Should You Rely On Social Media For Your Marketing?

Relying on social media alone for your marketing opens up a hornets nest if we’re honest and there will be many disagree with our view especially if they have been taught the benefits of organic marketing and it being the best thing since sliced bread

And it’s something we’ve taught our clients and students over the years but what was popular once can very quickly become unpopular as the methods become saturated.

Like we said, we’ve been advocates of organic marketing as a method of lead generation for a lot of year but not stand alone!  It should be combined with some method of paid marketing to build an email list.  We’ve used social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram for that in the past and it’s been very successful in building our business and also that of our clients.

Because we have always taught that whatever marketing you do either paid or organic that the collection of an email address and building of a list of subscribers interested in your offer is paramount.

It’s not rocket science but still we see far too few people doing this relying on the “lists” they create on their social media accounts.  Poof!  You can lose them just like that!

People you don’t own those lists – the likes of Facebook do!

And what happens if you lose your social media account?

We speak from experience because Susan had her Facebook Account hacked a couple of weeks ago…

She does all our social media marketing so over the years she has built us an audience of people interested in what we do as well as building our brand and staying connected to friends we’ve made around the world over the years during our speaking and training engagements.

Of course we were mad and frustrated and we still are and we continue our fight to get our account back because it’s not just some vanity thing but an asset of our business as well as a store for over ten years of memories.

There’s far more at stake for us as we’ve talked about on our other blog if you want to read it (there’s some good advice too – better now than when the horse has bolted!)

Lessons Learned From Being Hacked On Facebook

But it did make us think about the ‘all eggs in one basket’ scenario and that’s what we’re looking at in today’s article – Should You Rely On Social Media For Your Marketing

Let’s continue shall we and talk about why using one social media as your only marketing platform is dangerous

There’s no denying that social media marketing is a solid business strategy but it needs to be strategically done  and paired with other marketing strategies and platforms.

That was a BIG mistake on our part – we were building our email lists but not on enough platforms.  Don’t do it please.

No matter how big your following or audience, how much they like your or how much money you’ve spent on the platform, the truth is that you do not own it, nor do you have any control of what happens on it

We’ve seen people who spent thousands of dollars on Facebook ads lose their Facebook ads account in an instant for no apparent reason (ok some definitely did do something wrong) and if you talk to any business owner they will tell you they know someone who it happened to.  It’s a very familiar story sadly and after our personal experience we know we will never again put all our eggs in one basket!

Ask yourself the question

“What would I do if I lost access to my Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram account?”

Could you quickly move on or would you be left not knowing which way to turn

Luckily we did have alternatives but we confess to not being active enough on them so we’re right now putting that right.

Let’s go back to talking about organic reach because we see so many business owners relying on this alone without a clear plan of action and we have evidence ourselves of how this can work very well.

But is something that needs to be learnt and learnt from people who really know and most newbies just don’t know this.

There were times when a simple post had incredible organic reach and we experienced that.  Today it’s a very different story – yes it can still work but it’s a lot harder than it was say 2-3 years ago.

Diversification really is the name of the game.

Don’t go all-in on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest alone without having a solid backup plan.

The best backup plan is to build your email list while building up your social media presence on different platforms. Use social media as it was designed – for building credibility and your brand and use it’s marketing power through content generation to boost your business.

Invest in paid marketing education to help you get results and build your business faster and whatever you do build your email list using different platforms so you are no longer a hostage to the owner of any one platform

Meanwhile we will continue our fight to get our Facebook Account back because we didn’t deserve to have it taken away from us

We’ll do our best to keep you in the loop and will update this blog and our sister blog with developments and any advice we receive to help you should you ever find yourself in the unfortunate position of losing your Facebook Account

Until next time

PS  Watch out for a brand new look to our blog coming soon