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The Importance of Owning Your Core Marketing Outlets and Content

by Donna Maria

If you can't see the video, click here.And don't forget that Twitter i" data-site="Donna Maria's Indie Business Blog">

Over at our FaceBook Page, we’re having an interesting discussion about FaceBook’s change yesterday from “Become A Fan” to “Like,” and back to “Become A Fan” again. It seems that, once again, FaceBook is making changes without giving us small business owners any advance notice. And people don’t like it. But what do you expect? “He who owns the gold makes the rules, right?” It’s not fair, but it is what it is.

If you can’t see the video, click here.

And don’t forget that Twitter is in the process of adding Promoted Tweets. And Ning announced last week that it is phasing out its free service so it can focus on enhancing services offered to premium network users. (I already use their premium service at my social networking site — in part because I saw the transition coming a long time ago and I didn’t want to build my network relying on a free service.)

All of this adds up to one thing: to the extent you can, you have to own your own branded core marketing outlets. Period.

Own Your Core Marketing Content

Use FaceBook. Use Posterous. Use Twitter. Use them all. (I obviously do.) But I also have this blog and my newsletter, and my radio show. And I don’t rely totally on YouTube for my videos — I pay WordPress to host them here so if anything happens to YouTube, I’m not stuck without my content. I don’t rely on third parties to control and maintain how I reach out to my customers, clients, members, friends, and other people who matter to me and to whom I matter.

I know you can’t own everything. But you can develop a branded content strategy that will fee your business as it grows. Money is tight, I know, and all of us enjoy using free (or mostly free) services to build our businesses. But while you can’t own everything you use, you can own some of the things you use. It’s your brand, and in order to grow it, you have to invest in it. Why should FaceBook invest more in your business than you do?

The Media Is You!

You are responsible for the proliferation of your brand, not FaceBook or Twitter or any of the rest of them.

So the next time FaceBook does something you don’t like, remember what’s going on. You don’t own FaceBook, and you don’t own your FaceBook Fan Page. How could you? It’s free. You’re not paying for it. FaceBook’s owners are simply managing their business so they can be as profitable as possible. You should do the same.

As I’ve said before, it’s your lawn; mow it. And don’t just own the water; own the pipe.

Own your newsletter. Own your blog. Carve out time to comment at other blogs, which comments of course link back to your blog.

Twitter (and all the rest of them) is icing; not cake.

While you’re thinking about this, you might also enjoy this Indie Business TV segment I recorded one day last year when Twitter and FaceBook were both down at the same time.

Question: Do you own your core marketing outlets and content? If not, what are you going to do about that?

If you can't see the video, click here.And don't forget that Twitter i" data-site="Donna Maria's Indie Business Blog">

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Tagged as: facebook, fan pages, marketing, media, ning, sales, Social Media, social networking, the media is you, twitter, web 2.0, youtube

posted on April 20, 2010 ·

Facebook comments:

  • http://www.brambleberry.com/ Anne-Marie

    This is SUCH a great reminder about how important it is to ensure that all of your hard work is always kept on something you own and control. I agree with your comments about FB – we're lucky they've kept it free this long – and wouldn't trade our newsletter or my blog for the world. We also have duplicate servers for our SoapQueen.TV videos (YouTube and Vimeo) just to be on the safe side.

  • http://www.indiebusinessblog.com Donna Maria Coles Johnson

    Thanks A-M! I love what you are doing with SoapQueen. We save each video as an AVI file so we have our own copies to use over and over again for a variety of purposes in the future. It helps us sleep at night and is exciting to think about fun things that can be done with content in years to come! Maybe we can edit some of our together one day for a fun, informative Indie Soap Business Queen A-M dM video. LOL!

  • http://twitter.com/MarmaladeHills Marmalade Hills

    Excellent post. Thank you for bringing it up dM! I will definitely keep this in mind.

