Facebook is a wonderful place to build relationships with your clients and potential clients. And I see people with exceptional communities built up around their Facebook pages.

And no traffic at all on their websites.

Your website is your place of business. It’s where people can buy your product or service, where they can find out what you can do and what you can offer them.

Facebook can’t do any of those things. And they control exactly what goes on there – if they want to shut your account down tomorrow, there’s nothing you can do to stop them.

So one of your business objectives should always be to try to gently nudge your Facebook friends towards your business website. Don’t start spamming them with links to it, but keep quietly reminding them that’s where you do your business, and encourage them to join the community on your website by commenting or signing up to your email newsletter.

So what should you be doing?

1/ When you post new content to your website, write a Facebook update about it and attach a link – you can even do this automatically using a Facebook app called RSS Graffiti. But don’t use Facebook “notes” to import your feed, as those links keep people on Facebook and don’t send them to your site.

2/ Encourage your family and friends to share links to your content.

3/ Occasionally link up to older content on your site – especially if it’s timely or relates to current events.

Finally, remember what your business objectives are with Facebook – it’s a great place to have fun, but it’s also an amazing place to drive traffic to your website.

And some of those people will end up doing business with you.

Related:

1/ Eight things you shouldn’t be doing on Facebook

2/ How to convert your Facebook profile to a page

3/ Facebook spring clean