The Value of a Website

There are many ways to spread the word about your group on the internet—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram…Many are free to join, so why spend money on a website?

Twitter works well when you want to send reminders and or updates about events that your group posted elsewhere.

Facebook is a good way to have conversations with your group’s “friends”. It’s also a good place to post pictures, videos, and more detailed information about your group and its events.

A website has one great advantage over all the other social media—it gives your organization a sense of permanence and therefore legitimacy.

Remember in the old days of snail mail when you went to respond to a company’s ad that had a P.O. Box instead of a street address? The P.O. Box sounded sleazy and made you question the legitimacy of the business. It made you wonder that if you send that check to the P.O. Box would you ever hear from that company again? That’s the feeling I get when I see a business with a presence on social media but no website to anchor it.

I generally find websites easier to navigate then Facebook pages because they are better organized. There’s no scrolling down all kinds of non related items to find what you’re looking for. This is a big help to the event director who doesn’t have the time to wade through memes, cat videos and whatever else lands on your Facebook page.

Because only group members update content on a website, the group has total control of how it portrays itself to the public. There’s no chance of negative comments or unflattering pictures being posted like you have on other social media. And that maybe the most important reason of all to maintain a website.