Social media companies love that you don't have a website

Social media is similar to sharecropping :

• We’re "renting" space on a platform we don’t own


• We’re paying for that space by becoming “the product” whose attention is sold to the highest ads bidder


• Our attention is also being usurped by the makers of the platform and what they’ve programmed their algorithm to show us, and


• Our data is being collect

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In this age of digital cacophony dominated by these platforms, no one is looking out for you… but you. It makes perfect sense, then, when individuals tell me they want their website to do the job of “setting the record straight” on who they are and what they do.

And rather than rent an audience on social media in exchange for ad revenue, they can control their own relationships. TikTok, Instagram and Twitter may help them get attention, but they monetize that attention with the Beacons links in their bios, bringing their fans back to where they can engage more personally and get paid directly.

As long as their audience is on the media networks, they’re only renting it, not owning it. There’s a whole class of startups whose main purpose is to help creators convert media network followers into owned community members.

On TikTok or Instagram, you don’t truly control your relationship with the people who care about your work: the platforms do. They can take away those audiences at any time, or change something in the algorithm that prevents you from reaching them, or put things in front of them that you would never want them to see. Those places are great for find... See more