Here’s Why You Can’t Be Dependant On ONE Social Media Platform
Jeremy Ross Miller
I help businesses amplify word-of-mouth marketing through social media | DM me for free training
I often talk about the 80/20 rule with content and social media.
Spend 80% of your time focusing on one platform and 20% of your time testing 2–3 other platforms.
It’s very easy to spread yourself too thin on social media by trying to grow on every channel at once.
Focus on one platform but don’t be dependent on that platform.
When Facebook suffered an outage of about six hours on Monday, October 4th 2021 businesses and brands suffered along with it. The platform and its Instagram and WhatsApp siblings play key roles in commerce, with some companies relying on Facebook’s network instead of their own websites.
But on Monday, that network came crashing down.
The shutdown wasn’t even caused by a hacker. It was Facebook’s self-infliction.
Knowing this, your brand and business shouldn’t be dependent on any one platform.
You never know when the social media platform that you rely on for customers, community, or sales will be shut down and there’s nothing you can do about it.
You never know when you might be censored or even deplatformed.
Just recently, a popular investor named Andrew Pompliano was kicked off YouTube, by YouTube, because his content was “harmful” when all he does is talk about business, markets, investing, and crypto-currency.
To prevent being beholden by platforms shutting down or censoring you, sure, you can diversify your channel strategy by building an audience on multiple social media networks.
But I recommend creating a channel off of social media where you own your content distribution.
When you create a channel off of social media, you aren’t always needlessly chasing after algorithm hacks.
Don’t be dependent on algorithms.
We often talk about content creation, but we don’t spend enough time talking about content distribution.
Content is king, but distribution is queen. And she wears the pants.
Think like a media company. Own your content distribution. You don’t own your distribution on social media.
Social media is great for generating attention and community. But you want to have a space where your raving fans can be more connected to you.
I recommend creating a newsletter where your raving fans can opt-in for a weekly or monthly newsletter.
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With an email newsletter, you own your distribution. With emails, you can easily send information, stories, products, offers, or news directly to your raving fan-base.
You aren’t dependent on an algorithm with a newsletter. And if Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram all go down, then you still have direct distribution to your newsletter subscribers.
If you have a younger audience, consider creating a Discord.
Discord is a VoIP (voice over internet protocol) instant messaging and digital distribution platform. Discord users can communicate with voice calls, video calls, text messaging, media and files in private chats or as part of communities called “servers”. Servers are a collection of persistent chat rooms and voice chat channels.
There are many different functions of a Discord. But at the end of the day, you aren’t at the mercy of how much an algorithm wants to share your content.
Watch my video to see what Discord is all about:
If you have a professional audience, consider creating a virtual community inside Slack.
Slack is a business communication platform owned by Salesforce. Slack offers many IRC-style features, including persistent chat rooms organized by topic, private groups, and direct messaging.
No algorithm hacking needed with Slack.
There are many other platforms you could consider. But think about a platform to drive your audience on social media towards.
Don’t be dependent on algorithms or if Facebook is going to screw up their servers today.
I recently published how the Facebook Algorithm works and how businesses can have better performance with their content. Dive in if you’re wanting to grow more on Facebook:
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