Business owners often see significant decreases in reach the moment a platform like Instagram changes its algorithm, and this puts you in a vulnerable position because your audience lives in someone else’s space… they’re in control. Anything can happen.
Platform owners change the rules whenever they have the financial incentive to do so. So owned media is where it’s at.
In this micro-episode:
- The definition of “owned media” and why you need it
- How email lists and podcast RSS feeds remain independent of the technology hosting them
- The compounding search value of articles compared to the short lifespan of social posts
You might find better ROI by investing in search-ranking assets like articles or podcast episodes that build relationships with the right people over time (more slowly). More on that during this week’s episodes.
https://stereoforest.com/beyond-social-media-business-growth-strategies-that-work-for-professionals/
Find more episodes and subscribe at stereoforst.com/minute.
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Transcript
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::So it's not unusual for business owners, marketers, professionals to see really significant decreases like a half or more right after a platform, a social media
platform like Instagram makes some kind of change to their algorithm. For example, this happened when reels came around and everything was short video all of a sudden
switching from beautiful photographs on Instagram to their algorithm.
::to vertical videos. That stuff happens really quickly on these platforms. And then all of a sudden it will be carousels will be the thing that works for everyone. And
then it will change back. And you're sitting there kind of wondering like what am I going to make now after half of your viewers have suddenly disappeared. And this is a
really vulnerable position to be on and it's not uncommon. This happens quite frequently.
::doing amazing work on these social media platforms. So your audience is really living on someone else's yard. It's their platform. And that platform owner can just
change the rules whenever they feel like doing so. It's not really that random. It's more when they have the incentive to do so. And that's usually financial. Because
these platforms are making money from advertising.
::And that can be from you. You are paying them to show your content to people. So what do we do? Well, it's what I started talking about in the previous episode. It's you
need to kind of build up what you have a little bit more control over. And an example of this, the most common example perhaps, is a subscriber list like to your
newsletter or invest in your own domain. You have a domain that you can point people to and you can move where that domain is. You can have a website. You can move where
::the website is. This is called owned media. So your email list, the subscribers on it, as long when they choose to subscribe to you, as long as they choose to subscribe to
you for, that list of people belongs to you. You can move it. You can't do anything with it. There are limitations. But that email list for what you're doing, you can
continue to email people on that list. But if, say, MailChimp, you say you have it hosted,
::on MailChimp. That's where you send your emails from. They decide to not exist anymore. You can take that list of people and you can take it somewhere else. You can go to
say kit.com and if kit.com leaves you can move it to Ghost or wherever. You can take those subscribers. You can take them somewhere else. So that relationship stays in
place independent of the platform that you currently have it hosted on. It's independent of the technology. Another example of this same sort of thing.
::podcast RSS. You can move hosts with your podcast. Whoever is subscribed to it can continue to get it wherever they get their podcasts. A video series that you invest
in, you spend time making, you can have that live on your website, which is a domain that you've registered. You can move all of that. So if you make content like this, if
you put your investment there, the value can continue valuing over time.
::That's a terrible sentence. I'm gonna leave that at a blog post that you write. Something that you write today. It can continue to get traffic years after you write it.
You can update it and continue getting traffic. Google really likes it if you keep updating your articles. Instagram posts, they sort of fade away after a very, very
short period of time. Anyways, your network on these own platforms, that sort of belongs to you.
::It really works best to complement your owned assets. And then if you do add content to another platform, like for example, YouTube, just make sure that you get some
kind of return for that. Because YouTube can be, you know, you can do that for the search. You don't have to do it for views, but you could do it to come up in search because
it's a really important search platform. And also, of course, you're getting a return because YouTube will host very large files.
::and a very robust system as well that you can benefit from that. Even if their algorithm doesn't send you those views, you can be searched for over time. And you can also
embed it in your website and host those search files for free. Anyways, I'm Jen DeHaan. This is the Credibility Minute. Find more episodes and get in touch with me and
subscribe at stereoforest.com slash minute.