The original promise of social media was noble. For consumers, it would connect the world. For brands, it meant reaching an audience with no filter—and no advertising fees. For creators, it meant unlimited free publishing and the possibility of a massive audience.

There was just one problem. Or to use another term, a dilemma.

Eventually, we became the product. Social media and other third-party networks employ algorithms to enhance the user experience and study our data. But it doesn’t provide the same services on behalf of brands.

People are noticing. And just as relevant, brands are noticing. They’re now rethinking things. Are social media platforms the best ways to reach their customers? Or is it always better when a brand owns its digital real estate?

Why Brands are Re-Thinking Their Successful Platforms

Social media is revolutionary for good reason: it provides free distribution to audiences of any size. But for brands, it can feel like building an office on rented land. Social media still denies brands and creators a key element: control. Even Charli D’Amelio, recently unseated as the most-followed user on TikTok had this to say about social media: Don’t tie yourself down to anything specific.

The Problems with Building on Social Media

Rent an apartment, and maybe the landlord won’t allow pets. Buy a house, and you can have all the pets you like. Like someone building on rented land, brands on social media are beholden to the platform’s rules. They don’t have access to followers’ email addresses, for example. And email remains one of the best returns on investment in marketing, and as the number one channel for driving engagement, returns on average $36 for every dollar spent.

Social media platforms want to please their consumers and drive engagement, so it designs their algorithms that way. As one Forrester report put it: Social media is not about companies; it’s about consumers.

So, where do brands fall into this scheme? What if a brand wants to publish longer-form content without a catchy hook to please the social algorithms? They may find that quality content doesn’t always drive social engagement.

Even more challenging, new platforms are always emerging. An engaged Twitter audience won’t necessarily translate to TikTok and vice versa. That leaves brands in the position of building a new audience every time there’s a popular new platform, essentially starting from scratch. When a brand owns its own real estate, it can stay there as long as it likes.

The Itch to Build a New Kind of Platform

I started a newsletter because I wanted to de-platform my audience from social media to something I actually own, wrote Justin Welsh in June. Not only does email marketing drive more engagement, but an email list is more independent than a social media account. There are no algorithms and few platform rules to follow.

While not everyone is completely de-platforming, many creators (like D’Amelio) are diversifying their content. Statistics suggest that 41% of creators use websites, blogs, newsletters, and podcasts to connect with audiences away from social media. Justin Welsh maintained his social media accounts but also placed greater emphasis on his newsletter.

Brands are following suit. The British cosmetics brand, Lush, made waves in 2021 with a highly-publicized exit from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Snapchat.

It wasn’t a complete exit. Lush maintained a YouTube presence and kept Twitter around to offer customer care. They also stayed on Pinterest to connect with fashion-conscious consumers. But Lush put new emphasis on producing email newsletters for campaigns, writes Vogue Business. And the newsletters belong entirely to Lush.

The Benefits of Brands Exploring Owned Platforms

It’s not existing on social media that’s the problem. It’s the lack of control that comes from building on rented land. Here are some of the benefits of owning your own land:

• Controlling distribution. Some people call it owning your sandbox. This comes in the form of building your own media arm as a hub for your content. This is especially useful for people who build dedicated communities, such as on Patreon, or grow a newsletter list.
• Better engagement. One study says that social media engagement is down overall. But building a platform of engaged, pre-qualified users (after all, they’ve already signed up just to hear from your brand) means you can move from a low-engagement platform to something much more likely to drive sales, like email.
• Building trust and authority. Getting access to privileged data on how your audience is engaging with your content, and in turn, being able to deliver that value back to your community, is data today that social media and third-party networks won’t give you. Even Disney—perhaps the best content creators of the last century—used to distribute content through third parties. But Disney knew it needed to learn more about its customers. It wasn’t going to do that through third parties. The brand launched Disney+, which now boasts over 137 million subscribers. It’s not only an additional revenue stream. They now control their content and have an avenue to study user behavior en masse.

The Role of Social Media Moving Forward

Social media isn’t going anywhere. There is still a role for publishing on social media, and even de-platforming brands like Lush have maintained a hybrid presence. But if you’re going to navigate the shift toward owning your audience, it helps to know what you can use it for going forward:

• Public discourse. Founders, spokespeople, and influencers can still access millions of people via social media. They can answer questions, post relevant content, and share their insights in a public forum, humanizing the brand they represent by revealing their authentic selves.
• Amplifying content. A large social media following is still a powerful megaphone for promoting content—as long as brands learn to push that traffic back to property it does own.
• Paid media. If brands want to reach people on social media, they still can—but sometimes it means paying for that engagement.

Where do brands go from here? Not abandoning platforms wholesale, but shifting focus to new platforms.