The True Cost of Social Media

Building an online empire is great but remember it can be destroyed or taken down at anytime unless its on your own platform that you have full rights to.

Whether you are using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or another social media platform you may soon find out that if you are active and trying to monetize your account that they may soon suspend it with little or no warning. FB and many others don’t always play fair and the only option you have is to send an email to a mailbox that gets answered when they get around to it. I have never been in love with social media, to be honest as the important thing to understand is that when you upload any information to their servers the content may not be yours.

Know that at any time they can delete it, suspend some of your services, block you and or delete your account permanently thus make sure you have a backup of it somewhere. All of these companies are guilty of changing their terms and service agreements if and whenever they want to suit their own business needs. One should never provide personal information to them when they ask you to validate your information as I don’t trust any of them with it and what they will do with it. Data they acquire from you is big business and you are just a number that helps them make big money off you and many others and none of them want community they just want to find ways to monetize your data they learn about you.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Clayton Ruebensaal, EVP of Global B2B Marketing at American Express

Many of these companies are a monopoly on their specific industry and platform but what does this means to business and consumers when we hear this word. According to many dictionaries, it is defined by and I quote Oxford “the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service.” For example, let’s say you want to get your car washed and there is only one company that owns all of them across the state or country we would refer to this as a monopoly. Since this one business has taken over and given you no choice on being able to go anywhere else to get your car washed except if you wanted to wash it yourself.

Pretend for a moment that you had an idea to start a car wash but you couldn’t exist do the fact that the monopoly car wash buys soap and supplies cheaper than you could and still make a decent profit. We would say that is a competitive market but is that a fair analysis? Now let’s say you have your car wash but the car wash monopoly company is doing things such as creating harmful conditions that cause you to go out of business. That would not be competitive if they were directly doing things deliberately to take business away from your car wash in the efforts until they shut you down.

social media platforms were supposed to help build community and bring people together but it has turned into a cash cow that doesn’t have much respect for people, their life and or their dreams. I have been on FB for many years but unlike many, I don’t use it to tell people what time I’m eating, where I’m going, when I’m on vacation when I’m going to the bathroom, etc. and I’m sure you get my point. Doing some of these things would not only be a waste of time but in some regards a security risk and may help others learn when will be an easy target for the bad actors out there.

Recently I decided to do something nice which delivered a Motivational Tip every day via live stream to FB which had no sales content in it just a great tip that if exercised may just improve the quality of your life. On Day 1, I posted my first tip starting with the first letter in the alphabet which is “A” and the tip for that day was “Always be Present”, many liked this and wrote me back thanking me. I began to explain how so many times we are not always present at the moment but wondering what we will be doing right after. Regardless of whether we are with our loved ones, at work, exercising, or some other activity wondering what will be doing next before we finish what we are doing presently. The next day we had a letter “B” and the tip for that day was “Be who you are” which resonated with many. I talked about the fact that we need to be proud of who we are and act that way not pretending to be someone else so others will like us.

Marketing Technology News: WEX Expands Presence In Europe With OMV Win