Now that Elon Musk has bought Twitter, are you going to leave the platform?
That’s the question of the day (or week), but instead of answering that question, I’m going to steer you to another development taking place in the social media space. It is quiet, barely noticed, but it’s happening.
Many people, many of them content creators, are getting tired of having their distribution channels dictated by the rules of the few. So, they are moving on to platforms that enable them to take more control of how they can reach their followers and readers.
The main appeal of these tools is that they are not algorithm-driven. Meaning, whether your content gets seen or not does not depend on the platform’s distribution rules of the day. Instead, these are merely distribution tools to use.
For example, take Substack, a popular online tool used by millions of creators to send newsletters. If something happens to the platform, the rules change etc, users can take away their mailing lists to another platform that best suits their needs.
Newsletters are gaining popularity
For the last few weeks, I’ve been stumbling on more and more writers who are moving away from their blogs to write on Substack. Many say that they just “want to write more freely”.
The usual advice you hear is that you should publish your content on your website: you own the content and have more control. But more and more content creators realise that Google is increasingly dominated by commercial bodies with deep advertising pockets. They can afford SEO experts to optmise their websites and content, most content creators can’t. Email tools like Substack gives them the option to rise above that.
Fascinating times in the content world.
I’ve recently done the same, and I’ve never felt freer as a writer. And as a reader? Boy, I’m really excited by the content I’m reading from fellow creators. I realised with a start, how much effort it was beofre to find this content on Google search.