A WhizBang! Tip of the Week
TIP: Your Digital Real Estate – Are You The Owner Or Just A Tenant?
Dear Tip of the Weeker,
Last week Mark Zuckerberg posted on Facebook that the News Feed will soon be showing “less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media.”
Yep, that’s right, the already slim volume of posts from your business page that your fans see is going to get even slimmer.
Which brings us to this week’s Tip…
We’ve been preaching this since the very first Retail Success Summit in 2008, just after Facebook first launched the first Pages for celebrities and brands…
“Own” your space.
When you’re on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest you’re RENTING your digital real estate. And you’re at the whim of the landlord.
You have no control – zip, zero, zilch – over what those platforms will or won’t do as so clearly evidenced by Zuckerberg’s post last week. At any moment they could change their business model in ways that profoundly affect your ability to reach your customers.
However, you have complete control over your website content and your email list. You OWN it. It’s critical that you maintain a vibrant, customer-focused website that tells the story of your store and your products. Continue to invite every customer to subscribe to your email newsletters. This is digital real estate you must invest in.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be actively marketing on social media. Certainly you should! It’s a great tactic. But don’t replace your website with social media – augment it.
Diversify your holdings.
Post your content in lots of different places on the Internet. For example, if you make a great video you could upload it to YouTube, embed it on your website blog, post it to Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, and then email a link to your list.
There are 2 big reasons why it’s smart marketing to put all your content up on a wide variety of platforms.
First, if one platform pulls the plug or limits your reach, you’ll still have lots of other places where your customers can connect with you. You won’t have all your eggs in just one basket.
Second, not every customer uses every type of media. The more different places you “live” on the web, you are likely to have more different customers engaging with you.
You be YOU.
Your website brands you, Facebook brands Facebook. Just like when you’re renting a house, you can make some modifications to your Facebook page (or Instagram feed, or YouTube Channel), but mostly you’re confined to the small changes your landlord allows. Overall the page still looks like… Facebook. Not you.
However, you can totally customize for your brand on your website – your colors, your style, your logo, your layout. Your website is a mini representation of your awesome in-store experience online. You get to be YOU.
And you can’t really do that with rented space.
