The NormalNess Podcast – Season 2 Episode 2 – A Lesson In Owned Media

In this episode, I talk about the risks associated with building your blog, business, or other online activities solely on social media. 

 

You can listen below or subscribe via iTunes.

 

 

Links:

• A lesson in owned media (to see screenshots of what I mention)

 

Episode Transcript 

A lesson in owned media. At the start of the pandemic, I thought, well, I need to make fun of things. You know, this was when the toilet paper hoarding was going on in Australia and I thought just I need to make fun of people. It’s my outlet. You know, I’m not mean but you know, sometimes anybody’s gonna anyway, on by Facebook and Instagram, I decided to do something I said want to play a little game. It’s called, would you rather stockpile and then you flip to the next screen. And I decided to make it silly because you know, I’m not actually going to encourage people to stockpile beyond what their family or their household needs.

 

So I made some examples. So would you rather stockpile acid or potatoes? batteries or lemons, moisturizer or pillowcases? fish food or knives? You know, I think it’s pretty obvious if you look at any of these, that it was a joke. And then I was making fun of all the idiots out there who were fighting and punching each other up in supermarkets. Toilet paper. Anyway, turns out that both Instagram and Facebook, she’s not like me for this. Instagram threatened to delete my entire account because it went against community guidelines. I don’t know what those guidelines were. But apparently if I did it again, my entire account would be deleted. I sent them a message crying. Hi, how exactly a sarcastic polls in my stories breaching your mythical rules? Don’t you have bigger problems? I’m a little antagonistic towards big companies sometimes. Anyway, because it’s me, I decided to mock it even further. Not only did I put my response to them and their response to me on my Instagram stories, I shared it all on my Facebook page. Sure. I said, I shared the screenshots of the things I was asking people to vote for and my Insta stories, the replies and all that sort of thing.

 

Facebook took this one step further, of hating me. Facebook token strongly disliked this one more specific apparently the posts cited were of sexual adult sexual exploitation. I don’t know how Paul mocking idiots stockpiling toilet paper with adult sexual exploitation but apparently according to Facebook it is. And then I got blocked for composting or commenting for 30 days and no one could see my posts, you know, requested a review because you know, it was not adult sexual exploitation. Facebook corrected out faster than Instagram at least. I got messages saying a post is now back on Facebook. Sorry that we got it wrong. I was thinking say sorry. That’s actually pretty impressive. Instagram never really replied. They just sort of left me alone, I guess for lack of a better way of putting it so I don’t know if they wouldn’t admit they’re wrong which is Stupid because they’re the same company. So I didn’t understand what happened there. I did get told that I couldn’t use their branded content tools on Instagram, which “Oh no”, because that’s not a part of what I do really. branded content has never really suited me because I really liked a lot of things that are for sale in the world. So it’s always been kind of a meaningless some revenue stream for me.

 

Anyway, it’s one of those Never Say Never things, but just not something I’m particularly interested in. The lesson out of all of this though, people invest so much time into social media, and you don’t earn you do need to make sure that you focus on owned media owned media. Either things that you aren’t. I know that sounds silly, but a lot of people don’t get it. I’ve seen people who felt that whole Facebook have built their whole business on Facebook and their pages. Did architect or something happens and their entire business is gone. And that’s not safe. It’s not a safe way to run a business. Keep a job, and don’t run a business, if that’s what you’re gonna do.

 

Your owned media is primarily going to be your website, and your email list. Those are the things that you invest in, because unless you breach your Terms of Service, they’re yours. And you can create backups of all those things. You can create a backup of your website and move to a new host. You can export your email list to a new provider. These things are things that you own and you control. Now, I don’t mean arenas and sell your subscribers details. Don’t do that. That’s a dick move and probably illegal. So just make sure that as much as social media is great, it connects us it gets our information out there. Make sure that you’re actually building things on your turf as well. get people back to what you are way you Actually control things because social media can be here one day on the next. And if that’s what you’ve built it on, what are you going to do when your business, your blog, your whatever you do is here one day on the next. It’s not safe. It’s a great bonus, but it’s not something that you can rely on.