It’s All Energy
July 31, 2021
Assigning Value
November 8, 2021
Platforms as Tools
Platforms are tools, and should not be your entire business.
Facebook, Instagram, Tic Tok, Youtube and others are tools for you to use to grow and find business, they should not be your entire business. This means that you should be using them to build something you own, and not rely 100% on them. If your entire business is built and based on one of these platforms, you are essentially renting a business from them that they can reclaim at any point.
If you create a business based on a page or a group on one of these platforms, what do you do should they decide to delete it or block it in some way? Do you just consider your business closed? Do you fight with them begging them to give you back what you have spent so long building up? It is not a nice situation to be in.
You should use these platforms as a tool for your business, as a way to gain customers and keep in contact with them, but you must also put effort into creating your own business that can run independently from these “tools”. You can do this through creating your own website, getting customers to subscribe to your own newsletter, and getting your “followers” to send you their contact information so you can contact them separately from the platform they join you on.
Tips to take control of your business
If you have spent time building up a business / following on a social media platform and either rely on it, or would like to turn it into a dependable business, the first steps you should take towards this is making sure that your followers / subscribers are “yours” and not simply a list of people you rent from the social media platform.
This is not difficult to do, but is extremely important as it will enable you to operate independently of the social media platform should you need to. It also gives you a way to stay in touch with your followers / subscribers regardless of algorithm changes the platform makes.
Social media platforms may offer you a free online presence, but they depend on you spending money with them in order to reach your subscribers, this earns them money and keeps them in business, but it also means they have to limit who gets to see your posts when you don’t pay so that you have an incentive to pay for advertising.
The following steps will help you take control.
Steps to Follow:
Complete as many of these steps as you can to gain more control over your business.
- Get your own newsletter
- Get your own website
- Gather your followers / subscribers contact information
- Operate on multiple platforms
Details of the steps:
The steps are not too complicated to carry out, but they do require some effort, time and in some cases a little money. If you are wanting to actually build up your business, or have control of it then the investment is more than worth it.
If you were to lose access to a platform for whatever reason, you could risk losing your entire business if you have not taken the steps to ensure it is your business. You should carry out a look at what your business would be without access to platforms or services you do not own or control and then work from there to create a business you own and are not entirely dependent on another companies platform or service.
Get your own newsletter:
This step is probably the easiest, you can start with a newsletter service like mailchimp.com or sendinblue.com, both of those offer free start up packages and there are other providers of similar services too. You try and get your followers / subscribers to sign up to your own newsletter that you can backup and keep so you always have a way to get in touch with them, even if you cannot do so through your social media platform. This is definitely the most vital step to actually owning your business and not simply renting it from a social media company.
One your social media pages you offer specials and prizes for people to sign up to your newsletter and this way you turn a basic like or follow into a tangible customer that is yours. If your pages are removed or taken down you still have a way to contact the people interested in your products and services.
Get your own website:
This step is a little more complicated and could require you to get someone to build it for you. Having your own website gives you a place to make look the way you want, offer all the products and services you can in an easy to navigate layout without being stuck to what another platform offers. With that though comes the complication of setting it up. Unless you are wanting to spend the time learning how to create a website it might be better to find someone to create it for you.
Your website should be regularly updated and it is worth learning how to do that even if you get someone to create the actual site for you. This should be where you try and drive traffic from your social media pages. Get your customers to come to your website and complete their purchases and subscribe to your newsletter from here. This gives you complete ownership of your customer list rather than depending on another platform for all your interactions with customers.
Gather your followers / subscribers contact information:
This would seem like the most common sense step, but it is something that is easily missed. When someone likes your Facebook page or follows you on Instagram or YouTube, that is usually the end of it. You can another like, follow or subscribe. But what happens when you don’t have access to that page anymore? At that point it is too late and you cannot go back and do things differently. Your only choice is to try and fight the company or start again.
You should use these pages to build up your own list of contact information for everyone interested in your products and services. Get them to fill out contact forms, subscribe to your own newsletter, or anything else that will provide you to contact them directly should you ever need or want to in the future. Then it is “your” client list and not a list owned by someone else that you get to use for as long as they will let you.
Operate on multiple platforms:
Another way to keep more control of your business is by operating on multiple platforms. This helps in a variety of ways, one is that chances of losing all of them is a lot less than if you rely on a single one. You also have the benefit of being able to reach more people as people will have their preferred platform that they spend most of their time on.
You should still have your own newsletter and website and then operate on multiple platforms as an added advantage rather than simply building your business only on social media.
The steps outlined above should be what every online business consists of, by having all of those you will be in control of your business and be able to benefit from all the advantages each offers. Even if you hire people to manage them for you, by owning them and having them backed up where you can access them you will not have the possibility of losing your business by being blocked or hacked.
One way to consider basing your business entirely on a social media platform would be the same as running a repair business, you have your car, in your car you keep all your clients contact information, all your tools and all your money. If you car is stolen you lose everything. That is the same as having your entire business built on a Facebook page or group, if they take down you page or a hacker takes it over, you lose it all.
If you are serious about your business, put in the effort to have control over it rather than simply hoping it will just always be there for you.
