Social Media vs Kennel Website
Why you need your own web presence

Recently I went to log into the Gundog Central’s Tumblr account to check the social media post on that platform, but it wouldn’t allow me to login. I created a support ticket with Tumblr asking them to reset my account login, because apparently, I forgot my username and password. They sent me back an email saying my account had been terminated and that they wouldn’t be turning it back on. I was never given a warning or any notifications that my account was in jeopardy of being banned. I was left scratching my head trying to figure what I possibly could have done to get permanently banned from Tumblr. The Gundog Central Tumblr page was exclusively used to share pictures of dogs that were listed on Gundog Central, but somehow those post went against company policy!?!

This isn’t an isolated incident either, it has also happened with Facebook and Instagram, both of which have blocked post from Gundog Central because the post went against “community content policies”. These services have also threatened to shut down my business profile as well as my personal account. Twitter isn’t any better, they’ve also recently started banning links to other social media websites like Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and Post.

The fact that these companies can and will ban you from their services for sharing pictures and post about your hunting dogs or breeding program should be cause for concern, especially if you’re using these services to promote your kennel or hunting related business. This is one reason why I recommend getting your own web presence, so your kennel isn’t left to the mercy of these large, billion-dollar companies, should they decide your hunting lifestyle goes against their company policies.
That’s not to say that your kennel shouldn’t use social media, you most certainly should. Facebook, along with Instagram and Twitter are really good at what they are designed to do, which is to share content and connect with other people, mostly friends, family, and followers. I believe every kennel should have their own Social Media pages, it’s a great way to stay in touch with your customers, but I believe it’s a mistake to rely solely on these social media platforms to advertise your kennel. In fact, your kennel website and social media pages can nicely complement each other, expanding your opportunities to connect with new customers.
Isn’t the purpose of advertising to reach or include as many people as possible? I can’t help but feel like using Facebook excludes a large portion of the internet population. Advertising should be about inclusion, not exclusion, you should want to reach as many interested people as possible. Advertising your kennel solely on social media limits your audience in multiply ways. You might say that there’s nearly 3 billion active Facebook accounts and I get plenty of business from my Facebook page already! That’s a really big pool of people to be targeting, so how is that limiting? For starters, of those 3 billion active Facebook users, less than half of them are on Facebook daily. There are over 5 billion active internet users every day, with another half a million new people coming online every single day. Daily Facebook users make up on about a fifth of the total daily internet population. Granted your target audience isn’t going to be the whole 5 billion people, but with your own web presence, your potential target audience is much larger.

Most social media content sits behind a locked login screen that prevents anyone without an account from seeing your hosted content on one of these services. How many times have you searched for something on the internet, only to be redirected to someone’s Facebook page where you’re asked to log in before you can see the page? It happens to me far too much and 100% of the time I leave that page and find the information I’m looking for somewhere else. Not because I hate Facebook, but because it’s inconvenient for me to have to log into a service to find what I’m looking for.
These social media services are easy to use and allow you to share unlimited pictures and video, absolutely FREE … but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have a cost. The price of course is your privacy, allowing them to track your browsing history, siphon your personal information and listen to your conversations, all to collect marketing data to serve you personalized advertisements on their apps. Have you ever been talking about something with a friend or loved one, only to see an advertisement for the same exact thing on your Facebook feed later? Or searched for something in one of the major search engines, only to later be bombarded with advertisements about the same thing on Facebook. It happens to me all the time, in fact my wife and I have even turned it into a game, spouting out words or products to see who gets the first advertisement to show up in their feed. For some, their privacy isn’t for sale, and they’ll never use one of these social media services or visit any page hosted on one of them. With these censorship and privacy concerns, people are also leaving these platforms for other services.
When you post on social media, your post are limited to the people who like or follow your page, even if you mark your post as a public. Marking something Public doesn’t show it to everyone, it only makes it where everyone can see it … if they search for it. Most of the time, you’re only directly advertising to those people you’re connected with. Unless you search for something, you’ll rarely see anything outside your sphere of “friendship”. If you only have a few thousand followers … at most, that’s the number of people that might see your post in a timely manner, if they see it at all. Facebooks is notorious for changing and optimizing your personal feed with an algorithm that shows you what it thinks you want to see, not what everyone posts. So, your followers may not even see your post based on what the algorithm predicted and tried to show them. There are Facebook groups you can post to, but most of these group require being a member to see what’s on the group page, plus group post are mostly limited to the number of people in the group.
With a NetKennel website, your kennel is displayed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and doesn’t sit behind a password protected login screen … giving access to your site to anyone of the 5 billion people on the internet that might be interested in your services. You get 100% of your customers focus, because they aren’t distracted by everything else that’s happening on their social media app. A dedicated kennel website also adds a touch of professionalism to your kennel. If you’re considering a website for your breeding or training business? Here’s a quick breakdown of the advantages vs disadvantage of having a dedicated kennel website vs a social media page.
What are the advantages of a social media over website?
• Social media pages are free
• They are easy to use
• Great for networking with customers.
• Unlimited photos and videos
Some of the disadvantages of social media
• Sits behind password protected login
• Censorship and risk of being banned
• Limited audience
• Linear timeline-based feed
Advantage of Kennel Website over Social Media page
• Accessible by anyone from anywhere at any time without login
• Non-Linear format that showcases your dogs
• Customer focus, not distracted with other social media post
• Professional reputation
Disadvantages of Kennel Website vs Social Media page
• It cost money
• Not as interactive as social media
• Limited storage space