Do You Own the Land Under Your Digital Business?

Why betting your sales on social media may be the worst bet for your business

McDonald’s isn’t really in the hamburger business. They’re in the real estate business. They own the land beneath their franchises, to the tune of $30 billion dollars worth, charging rent no matter how well a particular store does. And the rent is not cheap. The corporate office gets paid whether or not you buy a Happy Meal in Montana. However, this article has nothing to do with McDonald’s and everything to do with your business model.

As digital creatives, entrepreneurs, and freelancers we may fall under the same trap without noticing the wizard behind the curtain.

Enter — social media. Here we are, working our faces-off as the largest group of free employees the world has ever seen. And yes, we provide free labor to social platforms without realizing it.

…and this is the way they’d prefer things to operate.

For all their good, social platforms can cripple your business overnight. As political climates and social norms change with each stiff breeze, so do the standards within which these profiles will accept your content.

One day you might own a $100K/month empire. The next, you wake up to lose everything.

They’ve McDonald’s-us, but the process was slow and painless. Franchise owners know the game on day one. They buy a proven system that will make money as soon as the front door is unlocked and the drive-through mics are functional. Social media slides their real estate empire through the small crack under the door. We didn’t see it until it was too late to reverse.

We’ve built huge followings on their land.

We’ve built entire businesses on their land.

We’ve built physical businesses with real employees… on their land.

Someday the rent will be due. They won’t tell us when they’ll send the bill. Maybe you stop working so hard, for free. I took over a year off Instagram and I shudder to think how small my trickle of traffic will be once I get back on the treadmill.

I worked for free every day, for a few years. I spent a ton of time on my posts and comments. Then, I took a break to write elsewhere.

I didn’t own the land under my digital business and I grew tired of it.

I had put most of my marketing eggs in the social basket and I watched the gamble grow until I knew I had to do something about it.

How to own your digital land

“Until you own your traffic, you don’t own a business.” I didn’t create that quote. I first heard it from mega-marketer, Russel Brunson. The words bite. But they are true. If some outside force (or business) can turn your customer traffic on and off like a cold faucet in the summertime, your business has made the biggest gamble of its life.

Until you own your traffic, you don’t own a business.

So, what does it mean to own your traffic? This means you own your customer list. No, you don’t own your customers, sorry. They are free humans, capable of doing as they please. But you do own their contact information and a way to connect with them directly, with no land-lease between you.

Enter email.

Email is the last, free frontier with a direct IV to your customer’s in-box, with the same rights as the biggest companies on Wall Street. No other platform has this direct ability to connect (SMS is working on it too).

• You decide the order of your messaging, not your social media landlord.
• You decide how frequently you’d like to connect, not your social media landlord.
• You can connect as many times as you wish, for free (once you pay for an email platform). Your social media landlord will charge you huge advertising fees to be able to access your followers, and you won’t be able to time your messaging, even then.

Email isn’t the only answer, but for me, email is the best answer.

Email has its thumbs, both up and down. There’s a delay in human connection, unlike social, with its near-instant feedback. But if you want to sell your work, email kicks all the other platforms straight in the assets.

Traffic = income.

When your entire business model is dependent upon an algorithm, or some new content guideline, you’ve planted your valuable business atop a mound of leased, digital land.

Eventually, the rent is due.

Don’t give up on social yet

I’m not here to dog social media. Social has created more businesses (and more young millionaires) than any other medium in recent history. But we’re smarter. We won’t work for free anymore.

We’ll receive payment for our labors.

We won’t necessarily be paid in cash, but we’ll take something better as currency. We’ll take connection. Instead of using our measly personal blog traffic, we’ll take the giant, digital real estate might of social media, and siphon our followers onto a platform we own.

We will own our traffic.

Social is a great tool. Here we are in the middle of a room, filled with millions (or billions) of like-minded people. Social is a great gathering place to build our own tribe. It’s a terrible place to bet your business.

Know your tools.

Watch the land lease.

Own your traffic.

We’re waiting for you.

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August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. A self-proclaimed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indie authors how to write books that sell and how to sell more of those books once they’re written. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.