Blog vs Facebook page: you need both.
You need both because they serve different purposes, audiences, and avenues of discovery.
Facebook pages are huge for fan interaction. Can’t bet ’em. You definitely want to build a successful social brand, probably centered around Facebook and either YouTube or Instagram (depends on your industry). But blogs are still important. Incredibly important.
Even though blog comments are basically dead and the vast majority of interaction happens on social media, blogs offer 4 major advantages over Facebook pages.
So while you’re setting up or improving your Facebook page, remember the importance of a standalone blog website, too.
Blog vs Facebook page: 4 Reasons Blogs Win
The blog provides the foundation. Opinions on this vary but, the way I see it, the blog should be your primary focus and Facebook et al. should be secondary. The blog offers 4 major advantages.
Google & SEO
People searching for keywords related to your industry might find your Facebook page if the stars are aligned, but the result won’t be very helpful to searchers. Google does a bad job indexing and displaying Facebook pages. It does an excellent job of indexing and displaying blogs.
Google knows this, so they’d rather show searchers a blog result than a Facebook result. Therefore your blog will outrank your Facebook page nearly every time.
Long-form detail
Facebook posts are short, usually 10-50 words. Blog posts—good ones, anyway—are 500-1,000 words. They also combine those X-hundo words with multiple photos and/or videos. Facebook can’t combine media in a single post. This multiple-media format (some might call it “multimedia”) is much more engaging for users than 15 words of “check out this sick vid” teaser.
Not everyone will invest the time to read 500 words, but those who do are much more likely to take the next step: subscribe on YouTube, like on Facebook, inquire about your products/services, etc.
Target market
Despite the overwhelming size of its user base, not everyone is on Facebook. To exist only on Facebook is to deliberately exclude those not on the platform. With a blog to post long-form stuff, you’re casting your net even wider.
Control & conversion rate
You can’t customize your Facebook page beyond the basics like cover photo. With a blog, you can design it however you want, add as many sections as you want, and add important pieces to the turn-traffic-into-sales game like lead-capture forms. None of those things happen on Facebook.