  • annlihl

    It feels very freeing and independent having my own blog. I just started mine in January and I'm still learning the ins and outs of it all and having fun! I still need to set up shop there soon to sell my trinkets, but I'm having fun just sharing my knowledge and communicating with others. Facebook has been a great place for advertising my business and I appreciate everything they have offered. I go with the flow so I don't depend on just one thing to keep it going. I did some reading up on whether Facebook will charge or not and they have stated they will not charge and that their revenue is on ads that people place on Facebook. It might be a great idea to place an ad on Facebook (it was $20 a month last time I checked) to maybe bring in more customers to our businesses. Not only to help ourselves but to show a little love for Facebook for what it has given us to work with. What goes around, comes around, and so far, every time I've given information or money or link love for a cause, it's always come back to me tenfold!

  • soapbartender

    Just yesterday I was complaining about not having time to update my blog as I'd like, and thinking about what content should go in our next newsletter…adding them to the never ending list of business chores that constantly nips at your heels. The temptation is to let it all go sometimes, but I know better. Thanks for the reminder dM. Very timely for me and much appreciated.

  • http://www.indiebusinessblog.com Donna Maria Coles Johnson

    Ann: Nice idea to think of buying an ad as a way of “giving back.” I wonder if the information you read was about FB charging people or FB charging businesses. I don't think they'll charge Aunt Glenda for Co-ed Carrie for a page. But I do think they will eventually charge businesses on some level. I have no inside knowledge or anything, it's just a gut feeling based on what some of their competitors that also make a ton of money on ads are doing.

  • http://www.indiebusinessblog.com Donna Maria Coles Johnson

    Glad to be timely. I doesn't always happen that way. LOL! See you next week and I'll have all my camera apps to take pictures with the fabulous Maggie!

  • http://www.indiebusinessblog.com Donna Maria Coles Johnson

    Glad it was helpful! I want to keep those Marmalade Hills soaps going strong. Love them!

  • dawnaurora

    I have tried to encourage my readers to do the same with their business. For example, they want to blog and so they chose a free blogging source. They don't “get it” that the info they put on what they think is their site is not theirs. It can be taken away or changed at any moment.
    Great post. Will have to have my readers read it.

  • annlihl

    There was a rumor going around last year that FB would start charging people $14.95 a month (my friend said he also saw it on the news too) and this meant “everyone”. I looked it up and Facebook said it has never and will never make people pay for Facebook as it makes its money off of ads. Facebook often squashes rumors. This was one of them. But I can see what you mean by businesses eventually being charged. If you own a business and would like to place an ad, you can pay a monthly charge to advertise. I'm not sure what the guidelines are as I haven't done it yet.

  • http://www.indiebusinessblog.com Donna Maria Coles Johnson

    Love what you're telling your readers. Keep beating the drum of truth. Thank you for being here and sharing this information with your readers. Feel free to grab the embed code from the upper left of the video embed if you'd like.

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  • http://www.Wisdominthemind.com/ Wisdominthemind

    I admire their endless support, and endless believing .
    If since young age they receive good influence by person they admire, they would have became great people with great vision about work and determination. Even if this person only an entertainer.
    I think it's because they believe that hardwork will be payed off. And this belief come from their Idol, Rain. How many entertainers can cast this strong belief in our world today?

  • Melody

    Loved it! Really great video too. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing your cheery face reminding me to “own” my core marketing sources!

    • http://www.indiebusinessblog.com Donna Maria Coles Johnson

      Melody: I try to add some cheery-ness so people can remember that none of it matters if it’s not also fun. Thanks for watching and sharing!

  • http://twitter.com/hipcop Francis

    Great advice!! You are correct…Own your brand! No one is responsible! Seems you have taken the necessary steps to keep on track with Facebook and twitter! Thanks for sharing them and great video! :)

    • http://www.indiebusinessblog.com Donna Maria Coles Johnson

      Hey Francis: It’s a work in progress, but I love it. And I love empowering others to take this kind of control. It’s so fundamental, yet many miss it. Thanks for being here and sharing with us!

