… you might just die by social media, like many have 🙂

As someone who is also an entrepreneur, I share many of Rick’s concerns about social media despite the fact that for my career as an economist (books + videos), I without a doubt need social media platforms.

Understanding what role social media needs to play is the name of the game in my opinion.

Some say that since these platforms are just so darn convenient and easy to use, domains are obsolete. My only reply can be “Sweet summer child…” in such cases 🙂

I don’t agree that social media makes domains unnecessary, I don’t even agree that social media “complements” domains because the relationship I see between them is one of subordination. In other words, sure, social media platforms can be amazing traffic sources and they can without a doubt enable you to do awesome stuff with your brand.

But please don’t forget that social media is here to serve *your brand* and that domains should represent the core of your brand.

Whether you’re an economist who writes books and publishes videos like me or an artist, an entertainer or whatever, it would be the biggest mistake of your career to ignore social media.

Like Gary Vaynerchuk frequently says, and he’s a guy who *lives* in the social media world, he doesn’t really care about social media itself. He cares about attention and if people’s attention just so happens to be on social media apps these days, then that’s just the way it is and he’s going to leverage that.

Perfect mindset!

But that same Gary Vaynerchuk, who makes as much as six figures per public appearance by the way, is in no way dependent on one social media platform or another.

If facebook tells him to leave, no problem.

If twitter bans him, he will do just fine.

If all the social media platforms he’s on give him the boot, his brand is so strong that people will just search his name on Google and find out what he’s up to.

His brand, that’s the key term here.

Gary is not a slave of social media, social media is his slave. Therein lies the key to making this stuff work as far as I’m concerned.

Let’s be honest: perhaps the main problem with social media platforms is that you’re at their mercy. If you do something wrong, they can easily close down your account and there’s pretty much nothing you can do about it. You can appeal that decision but yeah… good luck with that. Even if you did nothing wrong and your account got flagged as a result of an error, it doesn’t matter, they dropped the hammer on you and don’t particularly care about your problems.

It is what it is.

Instead of saying it could never happen to you and building a business that *depends* on these platforms, I’d recommend assuming the worst case scenario will unfold and building a brand that, while leveraging everything social media has to offer, is robust enough not to depend exclusively on it.