A common question people still ask online is whether now is a good time to start a blog. And if so, how do you actually grow it in a world dominated by social media?
What happens to your audience when the platform you built it on changes, disappears, or stops working in your favor?
It’s easy to focus on how many followers you have. It’s harder, but far more important, to think about ownership.
The Problem With Building on Social Media
Social media makes it easy to build an audience. With a few clicks, people can follow, subscribe, or engage with your content. The barrier to entry is low, and the numbers can grow fast if you go viral.
Yet those platforms are not neutral spaces. They change. Algorithms are unpredictable. Features disappear. Accounts get restricted or removed entirely… sometimes without explanation.
When that happens, the audience you thought you had could become unreachable. If your connection to your readers only exists through a third party, you don’t actually control that relationship.
Metrics vs. Real Engagement
Follower counts and subscriber numbers look impressive, but they don’t tell the whole story.
Most people only see what a platform chooses to show them in the moment. They don’t scroll endlessly. They don’t catch everything they missed. If your content hasn’t popped up at the right time, it might as well not exist.
The same applies to blogs and newsletters. You can have hundreds or thousands of subscribers. That doesn’t mean those people are actively reading or engaging with your work.
Numbers are easy to measure. Attention is not.
Why Depending on Social Media Is Risky
This doesn’t mean you should avoid third-party platforms like the plague. They can be valuable tools for distributing your content. The risk comes from relying on them too much.
If a platform goes down, blocks access to your account, or changes its business model, how easily can you reach your audience without it? If the answer is “I’m not sure,” that’s a problem that needs to be addressed now rather than later.
The Cost of Being Everywhere
Another challenge is over-extension. Trying to maintain a presence on every platform fragments your audience.
Sometimes people are told to go one place for updates, another for interacting with fellow readers or the author themselves, another for long-form content. Most of them won’t follow all those threads. Attention has limits. Being everywhere often leads to weaker connections.
Why Direct Communication is Still Important
With my audience, I’ve always tried to minimize the distance between us. No algorithms deciding what gets seen. No platforms filtering the conversation. Just direct communication through my site or one-to-one interaction.
That approach isn’t always convenient. It can be messy but it means the people engaging with my work are doing so intentionally. Not because some platform put it in front of them.
That kind of connection with fans is harder to build, but it’s also harder to lose.
Use the Tools, Don’t Let Them Use You
Social media platforms aren’t inherently bad. They’re powerful tools, but they should be used to build a foundation for content creators, not replace it.
Build something you have ownership and control over first. Let social media help extend your reach, not define it. What you do today should still work for you tomorrow. Regardless of which services rise, fall, or reinvent themselves next.
Use the tools wisely.
📌 Changelog
- December 16, 2025: Changed the formatting and re-wrote some sections to improve the flow.
- December 19, 2008: Date article was originally published.
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