You Ask, I Answer: The Fading Utility of Facebook?

In today's episode, Darlene asks, How have you adapted to the fading utility of Facebook? I'm sure we've all shifted energy and dollars into other social networks, but what's been really worthwhile for you, regardless of your industry, things like video and podcasting, etc. At the end of the day, I focus on what I own and control to the best of my ability. I don't own Facebook, I don't own Twitter, I don't own, I don't even own my own YouTube profile, right? I own the ability to access those properties, but they're not mine.

I don't have control over them. I can't change how the overall strategy of those platforms work. They're just not mine. So what is mine is my website. Right.

That's mine. Uh yes, there's a hosting company, but um my email newsletter. So on the website, there is video, which right now I do host with YouTube because if nothing else, it is useful as a utility to host these enormous video files. Um, and any traffic I get from YouTube is a nice add-on, but it's not where uh it's not my place where I build and focus all my promotional efforts. Audio, I do have a podcast, several of them actually, uh, which I host through Libsin, but the website is still where that's based.

And of course, the text, the the notes plus the transcripts, go on the website. And so that's that's really where my attention goes. My attention has gone for a really long time because again, we don't have control over these platforms. The expression is never build on rented land. Right?

Um, for those of us who have a lot of gray hair, um, remembering back to the early 2000s and people spending crazy, crazy, crazy money customizing their MySpace profiles, companies spending, no joke, like hundreds of thousands of dollars on design and building it out and and all this stuff to make it uh appealing to the crowd that was on MySpace at the time. That money was not money, I mean, it it served its point in the day, and it did what it was supposed to in the day, but you do not have an enduring platform that was yours from that time period, right? It is largely faded from existence and and uh is the butt of people's jokes. The same for you know, Google Plus. There were uh people who made huge professional bets on Google Plus, and they probably got some utility out of it at the time, that's fine.

Right, you you don't buy a meal to save it forever, right? You buy a meal to use it to eat it, and then you move on with your day. But if you are trying to invest in the long term, um, building on rented land is never a good idea. So, website with your stuff, if you're gonna spend ad dollars, point those ad dollars at your stuff unless you have something, you know, uh a one-off that does really well, like a social post that does really well. Obviously, pay to lean into those uh things that do well, and fundamentally, you need to have uh three different goals, and you can call them top, middle, and bottom of the funnel or whatever, but uh the goals are you have to capture audience, you have to capture attention, right?

That's goal number one. And the easiest way to measure that is by the people that you can get to the website even once. You have to build trust, that's goal number two, and that is uh easily measured by enrollment in other digital activities that are yours. So signing up for that newsletter. Uh people need to have a minimum level of trust in you, a minimum level of belief that you're providing something of value in order to be willing to hit that yes, I want more email button, right?

Because that's what that button means. I guess I want more email. Um three, uh, direct attention. You have to take the attention that you have and direct it at things that are mutually beneficial. That may be um buying something, doing business with somebody.

Um there's all sorts of different things that directing attention can mean. But those are the three goals that you want to measure from those owned media properties. Everything else is ancillary, right? The number of followers you have, the number of uh engagements you get, all that stuff. It's not unimportant, but it's not the end game state, right?

That is not where you're trying to go. So I don't worry too much about the fading utility of Facebook. It's an ad platform. Like, and and I will I measure it like every other ad platform. How good is it at capturing attention or re-engaging people to build trust or directing attention to to what I want people to do?

It's just not where I'm spending most of my time and money. And I'm not moving to another social network because it's still not mine, with the exception of Slack. Um I run a Slack community. If you go to trustinsights.ai/slash analytics for marketers, um that Slack instance is one that we run and is as close to owning it as you can get without actually deploying your own server, right? Um that is an owned community as well, in the sense that we can see it, have control over it, have total control of what gets published in it, and so there's there's that as well.

So website, email, community would be the the three things I think that every marketer should be focusing on now, rather than Facebook or Twitter or TikTok or whatever. Those are billboards. You don't stop to eat at the at a billboard when you're driving, right? You stop to eat at the restaurant. The same is true of social media.

Don't build the restaurant at the billboard, build the restaurant at the restaurant and use the billboard to get people to the restaurant. So good question. It's an important question. It's a question that I know a lot of marketers are struggling with as we get to uh the end of the year, and people are setting strategy and trying to figure out what to do. Build on owned land, use rented land to direct people to the owned land.

That's the best strategy that will serve you well now and will serve you well in the long term. As always, please leave your comments below. Thank you for watching. Subscribe to the YouTube channel and to the newsletter. We'll talk to you soon.

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