Which Comes First? Facebook Pages, Or Web Hosting?

When it comes to promoting your company online, most business owners know that they have two choices: Facebook pages, or creating a website and hiring a web host to store, run, and possibly maintain it for you. Both are very good options, come with great benefits, and are definitely things you should do for your business. But the question is, which comes first?
Facebook pages have two distinct advantages over running a website through a web host: they’re free, and you can instantly reach millions of people a day – as many times as you want. Through a Facebook page you can promote your company online, tell your customers about new products and discounts, and receive feedback about what your customers are looking for. All instantly, and all on a regular basis. Best of all, it’s free, which is something that can’t be said for the best web hosts.But as good as Facebook pages are, they do have their drawbacks.
The first is that, because you are posting to a third-party website, you will not have complete ownership over anything that’s posted to Facebook. Social networks, especially Facebook, are notorious for changing their policies on a regular basis, and with little or no notice to the users on that network. This is completely legal, because the website you’re using is not your own and the owners are able to change it the way they see fit.
While these policies can be difficult to keep up with, and downright bad for your business, there’s a bigger problem with creating a Facebook page before you have your own website up. And that’s if Facebook were to ever suddenly shut down – forever; and take all those customers who had contact with you through Facebook with it.
As you’re creating your Facebook page, you can include a link to your website right within the info section; not to mention constantly promote it with links throughout the day. By doing so, visitors to your page will become familiar with your website, know its domain, and hopefully even begin to visit it outside of Facebook use. This is all possible if you already have a website going into the creation of your Facebook page.
If you don’t however, and Facebook were to suddenly shut down permanently overnight, customers may not know where your website is because you haven’t been able to promote it yet. They may attempt a Google search on their own, but the chances are good that they will convert to using whatever product or service they were before they heard about your company. And if you’ve created your Facebook page already, but haven’t yet gotten around to getting that website up and running, you’re most likely out of luck for ever regaining those customers back.
Have a website, and those millions of visitors will still be able to contact you, no matter what happens to Facebook. Websites and a Facebook pages are two very important tools for the online marketing of your company, and you should utilize both of them. But when it comes to which one you should be developing first, without question that’s finding a web host to store and run your website.