The Danger of Only Blogging on Rented Land

I initially wrote this post for my blog a couple of years ago. As it is still relevant today, I am sharing it here with you.

In 2015, Facebook revamped its Notes feature to make it easier for users to blog directly on the social network.

Right away, a large number of solopreneurs, small business owners, and indie artists (chiefly writers) started asking themselves if they should not abandon their blogs and just publish their future posts on Facebook.

Half a decade later, a number of them still wonder...

Here is my short answer:

Don’t put all your eggs in that basket. I repeat, do NOT put all your eggs in that basket.

Why, you ask? I will start with a story.

In 2013, Social Fixer, an unofficial app created to improve the Facebook experience, had a Facebook page with 338,000 likes and a flourishing community of 13,360 members. Then one day, the page was deleted without notice or explanation.

Founder Matt Kruse was bummed, of course. However, since he really wanted the page back up, he accepted Facebook’s demands and removed some of the tool’s key features. You can read all about it here.

Over the years, thousands of people have complained about the social network deleting or disabling their pages or profiles. From spammy content to badly run contests and reports gone wrong, the Facebook team can decide to sever all your ties with your audience with a push of a button.

Is Facebook right or wrong? It doesn't matter! It’s more important to understand that your Facebook page or profile isn’t your property. You do not own anything; Facebook does. Actually, the same goes for any social media account you have—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Ello, Vocal, Medium, etc. Whatever you publish there could be gone tomorrow. All these platforms are rented land and make their own rules.

Want an example of what I am talking about? Read the Financial Times’s article titled Instagram Threatens to Stifle a New Generation of Poets. Here is an extract:

Instagram is in danger of strangling the literary phenomenon to which it gave its name [Instapoetry]. Gill thinks that measures the Facebook-owned platform has introduced to boost its own commercial income are cutting her — and fellow poets — off from the fan base they worked hard to create.

(This article is two years old, so you may think that the threat is gone. But look at the way post visibility has decreased in the last year or so. For example, Instagram has the power to hide or restrict your posts and hence "stifle" search results for specific hashtags with "shadowbanning".)

I get it. The appeal of publishing on Facebook or Instagram is real. After all, you are tapping into a huge audience. But the powers that be, not you, have the last word on your content. Also, algorithms have been put in place to limit your visibility. Only a subset of your audience can actually see what you post.

It is what happens when you build on borrowed land without backing up your content on YOUR platform. If you own your domain name, no one else but you can tell you what to do.

In 2021, if you consider yourself a serious author or writer, you must have a website / blog. Publish your content there first. Then, republish it on Vocal and Medium, and/or curate it on social media platforms to draw traffic to your site. So, if your social media accounts are deleted for any reason, your hard work will not go to waste.

Worried about duplicate content? Just rewrite or tweak your posts. That’s simple. 🙂

(However, you shouldn't, because the duplicate content penalty does not exist. For more info, click here.)

That's it for today! Thank you for reading!

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Cendrine Marrouat is a writer, photographer, podcaster, blogger, anthology editor, and the co-founder of Auroras & Blossoms and A Warm Cup of Cozy. She has authored and co-authored more than 40 books, including The Train: A Short Story (2023), In Her Own Words: A Collection of Short Stories & Flashku (2022), After the Fires of Day: Haiku Inspired by Kahlil Gibran & Alphonse de Lamartine (2021), Rhythm Flourishing: A Collection of Kindku and Sixku (2020), Walks: A Collection of Haiku (2019-2020), and In the Silence of Words: A Three-Act Play (2018).

Cendrine's work has appeared in many publications. She is the creator of the Sixku, Flashku, Sepigram, and Reminigram; as well as the co-creator of the Kindku, Pareiku, Vardhaku, and Hemingku.