Facebook and Google+ Are Not Blogs

A client of mine and I have been developing their content strategy and we’ve come to the point of setting up a blog for their business. After talking through options for where to host their blog, I was surprised when my client asked, “Can’t we just blog on Facebook?”

It’s an excellent question.

Can’t you just blog on Facebook? Or on Google+ for that matter?

I’d suggest you can’t.

But why?

If you think about the 4 “P’s” of marketing, your blog content — actually, all of your content — represents one of your products. Your content exists to address customer needs.

Facebook and Google+ represent either a marketing channel (promotion) or distribution channel (place) for that product. (Of course, the only practical difference between a marketing channel and a distribution channel online is whether there’s a “Buy” button). So, in theory, there’s nothing wrong with using Facebook or Google+ as your blogging platform.

In practice, however, they’re another matter.

Here are three reasons why:

1. It’s unlikely all your customers have a Facebook or Google+ account. While this is particularly true for Google+, there are still plenty of people who aren’t on Facebook. Additionally, there’s a big difference between having an account and using it actively.
2. SEO of Facebook pages is, um… interesting. Google clearly indexes some content within Facebook. But not all of it. How Google indexes Facebook has changed several times (and will likely change more going forward), based on Google’s algorithm, Facebook’s privacy settings, the relationship between the two companies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…
3. Google and Facebook can change their rules at any time. For me, this is the biggie. Your content needs to be the hub of your customer interaction, the one true place your customers can find that helps answer their questions. And while Facebook and Google+ make it somewhat simple today to tell your brand story on their platform, there’s no guarantee they’ll make it equally easy tomorrow.

Despite these reasons, I still highly recommend using Facebook and Google+ to promote your content. After all, lot’s of customers do have accounts on Facebook and an interesting group of people have accounts on Google+. Google+ pages absolutely have search engine value. And FB and G+ undoubtedly want to attract brands to their platform.

But for the reasons I mentioned above, I wouldn’t recommend putting all your eggs in Google or Facebook’s baskets.

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