do they go looking for your website to find out more? Or do they close the tab, or get distracted by a funny cat video YouTube has recommended for them?

Alternatively, how about this:

You post a video on YouTube, but you also create a new page on your website (or a blog post on your website) especially for the topic your video covers. You embed the YouTube video into the page on your website, and that page is the link you share on social media. Users click on the link, watch the video, and then what do they do next? They act on your call to action on the page, telling them to get in touch with you. Or they click on the link you’ve provided that takes them to a page where they can purchase the product in the video. Or they explore other parts of your website. Either way, you’ve got them right where you want them and there are no cat videos in sight (unless you’re a vet surgery or a pet shop, of course).

By creating pages such as this on your website, you are providing users with a wealth of information that could be essential to their purchasing decisions, and also shows you are experts in your field. Of course, you can appear to be an expert in your field by what you post on LinkedIn, but that’s not where your conversions take place. By all means, continue to interact wherever you can with your customers – just make sure you’re leading them in the right direction for making a purchase, and that your website is as much a home for rich content as your social media accounts are.