Social media is borrowed, your website is yours

What social media does well

For showing work as it happens, reaching new people and keeping a conversation going with those who already follow you, nothing beats it. A website does not replace that and should not try. What social media does not do is keep anything for you.

When you genuinely do not need one

There are cases where a website adds nothing and the money works harder elsewhere. If you recognise yourself here, stay as you are.

• Your work reaches the right people through social media and word of mouth, and whoever contacts you already knew of you before searching.
• Your calendar, classes or orders are full — there are no places left to fill.
• Your Google listing already has current photos, correct hours and contacts, and recent reviews.
• Nobody asks you for written prices, a programme, a full portfolio or details that would not fit in a caption.

What borrowed means

Your page is an account on a platform that decides who sees what you post. The algorithm changes and some of your followers stop seeing you, without you changing a thing. An account can be suspended by mistake, with nobody to call. It happens rarely, but when it does it takes years of work with it.

A domain and an email list are the two things that are genuinely yours. Someone who follows you on a platform is the platform's follower; someone who gives you their email hears from you directly. The website is where those two live.

The four situations where social is not enough

It is not about image. These are concrete things Instagram and a Google listing do not do, by design.

• You need to explain prices, terms or a programme. A caption cannot hold a table of lessons, and nobody wants to ask what things cost by private message.
• People compare before they write. Parents choosing a music teacher, a company choosing a photographer: they open three or four options and go with whoever explains best what they do.
• You work for people outside your country, or who do not speak your language. A post in two languages ends up halfway to both; a site in Portuguese and English serves each properly.
• You need requests to arrive organised — bookings, quote requests, questions about lessons — instead of digging them out of three different inboxes.

The middle option almost nobody offers

It does not have to be a ten-page site. A single page with the essentials — what you do, who for, a few chosen pieces of work, prices or ranges, where you are and one button to reach you — solves most of these cases and holds up for years. Social media keeps doing what it does well, and now points somewhere that is yours.