Whether it’s a shadow ban, conflict of interest, deemed inappropriate by an unknown standard, or simply not being up to par with fixing internal web issues, it seems that social media is not the golden standard in promoting your brand to grow your audience anymore.
Lets begin with this important statement:
Social Media is not a democracy run platform. The same protections you may get from the constitution may not apply normally to your posts, such as freedom of speech.
Essentially your post, product, and entire account can get removed from a platform with little to no reasoning justifiable to your standards or even that of the law.
Think of social media platforms such as instagram, twitter, and even etsy as the maritime law of the web.
Comment if you fall into any of these categories:
1. Working hours on quality posts and doing everything by the book just for instagram to block the hashtags you carefully selected and made sure were not banned. – How many hours are content creators losing in this arena? The price is hefty. Want to test this? Hashtag your own name in full (including your middle initial) and see if it pops up on recent posts. If it doesn’t pop up you are most likely shadowbanned.
2. Algorithms changing with little to no transparency, reducing your exposure to likes, comments, and following.
3. Platforms such as etsy suspending your account for being in minimal to no association with a banned account with little to no ability for you to protect your brand from falling victim to their scrutiny.
3. Platforms such as Twitter deleting your account because you are posting their version of “FAKE NEWS” despite freedom of press and independent thinking.
4. Powerful company platforms such as Amazon wiping out your profits as one of the biggest online retailers in the world working with small business with minimal government regulation on their appeals process if something were to go awry.
This is all pretty scary stuff considering the direction of most businesses spreading brand awareness through web advertising, building online communities, followings, and marketing on social platforms that well, are not so social anymore given the regulations and controls that are simply not regulated or transparent enough for us to have a chance at keeping up.
On the other hand when you own your domain name and decide who gets to host your channel you are much more in control of what happens to your brand, content, and ultimately run your own voice.
With this comes great responsibility as what you post becomes live the moment you publish not just to a particular platform, but to the World Wide Web ready to make an impact for better or worse on those who fall upon it.
Sure, your exposure starts off slow and you may want to learn about SEO and other ways to add traffic to your blog such as adding tags, pictures, videos, and overall optimizing the pages you create. But this channel you build from the ground up not only can be shared to social media channels you are already on, but it stays put with little to no input of anybody else primarily because – You control it.
So, what’s the verdict? If you do not maintain a public web presence with a blog or vlog, (by embedding video footage into posts, photos, and of course the sharpest knife in the book), then you will always be at the mercy of the mysterious algorithm, bots, and moderators whom may not have the same views as you. You risk being taken down or even more frustratingly not have any of your efforts met for the exposure you worked so hard to get because it was out of your control.