How to be on social without being owned

Don't spend time on social media unless you're clear what kind of long-term asset you're building.

Simply posting on social media is like paying rent. You get the immediate benefit — a place to live — but the landlord accrues the long-term value.

What’s the alternative? Approaching it like a mortgage. Let me explain.

If you invest time into being present on social media with a business goal — making sales, building a personal brand or a following — you are entering into a bargain with the platform you’re posting on.

You get a short-term win — engagement, visibility, maybe a few followers — but tomorrow, it disappears into thin air. Who cares that your post went viral last year? And if that post gave you followers, your ability to reach them depends on the whims of the algorithm (unless you’re on Substack and can take your subscribers with you).

However, the platforms—LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube—gain long-term benefits from your efforts to build an audience, which they can monetize.

How to build a long-term asset

Instead, you can and should approach social media work with a long-term view of building an asset and making your social media posts a byproduct.

Example 1: Book

Over the last two years, I have written a book on CEO succession in startups. Many ideas from the draft were shared here on Substack as Sunday essays, allowing me to get feedback: low engagement indicated that maybe I should remove it from the book.

So, I was writing my Substack and building a following (thank you for being here), but in the end, I also acquired a valuable asset.

Example 2: Podcast

I’m currently recording and editing a podcast on CEO succession. It’s way more time-consuming than just writing something random on LinkedIn, but it gives me small video clips and real stories from entrepreneurs that I’ll be able to share on social media.

Assuming my interviews are any good, people will be able to find them two years later. I am building a long-term asset while creating content for social media in the process.

Example 3: Thought Leadership

My friend Alex Merry, a great public speaking coach and leader of MicDrop, a community for sharpening public speaking skills, calls LinkedIn his “thought leadership laboratory.”

He’s been posting daily for years, but he hasn’t posted just memes designed to get a quick laugh or a like. He’s been sharing his thoughts on public speaking, sharpening his thoughts. In his own words:

LinkedIn is my clarity coach and my skillset is years ahead of where it would have been without it. Forcing (I use that word intentionally) myself to put content out into the world each week has helped me to:

1. Test new ideas and stories 🧪
   And different ways of communicating old ones

2. Learn from my audience 🧠
   What they care about (and what they don’t!)

3. Find my voice ⭐️
   Specifically what and who I want to stand for as a leader

Alex is building long-term assets: a deep understanding of his audience and of who he is and what he stands for. As a result, Alex is a much better coach than he might have been otherwise, and he has a thriving business with a waiting list of people for MicDrop.

Photo by Greg Bulla on Unsplash

What are you building?

There are countless examples of what long-term assets you could build:

• a course

• a community

• a video channel

• a book

• a framework

• a podcast

• a deep understanding of your audience

• etc

Some people I know are building an audience for audience’s sake. They post click-baity content that gets lots of likes, which they then monetise because of a significant volume (50,000-500,000+ followers on LinkedIn).

It works for them, but a part of me is sceptical. Sure, it’s great, but… if their social media profile gets deleted tomorrow, will anyone remember or care? Will they be known for anything other than the ability to get 500,000 people to follow their stuff? I don’t want to sound disrespectful. I know some of them make significant money doing it; it’s good business. It’s just… I personally find the idea of building long-term assets, including expertise in something other than social media, more attractive.

I don’t know what’s right for you and your business. But whatever it is that you’re building, make sure that your investment in social media leads to valuable long-term assets down the line instead of giving away the gains to the platforms, as 99% of people do.

After all, if you’re paying to live in a house, pay the mortgage, not rent if you can.

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