Another One Bites the Dust

I’ve often said – make sure you own it.

Some of you may remember I had a Facebook group with 800+ members shut down with no warning a few years back. Someone somewhere objected to some content and, poof, years of work building the community down the drain.

Recently Google announced their intent to shut down Google My Business web sites. I heard today, they plan to do it in a few weeks. For any of you out there that received inquiries or prospects through GMB, what are you going to do? Google’s suggestion – “go build another website somewhere else”.

Really?

This is just another object lesson in owning vs. renting.

With social media and platforms like Google & Facebook, you are renting. With a web site and an email list, you are an owner. Noone can take those away from you.

Many of you will recall, I’ve been a long time advocate of web sites and mailing lists. I’ve also been called “old-fashioned” and folks have told me, “people don’t email anymore”. But email marking still has the highest conversion rate of ANY marketing channel other than referrals.

And web sites are still the original “social proof” with respect to legitimacy. If you don’t have a web site, any legit business (potential customer), maybe outside of 20-something influencers, will question your longevity and professionalism. Much the same as in the old days when a company wasn’t in the Yellow Pages it didn’t exist.

So take a look at your business and make sure it owns its customers and followers. Or one day you might look up and have to start all over from scratch.

And if you need help getting an email marketing channel or a web site up and running, contact me for a free chat and let’s talk about it.