You’ve gotta build your own platform or you’re out
We live in amazing times.
With just a few clicks of a few buttons you can potentially reach everyone on this planet.
Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Medium or Quora make it possible to get your ideas in front of millions of people.
Not too long ago I passed 2 million views on Quora alone.
And I didn’t even post anything there in months.
I still got 40,000+ views last months.
It’s amazing but dangerous at the same time.
Simply because it feels like you can reach everyone for free you start to feel so comfortable that you tend to forget one of the most important rules in life.
Diversification…
It’s hard to diversify and spread your risk when everything goes well.
After all, why diversify when everything goes right?
I struggle with this all the time. And have to remind myself over and over again.
So this post is pretty much a reminder to myself.
After all, all of these (and future) platforms out there are businesses.
And they’re all following the same business model.
Getting as many people onto their platforms as possible so they can charge businesses for reach when the platforms are big enough.
Facebook was the first one to do this.
Then you had Twitter.
Linkedin.
And Pinterest.
All of these platforms make money monetizing their reach through (more or less) sophisticated ad systems.
So the moment you’re active on a platform you have to drive that traffic away from that platform onto a platform you own.
Otherwise you might end up like tons of businesses who went out of business once Facebook started charging for reach.
They forgot the most important rule…
Diversification.
And the second most important rule…
A platform that offers free reach today will most probably not offer free reach anymore tomorrow.
And the only platform you sort of own these days is email.
Once you have someone’s email address you can send them all sorts of emails, updates, sales pitches or what not.
So the big elephant in the room is how do you get people from one of these platforms onto your email list?
You’ve gotta create a lead magnet…
Or in normal talk, you’ve gotta create a PDF that people can download in exchange for their email address.
But it should always be about adding value.
And not trying to sell something.
For example I have a lead magnet called “121 Unusual Tips to Being a Better Writer.”
I write online. And a lot of people who follow my stuff are also writers. Or want to write to build their brands.
So it probably adds value to some of the folks who read my stuff.
So many of them might be interested in getting that PDF.
And it’s pretty easy to create such a lead magnet. You don’t even have to create any new content.
You can simply recycle already existing content.
Or if you don’t have any content yet, put out blog posts, YouTube videos or what not and once you have 20–30 or so pieces of content you make a PDF put of it..
That’s what I did when I created “121 Unusual Tips to Being a Better Writer”. I simply took all of the blog posts I ever did on writing and put them into a PDF.
And now this simple PDF gets me 100+ new email addresses every month…
So whatever you do, always keep in mind to diversify and spread your risk across multiple platforms to ultimately build your own platform. And right now email is the best way to do this…
P.S. This is a message from my new daily email subscription called The Daily Entrepreneur where I share all things entrepreneurship, online marketing and creating multiple streams of income online. No B.S. Ever. You can sign up here and get it conveniently sent to your inbox. For FREE!
P.P.S. I’ll be talking more about building and growing your email list and building your audience online in my upcoming Personal Branding course…
