Most of us have used Facebook at one point or another, and it’s great for a lot of things. For personal use, it’s great for keeping in touch with friends and family and/or sharing photos of a grumpy cat. For business, it’s a great way to showcase your products and services, provide helpful and useful information, and establish yourself as an industry leader. One thing it’s not particularly good for is establishing and showcasing your business brand.

There are many things that go into establishing your business brand and brand image. Too often, we still see businesses that opt to have Facebook as the only online face of their business – and as I mentioned earlier, Facebook is pretty horrible at establishing a brand. There are several reasons for this.

One of the obvious issues with having Facebook as the only online existence for your company is that the posts you make on Facebook have a rather short lifetime. Within a few hours, that post is irrelevant. Even if someone marks your page to have it show first, if the content is too old (merely a few hours), that post won’t show up. Plus, when your followers do see your post, they are very possibly seeing another post from a competitor right away.

The biggest issue with attempting to brand your business through Facebook alone is that you have very little control over the presentation. Yes, you can add in your own photos, but you’re oftentimes only adding one photo per post. Additionally, you’re probably only posting once or twice a day. You have no control over things like background colors, font selection, font color or slideshow images, and only limited options for a strong call to action.

I’m by no means arguing against having a Facebook business page or using one on a regular basis. It serves as a great avenue for building a connection with an audience and your page’s followers, but at the end of the day, Facebook alone is a very poor avenue for establishing a company brand and image: there really is no social media platform that will replace your business website for that purpose. Social media platforms can certainly enhance your brand and image, but a dedicated website is needed to help establish that brand in the first place.