The thing that all of the big businesses have is data. They control the data and no one can take it from them.
The small players, what you are talking about in the post, are the guys who base their data on other peoples platforms. Youtube - your subscribers and videos. Facebook - your lookalike audiences.
These platforms also, obviously, provide reach, which if taken away can cripple your business literally over night.
This is what happens when you build a foundation on sand.
So what should you do? In my opinion, Collect data like the big guys.
Get the emails and or phone numbers from your potential clients and customers. Offer them free value in exchange for an email/number.
You'll have to collect the data, for the most part, from the big companies like facebook and google by advertising on their platforms, but the whole point is to gather data to build your own platform to communicate with your customers, not build your platform ON someone else's platform.
For example, I have seen a few youtubers start creating their own sites and communities where their fans can go and interact. If you have your own website completely separate from youtube, you're pretty much immune from whatever is going on on that platform.
The smart ones also sell merchandise and products on their own stores and collect emails (as opposed to teespring or something like that, where you don't have access to your customers info)
But they leverage another platform to build their own.
YES YES, I understand that you can get banned from these platforms, but I've been advertising on Facebook since 2015 and the only time I've ever had accounts permanently banned, was from breaking their rules.
These platforms are for the smart people who leverage them, NOT just build an audience on them and do nothing with it.
Edit: A good example of this that I just thought of, is this forum. MJ could have made an entrepreneur facebook group in theory (I realize the forum is older than FB groups). MJ has his own platform that he controls. Sure the SEO helps, but he has a platform that could be isolated and still do fine, because he has a lot of data.
The small players, what you are talking about in the post, are the guys who base their data on other peoples platforms. Youtube - your subscribers and videos. Facebook - your lookalike audiences.
These platforms also, obviously, provide reach, which if taken away can cripple your business literally over night.
This is what happens when you build a foundation on sand.
So what should you do? In my opinion, Collect data like the big guys.
Get the emails and or phone numbers from your potential clients and customers. Offer them free value in exchange for an email/number.
You'll have to collect the data, for the most part, from the big companies like facebook and google by advertising on their platforms, but the whole point is to gather data to build your own platform to communicate with your customers, not build your platform ON someone else's platform.
For example, I have seen a few youtubers start creating their own sites and communities where their fans can go and interact. If you have your own website completely separate from youtube, you're pretty much immune from whatever is going on on that platform.
The smart ones also sell merchandise and products on their own stores and collect emails (as opposed to teespring or something like that, where you don't have access to your customers info)
But they leverage another platform to build their own.
YES YES, I understand that you can get banned from these platforms, but I've been advertising on Facebook since 2015 and the only time I've ever had accounts permanently banned, was from breaking their rules.
These platforms are for the smart people who leverage them, NOT just build an audience on them and do nothing with it.
Edit: A good example of this that I just thought of, is this forum. MJ could have made an entrepreneur facebook group in theory (I realize the forum is older than FB groups). MJ has his own platform that he controls. Sure the SEO helps, but he has a platform that could be isolated and still do fine, because he has a lot of data.
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