4 reasons not to build your “home base” on social media

Throughout the Amplify framework we say it like this: “Build where you own the property, not where you’re renting the property.”

(Will go into more detail in chapter 12 when we talk about  email and in chapter 27 when we discuss social media.)

There are four reasons for this, digitally-speaking.

First, when you send people away from you, there’s no control over where they’re sent next. 

This is true on every social media platform. In addition to the banner ad atop their webpage, YouTube suggests next videos. Whereas you can control some of this, you can’t control all of it.

Facebook works the same way. Even in your groups, sidebar advertisements constantly lure people away from your posts.

Furthermore, you might not politically or morally agree with the content they highlight for your viewers. 

Second, you— and your audience— are the commodity on these social media platforms. 

That is, access to you is being sold to advertisers. Or, to say it another way, these platforms rent their advertisers paid access to you (and your audience). So, not only are you building on something you don’t own, you’re building where others actually pay to distract your audience’s eyeballs away from you.

Why else would Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and the other online juggernauts gift you access to their proprietary platform at no charge? 

Here’s their business model: 

📣  Invite billions of people to join, luring them with “free” access.

📣  As people post and share and comment and like and upload and take other actions, collect absurdly detailed amounts of data on them.

📣  Sell that personal information— including their habits—  to advertisers, who then pay to run targeted ad-campaigns to users on the platform. 

📣  Collect major revenue from advertisers, all while people enjoy the “free” platform.

Again, if the platform you use isn’t charging you, it’s because someone, somewhere else pays for access to you and your data. You are the commodity. This means that your clients— while on these platforms— will consistently stumble across clickbait. 

Here’s a tip: once you create opt-ins and funnels that work, you can grow your audience by becoming that clickbait. That is, you can create your own paid advertising and invite more people from social media platforms to your website.

That strategy looks like this (we talk more about it the module on email opt-ins in the full Amplify course): 

Third, these third parties can— and will— shut you down. 

It’s not uncommon for someone to find themselves banned on Facebook for 30 days for violating a highly subjective policy. Post a contrary political or religious point-of-view (or something else that gets flagged), and you’re cut— with no appeal. 

I’ve watched friends lose access to their groups and business pages for over a month at a time. I know of others whose pages have completely disappeared. 

Yes, each platform can delete your followers and even your entire page, profile, or account. 

You know what they can’t strip from you and who they can’t isolate from you? 

Your email list— which we’ll discuss in the next section of the book.

You know what they can’t take down?

Your website. 

Fourth, these platforms are temporary— eventually, they all go away. 

I don’t foresee any of them vanishing anytime soon, but consider the position you’d be in if you built your entire business on MySpace. 

For the foreseeable future, new social media platforms will come (and go). In the same way you wouldn’t build your dream home on property that someone allows you to borrow at no charge— with no contract, no break clause, and no guarantee that you can keep that land forever— don’t build your business on borrowed space and borrowed time.

Instead, build a crystal clear website that invites people to engage at a deeper level. Then, leverage outside platforms to invite people back to your home base. 

In the modules on websites, we get super-practical about how to manage the tension, as well as outlinewhat your website needs to do in order to make this happen.