Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam
I snapped the image above during my trip to Vietnam a few years ago.
Ho Chi Minh City fascinated me.
American citizens a bit older than me may recognize the name Saigon before thinking of the place as HCMC.
How many movies or TV shows have you seen covering the Vietnam War? I recall more than a few, including an amazing documentary by the legendary Ken Burns. Epic show.
Anyway, seeing that military vehicle above made me think about most bloggers who seem to be at war with sites like Facebook and Twitter. Total us versus them deal. I admit fanning the flames under that one from time to time.
But is it really a war?
You Choose the Priority
At any time you can fire up your blog to create content. The Facebook owners never put a loaded gun to your head, do they? The folks at YouTube yield not that power, either.
Creating more detailed content for your blog consistently make social media sites largely irrelevant to you.
I know you might think that sounds arrogant.
But it is honest.
Prioritizing your blog makes every other site less important to you.
Why is that?
Creating content for your site gives it greater power.
Targeted readers are more likely to find 100, 500 or 1,000 detailed blog posts versus the content you create on a site like Facebook. Facebook consists of billions. Your blog is you. I do not compete against billions of admins on Blogging From Paradise Dot Com. I run the show here. This is not the case on Facebook.
Almost no blogger wants to admit that social media owns every single square inch of your profile. Facebook owns all of the content that you publish to Facebook. Twitter owns all of the content that you publish to Twitter.
Bloggers never want to admit this because most of us spend too much time on sites that we do not own. Shoving your head in the sand by putting in another 5 hours on Facebook today sounds like a better idea because most bloggers are in complete denial about this harsh truth.
Creating content for social media bridges the gap between your blog and the outside world but blogging needs to be the priority. You own everything on your blog. Every word and image is yours. Running your online business through a blog makes sense.
Few bloggers set up a custom shopping cart for the financial and programming investment required to do so. But unless you break the terms of service laid out by most lenient digital storefronts you pretty much run the show over your online business if you promote it through your blog.
I feel like most of us go through a tenuous stretch on social media. I put in thousands of hours on a site like Twitter. Putting in that much time motivated me to put in even more time. I had already invested so much of my life to the tune of hundreds of thousands of updates on the platform.
Something unfortunate happened. As I devoted more time to Twitter I invested less time to Blogging From Paradise Dot Com. I definitely helped build Twitter into a successful site. But where did that leave with my blog? How did that increase my organic traffic and blogging income consistently?
I Helped Social Media Owners Expand Their Empires
I helped other people – those being social media site owners – but not myself. I fortified their sites with my effort but not my blog. Making matters more insane, I did not own the websites where I spent so much time. Folks who ran those sites could have shut me down in a split second. 15 years of work could have disappeared in an instant. I didn’t even want to think about it because I spent so much time over there and felt horrified that it could happen.
I was fortunate enough not to be erased permanently from my main social media websites. My Twitter and Facebook held up relatively strong over the years. I’ve suffered through only a few quick suspensions on both sites.
But I still screwed up because I never put two and two together on a deeper level. Right now, when I see the 700,000 plus updates that I published to Twitter, I fully realize that every one can go away at any second. That’s why I’m writing this post and not spending another 35 minutes on Twitter or on Facebook for that matter.
I don’t own anything other than my blog. I use these sites to connect with some readers. But I dissolved the heavy psychological attachment to social media largely because I saw enough bloggers get burned by building their traffic and income on a foundation of social media quicksand.
Admit the Mistake
First you need to admit that you’re making this mistake. How does it happen? Look at how much time you spend on social media. Look at how little time you spend on your blog.
I’ve come across bloggers who spend two to four hours daily on each social media site from Facebook to Twitter. Each of these bloggers tells me that they have no time to blog. Most publish a post every month. Some publish one post weekly. Neither of these strategies make sense when you’re publishing dozens of updates and engaging hundreds of human beings on Facebook and Twitter over the week.
Do you realize that you are one update away from losing everything on social media? Even if you play by their rules the algorithm makes mistakes. Especially these days with artificial intelligence, more users than ever try to game the system. Rules have become more stringent. People get kicked off these sites permanently for completely silly reasons.
What’s worse?
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram don’t owe you anything because each owns all of the content on these sites. Each owns your username, your account and every single thing you publish from photos to text based updates to videos and the like.
Let that idea sink in before you spend another 4 hours on Facebook today and no time on your blog.
I hope this post motivates you to fire up your back office and write your next one.
Practical Ideas
- time yourself on social media; set an alarm on your phone
- drop social like a hot potato the moment your predetermined time expires
- open your WordPress backoffice
- busy yourself with creating new content and/or updating old blog posts
Create on Your Real Estate
Create on your real estate.
Be free of the calamitous tendrils consistent with social media.
Do what they do but through your blog.
Does Facebook send people away to off-site sources?
Hell no they don’t.
Follow their lead.
Become prolific through your blog.
Make it sticky.
Lower your bounce rate.
Drive organic traffic and blogging income.
Control what you can.
Practical Tips
- invest in your domain and hosting
- publish one long form post weekly; aim for 1200 words filled with practical tips
- prioritize your blog over social media, building a list and optimizing content for Google
- update old content to maintain relevance
Create through your real estate.
Make your blog the priority.
