Today marks the end of Posterous, a blogging platform/social media network that popped up in 2008. The concept was pretty simple. Bring blogging, photo sharing, etc to the masses with an easy to use interface.
Unfortunately, the team that brought you Posterous joined Twitter awhile back and decided that today, April 30th, 2013, was going to be the end. Never heard of Posterous? This story doesn’t affect you one bit. But for those of you who built a platform and a marketing plan using Posterous, you’re in a bit of a pickle.
When I started my business in 2010, I met a couple of potential clients that had built their marketing empire using Posterous and wanted to make sure that anything we did was still built and hosted there. While I ended up not taking on those clients for other reasons, I wonder what kind of scrambling they’ve had to do since everything they’ve invested (both time and money) into Posterous is now gone.
You see, investing too much of your resources into one platform or one social media network is a dangerous plan. Think about all the bands that spent the early 2000’s building up their audience on Myspace. When the decline of modern Myspace civilization began in 2008, these bands and brands were again without an audience to talk to.
Everyone loves Facebook, right? And billions of marketing dollars are being spent by companies & brands there. What happens when you and all of your friends stop going to Facebook? (Shudder at the thought!) But that day is coming, eventually. Facebook will someday be the new Myspace, the old mall that no one goes to anymore.
What to do?
Well, first off – a single social media platform shouldn’t be your only marketing plan. Social media should be one of three sectors you spend your internet marketing budget on. Email marketing and website design are also equally important when it comes to creating, sharing and communicating about the content you have.
But even when you are using a three legged approach to marketing, don’t limit yourself to just one social network. Spend time on the biggies, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn – but also keep your eyes peeled for new social networks that pop up from time to time. If you find the next Facebook, you could be finding yourself being the big fish in a little pond very quickly.
So, in closing, we’ll miss you Posterous – but for those users of yours that trusted you to be the end-all-be-all of online marketing, I hope you’ve found a new home.