As mentioned in yetserday’s blog, social media is simply crushing anything that is of any use to independent authors in general, and even more businesses.
I understand the answer is “build your own platform” but as an adage, that’s a lot easier said than done.
I have my own platform here, where I can type to my heart’s content, but it doesn’t reach thousands of people like my Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mailing List do.
Simply “putting out good content” doesn’t mean that more people read — in fact, much of the content I would find the most interesting to publish and discuss would actually get me less readers than if I just posted whatever the hot controversial topic of the day was.
It’s a catch 22 — one needs a big group of dedicated followers to build a good platform, but one needs a good platform to get a big group of dedicated followers. Starting from scratch — as I’m having to do a bit after the blog was down for a month to redesign the site, is a very difficult proposition.
So while “build your own platform” may seem nice, the real public squares are on Twitter and Facebook, and something needs to be done there to make it friendly, and make it SOCIAL again. And that’s beyond an average regular person to do.
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