I’m Only Going To Use Social Media To Promote Myself

Imagine you are seeking to promote your music, art or business with a limited budget.

You resolve to use the ‘sweat equity’ method of promotion by dedicating your time to promoting your endeavor exclusively via a social media network.

You decide that setting up a website and getting a domain name is just too much to take on. You know that a domain name is less than $15 a year and there are ways to setup a basic website for just about the cost of a restaurant dinner, but you just can’t be bothered with all that right now.

Now imagine that the social network you picked for your music promotion efforts was MySpace “the largest social networking site in the world from 2005 to 2008.”

All your music info and audio is on their servers and it is difficult directing interested parties to specific content.

In the interim, your band domain name was acquired by another band! You now need to setup a website using a much less-useful domain name.

Imagine GooglePlus as the social network you chose for your business promotion. You posted daily on GooglePlus, only to have all that effort sucked into the black hole of the web.

In the impermanent world of the internet, websites and domains are still just about as rock solid as online things can possibly be.

But, don’t take my word for it, listen to what the experts say about the social media/website nexus:

• Why You Need a Website No Matter Your Industry—8 Non-Negotiable Reasons
• Do You Even Need a Website in a World of Social Media?
• Faceoff: Website vs Social Media Profile or Page (Updated 2019)
• Website vs. Social Media: Why Your Business Needs a Website

“Post it on your website, then share/promote it on your social media” is what you are seeing as you swipe through your Facebook and Twitter pages. Social media is still but a tease for outside links (websites).

The goal of promotion on social media is to entice you to leave the social platform and visit these other websites!

While many things can be done on social media, websites are still the one destination for presenting your unique story, totally under your own control, with something more solid than just being part of an ever-swiping ‘feed’ frenzy.

It is literally the ‘master of my own domain‘ thing!

If you’ve had a domain attached to a website for any length of time, that domain has a ‘grandfathered’ status on the web, pages indexed by Google, and a record of visitor stats (which you would have if your site is tracked by Google Analytics).

Your website is there working for you, even during those ‘fallow‘ periods when your enthusiasm for self-promotion wanes. That happens to everyone at some time.

At the very least, make sure you get that killer domain name before somebody else does

Hedge your bets and don’t put all your eggs in one basket.