4 Reasons Not to Rely on Social Media

January 8, 2019

In the digital marketing world, not all is created equal! Social media is great, but what about your website? Or your email list? I take a dive into all the reasons why your digital marketing eggs shouldn’t only be in the social media basket.

Having a robust social media presence is clearly essential for today’s small business owner; it’s mostly free and you get to target your audience in a completely unprecedented way. An alarming trend I’ve noticed lately however is a tendency for those same small businesses to rely on their social media presence to the point of ignoring their other digital marketing avenues, or worse - not having them at all.

But why does this even matter if Facebook does all the same things as a website does?

You don’t own Facebook

An obvious point, sure. But it’s something that’s apparently regularly overlooked. Whatever social media you’re using, at the end of the day your content is completely at the mercy of that platform, to promote, hide or delete at their whim. Why put your content’s lifespan only in the hands of a corporation such as Facebook (or Twitter, or Pinterest)?

Facebook now owns ALL the top social media apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp; and global outages happen all the time. How can you get in touch with your audience when that happens?

What you do own is your website and your mailing list. No matter what Facebook decides to do with their platforms, that cannot be taken away from you. And remember, regimes fall all the time; Facebook may not be king forever!

Social media lifespan is extremely limited

The lifespan of your content differs drastically depending on what platform you’re using. For example, your content’s lifespan on Instagram is roughly 48 hours, whereas on Twitter it’s more like 18 minutes. Facebook is 4-5 hours and Pinterest can get up to a year or more for really high quality pins. There are things you can do to maximise your content lifespan on all platforms, including repurposing content, updating it regularly, and optimising your posting frequency. But what has the longest shelf life? Evergreen blog content and keyword optimised landing pages, on your website!

Algorithm's and monetisation has progressively made it harder to reach your audience without paying

Algorithm’s are the bane of the social media marketer’s existence. We all know how hard Facebook has made it for small businesses to organically reach their own followers. Now that Instagram is owned by Facebook (and the original creators have left the scene), who’s to say it won’t go the same way? Basically every social media platform has a paid advertising option now, including Pinterest and Twitter. In my opinion, the most direct (free) way to reach the people that matter to you the most is through your email list and by extension your website.

Nurture these, and make sure you're always able to reach your audience, regardless of outages and algorithms.

Through no fault of their own, people lose access to their social media every day

This may seem silly, but it does happen. I myself have a Google account floating out there that still exists but I lost access to 4 or 5 years ago due to a lost password and a failed appeals process. Whether it’s through a lost password, an aggressive hacker or just a mere bug, internet accounts are lost all the time.

Most people who work in social media, either professionally or as a hobby blogger, knows someone who has lost one of their social media accounts through absolutely no fault of their own.

And sure, one of the platforms you lose access to one day, could be your website. But through careful security measures and conducting regular backups, the content on your website should always be retrievable. The power is in your hands, after all - not someone else’s!

So what's holding you back from getting your space online? Get in touch if you'd like to find out how easy it could be to get you a website of your very own!

Cheers!
Laura x