I wanted to share with you this post I came across recently from social media  blogger Jay Baer of Convince and Convert because it’s one of the most thought provoking pieces I’ve read in a long time:

3 Ways Facebook Is Killing Your Website

Jay’s basic premise is that Facebook is a game changer that could herald the death of business websites as we know them and maybe in the fullness of time even Google itself and it is doing this in 3 ways:

1. By re-educating us to publish and consume real-time information in short bursts – status updates, photos, videos etc. – rather than the lengthy web pages we are accustomed to.

2. By providing all the rich functionality of a website and being able to leverage its massive social database to take customisation and relevancy of  information on the web to new levels, particularly in the area of e-commerce.  The example given is Amazon, who are now able to send customers who link their Amazon and Facebook accounts reminders of their friends’ birthdays and product recommendations based on their likes.

3. By virtue of the sheer number of users (500 million at the last count) Facebook is now the only party in town. Why bother putting all that hard work into getting people to visit your website when you can find them so easily on Facebook?

Jay has a very entertaining way of putting his arguments across, so I would heartily recommend that you read his post. And then, if you don’t have a clear social media strategy, I suggest you reflect long and hard on what this means for the way you should be promoting your business.