Something I’ve noticed recently:
There’s been a huge influx of freelancers/solopreneurs “building an audience” on LinkedIn and Twitter.
And while there’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself…
Most of these people don’t even have the foundation of their online business established.
Meaning:
They don’t have a website or email list.
Or even a simple google doc portfolio in their bio.
In short: these people don’t have a “home base” on the web … which is what your whole social media presence should be designed to lead people to.
People forget that these platforms can shut you down at a moment’s notice, with no warning whatsoever.
If that happens to you, and you haven’t been sending your followers to a “home base” that you own and control (again, think website, or email list)… you’ll be – to put it bluntly – screwed.
And no – you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist, political extremist, or Andrew Tate for this to happen to you.
Case in point: one of my clients in the health niche has a YouTube channel with over 40K+ subscribers.
And 2 or 3 years ago, YouTube banned him and completely shut down his channel for no reason.
The guy didn’t make any crazy claims, insult anyone, or anything.
This probably cost him multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The best part? There was no warning, and he didn’t even get an email that he’d been shut down.
After emailing back and forth with YT support, he finally got the channel back about a year ago.
But now his engagement sucks because he hadn’t been able to post anything in like 3 years.
So you might see his YouTube channel and on a surface level, be like: “Wow – this guy’s crushing it with 40K subs/followers”
Meanwhile, none of them are very engaged or monetized.
And unfortunately this is exactly the case for a lot of these Twitter and LinkedIn people.
They might appear to be killing it with a huge following…
But followers, likes, hearts, and subscribes don’t pay your bills.
So no matter what you’re doing, you need to be bringing your audience “into the fold” – via a website, portfolio, or email list.
Social media is fine … but only useful insofar as it helps you funnel people over to other platforms that you own and control.
Does that make sense?
Just something to keep in mind as you build your biz…
-Corbin Buff
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