  • http://twitter.com/essentialU Kayla Fioravanti

    I totally agree! Twitter, Facebook and all the rest should be directly us to your blog or newsletters.

    • http://www.indiebusinessblog.com Donna Maria Coles Johnson

      Yes! It’s all about cross pollination — strong pieces of content published multiple times to the places where your audience is. And owning the content — that is key to making the business more valuable! You do a great job of it for sure!

  • http://twitter.com/organicguru June

    I think Facebook was created by one big nerd convention. They seem to get a rise out of anyone who has a technical problem. I have had two colleagues lose their entire account for no reason..5000 followers..down the drain!

    I say this all the time. I prefer twitter to any of these sites. You can connect or block anyone very easily and when in doubt, just create a new twitter account!

  • Anonymous

    hi donna maria,

    i was looking over the wordpress terms of service and blogger’s terms of service and taking into consideration a lot of the things you said here in “the importance of owning your core marketing outlets and content” and “don’t just own the water. own the pipe” and i realized i wasn’t sure if i entirely understood what you are advising us to do.

    i know that usually google services claim that they own your content when you upload to their site (this used to be true for googledocs, for example) but there’s a clause in the blogger terms of service that says “Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services.”

    so if the issue isn’t whether you technically own the content – is the issue that i’m not paying for blogger? so in that case blogger has less of a commitment to ensure that their site is running properly?

    but isn’t it also the case that if wordpress were to go out of business i would lose my content just the same, whether i’m paying for my use of the site or not?

    i’m in the process of trying to boost my online presence. but i don’t want to up my presence on the wrong blog; i’d rather make the move to wordpress if that’s where i need to be. before i make the change, i want to make sure i know why, instead of making blind decisions!

    thanks so much in advance!

    • http://www.indiebusinessblog.com Donna Maria Coles Johnson

      Lori: Thanks for your questions and observations. My point is this: as nice as it is to write for other blogs or newspapers or magazines so you get “media attention,” it’s even better when you create a media outlet of your own. One that you brand yourself and own and control. If you have a blogger blog, you already have a branded blog, so that’s good.

      But blogger blogs are not self-hosted and self-branded, meaning that the name of the blog hosting company appears next to your brand name in the URL. The same would be true if you had a non-self-hosted WordPress blog — it would be thenovastudio.wordpress.com

      So, my point here is not so much where you host. After all, not matter where you host, your host company could disappear and you’d have to find a new host. (That’s why I back up my blog each day … so I have a backup of the entire blog in case I need to re-build it again from scratch.) Even Oprah depends on ABC network to be around so she can host her television show.

      So the point is not which blog host you choose (although I highly recommend WordPress for reasons I won’t get into here). The point is that you brand media outlets that you control (the pipes) and that you can use to share content (the water) with the world. Don’t just aim for being featured in media outlets owned by someone else. You create the intellectual property — the content, the brand — you publish it, you own it, you control it. This increases the overall value of your company, with each piece of content you put out there.

      No matter what you sell, you have to embrace the parts of technology that allow you to be a publisher of the information your customers enjoy, and which they can rely on you to share with them, and which encourages them to choose what you sell over similar items offered elsewhere.

      I’ll be tying all of these ends together in my one-day training next week on 1/12 — http://www.themediaisyou.com for more information and to register.

      Does this explanation help?

      • Anonymous

        Thanks Donna Maria for your quick response and your constant willingness to help out! Your comment is so helpful (as always :) .

  • http://makercraft.com/ Kay_M

    This is the first time I’ve been to your site, and I’m sad I didn’t start reading earlier! I’ve just started my own business, and I’m still figuring out media. I’m really glad to get this advice now, rather than a year or more in, when I’ve been doing things wrong for a long time.

    Thank you!

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