Recently I was admiring a group of photos on photographers Facebook page. I enjoyed the images and wanted to visit his website to learn more about his work and possibly hire him for a shoot. However, he did not have one. He was completely dependent on Facebook. This is what I call being hooked on the Facebook or social media crack pipe.
Whats the problem with this
The problem with this model is that you’re building on someone else’s platform, instead of your own. Facebook can and has changed the rules. In fact as I write this I just saw a post on a friends FB wall regarding how he’s unhappy with some recent changes in Facebook.
How Facebook is like a crack cocaine dealer
Something free always attracks attention and usage..after all why not try it…it’s ‘free’. The problem with free stuff is it’s usually does not stat free very long.
In the 80’s crack cocaine dealers got their customers by giving the first hit away for free. Crack being highly addictive usually resulted in extreme addiction after the first hit. There were no more free hits after you were addicted and earlier there was no rehabilitation center to overcome drug addiction. But now you can search about inpatient rehab centers and you can also overcome from drug addiction.
Because a Facebook page was initially free many content marketers opted to build there instead of owing their own website or blog. But now that they are addicted to the Facebook crack pipe guess what…it ain’t free any more. Facebook is charging for page and post promotion. Facebook will argue that your post will still show without paying but rumor has it that their algorithm favors paying customers. Read about it here, here, and here.
How to tell if you’re addicted to the Facebook crack pipe
- You don’t own your own website or blog and are completely dependent on social media for traffic
- You own your own website or blog but spend more time building content on various social media platforms.
3 Ways to ease your way off the Facebook crack pipe
Crack cocaine could not be safely used, but social media can. Therefore I don’t think content marketers need to completely abandon ship just yet. Here’s how I suggest you use it.
- Setup a blog or website on your own hosting account
- View social media as part of your marketing mix not your primary platform
- Use a service like Feedblitz to build your subscriber base and to feed content to your social media platforms
Update 6/27/2014: Ezra Fishman over at Wistia has weighed in on the subject….check his post out here.
Update 8/12/2015: Garrett Moon at CoSchedule has an interesting post called, Facebook Is Dead, But Your Content Wants To Live and a graphic that I think sums up how to use social media for distribution instead of a hub for your content.