What is that one risk that if you take, can literally cost you, your business?

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That one risk is relying on just one marketing platform to build your entire business.

This one platform can be: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, Amazon, Itunes or anything which is not your own website and/or email list.

Recently twitter announced that they are considering removing the ‘like’ button and I think they are most likely to remove it.

What that means, all those people (esp. trolls) who constantly seek validation on twitter through ‘likes’, will no longer get any incentive to tweet any more.

And the so called ‘influencers’ will loose all their perceived influence on twitter.

If you are one of those, who were tweeting all these years to get more and more likes, you are going to lose it all……very soon.

Likewise Facebook has suspended dozens of Fan pages (some with even million of fans) in the last couple of months.

Facebook organic reach is dying.

You can’t trust these third party platforms.

They don’t give a shit, how much time you invested building user engagement, following and fans on their platform or how much you spent advertising on their platform.

They are all private companies and are free to do whatever they live.

That’s why it is important that you diversify your traffic and revenue sources.

So if tomorrow, you are kicked out of one platform for whatever reason, you don’t lose everything.

This is not a epiphany.

I have been giving this advice to my clients for ages. Some listen and some don’t.

However I feel the need to reiterate my message after watching this podcast from ‘Russel Brunson’ (one of the top direct response marketer and owner of several multi-million dollars businesses).

In this podcast, Russel talks about his troubles with various marketing platforms and how he was kicked out, several times on multiple advertising platforms without any rhyme or reason:

You are taking great business and marketing risk by building your entire business on a platform which you don’t really own.

For example, if your major source of revenue, is from Amazon then that is a great business risk.

Amazon can kick you out any day any time without any prior notice without giving any explanation and in most cases there is no appeal.

Sames goes for Facebook and YouTube.

I have heard so many Facebook horror stories where the advertising account was suspended without citing any reason and where there was no way to appeal.

Also, it does not really matter how much you spend on a platform like Facebook.

Even if you spend millions of dollars a month on an advertising platform do not expect any impunity.

Facebook reserves the right to kick you out any day, any time without any prior notice.

Your millions of dollars of ad spend is still a drop in the ocean for Internet Giants like Facebook and Google.

They won’t go out of business, if they suddenly lose you as a customer.

Likewise YouTube can choose to de-monetize your videos, decrease your reach or suspend your channel any day any time without any prior notice.

So if all you do, in the name of marketing is ‘YouTube’ or ‘Facebook’ or ‘Google’ or ‘Linkedin’ then seriously re-consider your marketing strategy.

You have been warned.