Every time I am about to share information with other people I can transform that information into a blog post like I am doing now. When I create a blog post, I get to own my content and control my content. I can then share a link to my post on all of my social media networks. I can also update my blog post so that all of the links I shared get updated as well. Because I own my content and organize it on my website, I can easily share ideas and respond to people with a simple link to a blog post.

I created a lot of content on The Zeitgeist Movement forums around the year 2010. I may never get that content back if Peter Joseph lost that database or decides he won’t make it available to me in some way. I mentioned this story to Grizwald Grim and he introduced me to a word called digital sharecropping.

The risk of digital sharecropping is real. And there are similar risks like Facebook removing your account or YouTube demonetizing your channel. Besides these risks and many more, there are many benefits to using your own website.

One benefit is the ability to learn more about your audience and your network. I can integrate Google Analytics into my website. I can then understand how many people are visiting my website and which posts are most popular. I can also see who is driving traffic to my website. I could create affiliate links and recognize people who drive visitors, leads, and conversions. Or I could help people find what they need among my affiliate network who recognize me for visitors, leads, and conversions.

There are more benefits to this kind of content creation workflow. This workflow encourages me to give more attention to the information I am sharing. I can do things like spell check. I can review my writing many times. I can use version control to show how my ideas and the presentation of my ideas change over time as other people review my content and provide feedback. I can also funnel people’s feedback into a specific location of my choosing which can also be updated over time. It can be very challenging to integrate people’s feedback when it is spread across every social media network.

notes

I just updated the last sentence which had a mistake. Nobody has pointed this mistake out to me even though I have shared this post with more people than all of my other posts. I can’t seem to find people who care about doing good work. Maybe my latest post will help encourage and inspire more people to care about this work.