In an environment where the dynamic and eventful world of social media has become an intrinsic part of any business’s marketing and client base development platform, companies often find themselves questioning the viability and value of their static and one-way communicative website.
According to figures from the Social Media Marketing Industry Report quoted in Forbes, of all businesses with a marketing department, 94 per cent have used social media as part of their marketing platform. Over 60 per cent of marketers are devoting the equivalent of a full workday to social media marketing development and maintenance.
This is generating results too. Eighty-five per cent of all businesses that have a dedicated social media platform as part of their marketing strategy reported an increase in their market exposure while 58 per cent of businesses that have used social media marketing for over three years reported an increase in sales over that period.
Where does this leave corporate websites? Many companies have started dedicating a lot of resources to their social media marketing to the extent that they now view their website as merely a corporate online business card. Companies are therefore missing out on the opportunities that websites offer.
“Although we have witnessed the rise of social media and we are constantly leveraging the potential that these platforms can bring to our business, we still believe in the value of our corporate website and have recently invested a lot of resources to update our site,” said Joe Aquilina, CEO of Smart Technologies Limited.
“Websites still remain very viable and worth investing in. In the past months we have completely overhauled our website www.stl.com.mt aesthetically and from a product point of view. The content now shows how we have evolved over the past years, the development that has taken place from the operations side, and our extensive portfolio of services including IT renting, leasing, procurement, outsourcing and our growing array of solutions in the hospitality, education and digital signage sectors.”
According the latest research released by BusinessWire, 93 per cent of reporters go to company websites to do research, while 77 per cent use online newsrooms. Those two choices were well above social media (42 per cent), trade publications (41 per cent), blogs (34 per cent) or Wikipedia (32 per cent).
Lack of regular updates to your organisation’s website and online newsroom means you could be missing out on coverage.
“If anyone, be it from the media or potential local or international customers, is seeking the latest information about our operations, they can safely find this information on our website,” concluded Mr Aquilina.