Don’t Get To The Point Where You Need to “Reclaim” Your Blog

Filed in Blogging, Social Media by Matt McGee on August 19, 2011 4 Comments

Hugh Macleod of gapingvoid fame wrote a blog post that’s making the rounds today, and there’s a quick lesson in it for small businesses: Don’t get to the same point that he did.

Hugh basically says that he’s quitting Twitter and Facebook to focus on his own blog, instead.

Why?

“…even if they’re very good at hiding the fact, over on Twitter and Facebook, it’s not your content, it’s their content.

The content on your blog, however, belongs to you, and you alone. People come to your online home, to hear what you have to say, not to hear what everybody else has to say. This sense of personal sovereignty is important.”

(emphasis mine)

It sounds like Hugh invested too much in other social networking sites and forgot about his own site.

Don’t do what he did.

I don’t think you need to give up on Twitter, Facebook or social networking in general. But you do need to keep that stuff in its proper place.

Don’t be one of those small businesses that skips having a website in favor of having a Facebook page.

Don’t make social networks your primary business asset.

Focus on what you own and control. Build it. Grow it. Make it the hub of your social activity online, then use Twitter, Facebook or another appropriate social site to connect with your audience and introduce them to your blog.

Don’t get to the point where you have to “reclaim” your blog someday.

Comments (4)

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  1. Seth says:

    Well said, I’ve been telling clients this for months! So many think if they have a Facebook page, they don’t even need a website, because everybody’s already on Facebook so they don’t have to surf anywhere else.

    WRONG!

    What if your account gets banned for TOS violation that you didn’t even know existed? You’re now SOL! Your website is the only web property you actually own. Better to concentrate on that let the rest flow from it.

    • Matt McGee says:

      That’s an all-too-common attitude these days, Seth. Seen/heard it on many occasions — SMBs putting all their eggs into the Facebook basket. Not wise.

  2. Gino Orlandi says:

    I agree about focusing on your main website and not social profiles so much. I find it very annoying to have to think up little interesting tweets all the time. I know they can be powerful marketing tools, but I would suggest focusing more on building a brand and when your site takes off, you can start outsourcing more and spending more time on things like social profiles.

  3. Rich says:

    I would agree that you do not need to give up on Facebook or Twitter completely, just use them to direct people to your blog posts on your website from them.

    But other than that I stand by the opinion that it is pointless posting content such as a blog article on Facebook because they benefit from it not you. The same goes for these article websites that claim to be great for traffic and SEO, utter rubbish, they get all the benefits, you just increase the visibility of the article, which in many cases defeats the whole object because you want the SEO benefits.

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