The Case Against Social Media

Our primary marketing strategy at Wealth Project is to build a list of followers and customers through Email and direct mail. Sure… We use social media to connect with our audience and to attract new customers into our funnel. We also spend quite a lot of money advertising on social networks to build our lists and sell our training programs. However, our goal is to get people off of social media and into our direct marketing funnels. There are 2 big reasons for this:

Reason 1: Social media rules are rapidly changing.

The biggest problem with social media is the constant and never-ending changes that will kill your entire business overnight. The strategies that worked last year on social media would never work today, and what’s working now is going to be old news by next year, putting your income at risk. Let me give you a few examples.

Facebook fan pages back in 2016

Back in 2016, Facebook fan pages were all the rage in internet marketing. Build a fan page, then market to the fan page with daily posts. You could build a fan page on any topic, get some followers, and then earn money marketing to those followers. It was a simple and profitable business model that a lot of people were making money with. So what happened?

In 2018 Facebook stopped showing fan page posts in the newsfeed

Well, in early 2018, Facebook revamped its algorithm to focus more on posts from family and friends and stopped showing fan page posts. So if you were one of the ones that spent time and money building followers to your fan page, your ability to reach those fans evaporated overnight along with your source of income.

Facebook Messenger bots in 2018

Then came the boom in messenger bots around 2018. It was a great way to make money – you build a list of messenger subscribers and send them offers directly through Facebook messenger. At the time, everyone said facebook messenger bots would replace email marketing. Services like Manychat came along and made it easy for anyone to make money by building a messenger list.

March 4, 2020: No more unsolicited messages

Then on March 4, 2020, Facebook released a new policy. Businesses could no longer message their subscribers after 24 hours of them signing up. This completely killed the messenger bot business, and if you spent time and money building a list, you essentially lost it all.

Instagram’s algorithm changed so only 7% of subscribers see posts.

And it’s not just Facebook… Over the years, Instagram has changed its feed algorithm, so now on average, only 7% of followers will see your posts.

Imagine: you spend years building an audience, then one day, poof… you can’t reach 93% of them without paying for ads. Oh, and by the way… unless you’re as big as Nike or Apple, your ad account is probably going to get banned for some silly reason as well.

In 2018 YouTube stopped showing videos from subscribed channels.

In 2018 YouTube stopped showing videos from channels you subscribe to. That means even if you manage to get someone subscribed to your channel… They are most likely not going to see your videos.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Social media companies change their rules and their algorithms almost weekly, making it harder and harder to reach the audience that you have built on their platform.

Reason 2: Dead social media networks

Let’s not forget the graveyard of social networks over the past 20 years. For every Facebook, there are a dozen social networks that didn’t make it.

MySpace – DEAD

The best example is the very first social network to make it big: Myspace. I’m old enough to remember when entire brands were created by building a following on MySpace. Most of them, unfortunately, died along with the network.

Vine – the Instagram killer *- DEAD

There’s also Vine, the app that was considered to be the Instagram killer. Vine was basically Instagram for video. Many creators built millions of followers and created million-dollar brands on the platform, only to go bankrupt when Vine shut down in 2017.

Google Plus – DEAD

Then you have Google plus. The business-friendly social network backed by the biggest tech company in the world. No way that could fail.. right? Well, in August 2019, Google announced they were killing it. Along with any brand that built a following on there.

Tik Tok – almost banned in the US

Right now, Tik Tok is all the rage amongst social media gurus. Let’s not forget that just 2 years ago, there was a good chance that TikTok was going to be banned in the US due to the company’s relationship with China.

And as TikTok grows you can be sure it will change its algorithms the same way Facebook, Instagram, and youTube did making it harder and harder to reach any following you build.

Bottom line: Social media is a hustle and a ticking time bomb

Look, the bottom line is that if you build your business on a social network, it’s only a matter of time before you face algorithm changes or company shutdowns that can kill your entire business. And social media is a constant hustle: You need to produce lots of content regularly to stay relevant and constantly change your strategy… jumping on the latest trends just to survive, let alone thrive.

There is nothing passive or long-term about building a social media business.