Startup founders have a love hate relationship with social media.
On one hand, every business needs a social media presence.
Just think about it: Where is the first place consumers go when they research a company? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.
On the flip side, these platforms have made it critical for founders to implement a social media strategy when growing a business.
Meaning new companies must allocate capital, time, and labor towards content, advertising, networking, engagement, and so on and so forth. Ugh!
Every founder’s SWOT analysis poses the same threats:
- How will marketing be affected when Facebook changes its algorithm (again and again)?
- How costly will it be when Instagram increases ad costs?
- What would happen to the company’s influence and networking capabilities when Twitter outright censors us?
These are all important questions that have been looming in the minds of founders for the past decade. Which is why new startups are investing heavily in alternative platforms.
Social media has proved to be a necessary evil for any business. One that could completely disrupt a company’s growth potential with one change by big tech.
Now that’s a lot of power!
For example: Joe Spieser is the founder of LittleThings.com, a women-focused digital media site devoted to uplifting content. He says his company went under because of a Facebook algorithm tweak back in 2018.
According to Spieser, the once booming site was “throttled” when Facebook decided to promote posts it thought users would engage with more. Amounting to a 90% loss in organic traffic overnight, along with a total revenue loss of $100 million. Tragic!
“Can you ever truly sleep well at night knowing at any time it can all be taken away with just a simple algorithm change?”
Joe Spieser — LittleThings.com
Because companies like LittleThings.com have been historically vulnerable to social media algorithms (building operations around posting schedules, focusing heavily on engagement rates and social followings, etc.), big tech has wielded enormous power over how startups organize and operate their infrastructures.
Even leaked internal documents from Facebook have highlighted these weak spots and adverse effects from algorithm alterations.
Tech oligarchs have manipulated political discourse too, which not only affects businesses, but also more drastic events such as national elections. Remember when they censored the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop?
More recently, Facebook had to reverse its ban on posts praising Ukraine’s Azov Battalion thanks to user backlash. People are catching on.
Business owners and individual social media users need to pay attention to these patterns from big tech, so that they can minimize vulnerabilities in their own organizations.
Invest in alternative platforms like Gab now.