Why Just Building Your Tribe On Facebook Is Business Suicide

I want to talk to you about something I see going on right now in the business world that scares the crap out of me.

Virtually everybody thinks you should just use Facebook to build your tribe. In fact, when people talk about building your tribe, they almost always mean Facebook or any other type of social media.

One of the reasons why they love it so much is because it’s allegedly free. But I’m gonna tell you right now it is NOT free. In fact, this is one of the most expensive mistakes you could ever make in your business.

So why do you not want to just build your tribe on Facebook?

Censorship!️

What are some things that you can’t talk about on Facebook? Well, here’s the funny thing. You might think, “You can’t talk about the virus!”

Let me tell you what, if Facebook doesn’t like what you’re doing, they can turn you off. Censorship is real! Just ask anybody who’s run an ad that’s been turned down because it doesn’t meet “community standards.” Just ask anybody who’s had their ad account shut down and can’t figure out WHY or what they did wrong.

They Can Shut Down Your Account Without Warning

I went to Facebook Jail three weeks in a row because of an IP switch in the middle of a video. When I walked from my house out to my chicken coop to do my “Letting The Chickens Out With Jim” video, it switched the IP from my home network to the cell tower and they said I’d been hacked.

They put me in Facebook Jail for a week each time.

Here’s the million-dollar question: what happens if you’re doing a Facebook Live and you get thrown in jail? You DON’T get to communicate with your tribe for a week!

What if you’ve planned to do a live workshop on Facebook? You’ve done all the marketing; you’ve put in all the effort; and then all of a sudden, Facebook doesn’t like what you’re saying! Either by accident or on purpose, they shut you down and you can’t do your workshop.

What are you going to do? How do you contact your tribe? Hmm… I know the answer… YOU DON’T!

Facebook Will Sell Your Hard Work and Pay You NOTHING!

You worked really hard to build up a tribe of people following you based around a topic of interest. You cultivated them and you worked your butt off to build a relationship with them.

Well, guess what?

Facebook is going to make money by selling access to your tribe to all of your competitors!

Think about that for a second… you bust your butt to put together an amazing group of people centered around a topic.

You’ve curated them… you’ve built that interest!

And Facebook swoops in to sell access to your folks to the people who are actively trying to take food out of the mouths of your kids!

Now, how smart is that? It’s actually pretty dumb!

That’s why I say that is business suicide if you just build your tribe on Facebook!

So how do you beat Facebook at their own game! Simple.

SOLUTION: Use Facebook to get people on your email list.

Here’s the reality with an email list… you own it and it’s portable.

What does that mean?

If Facebook goes down or Facebook kicks you off, your list is gone. Your followers are gone. Your tribe is gone. Everything’s gone.

No matter how much you beg and plead, they don’t care! You are nothing to Facebook.

The only thing they care about is the data they own on you and your people because they can sell that data directly to your competitors in the form of ad targeting.

With your own email list, you own it, you can download it, you can take it with you. It’s portable.

Last year I had a problem with the email service provider I used. They literally had a meltdown. Their hard drives melted right there on the rack in the data center.

Luckily, I had a backup of my list. It was a pain. But I was able to get everybody moved over to a new server with new software in about a week and I was up and running.

Oh, by the way, when Facebook shut me down “by mistake,” I was able to send an email to my list and get everybody to go over to my website where I went live and still taught my class.

So it’s not just a question of building your tribe, it’s owning your own data.

Owning the data enables you to own the relationship with your people.

If you’d like to learn how to actually do this in the real world…

• How to build a list…
• How to have a relationship with your list…
• How to put it all on autopilot…
• How to not have Facebook actually own your business because they fooled you into thinking it’s free…

Then check out what we’re doing with the “Build Your List, Build Your Tribe” Fast Track inside of my Jim Edwards method premium membership site. If you want your own profitable list in record time, you’ll be delighted by what you discover.

Remember, Facebook ain’t free!