Social Media – The Perpetual Question

Web2.0 and Social Media Works – I don’t care what the skeptics have to say, but we have proven it and keep coming up with new ideas to implement on a regular basis. Sometimes I feel like I am preaching to the choir here on Agent Genius because if you are taking the time to read here, it means that you get it and don’t need reinforcing.

Today’s post is different – it’s about questioning your business practices and the way that you may be approaching your options. So instead of asking if your blogging and social media outlets are working I will ask this:

What would happen to your business if your blog or favorite Social Media Site were to disappear tomorrow?

What if you had no control of keeping that blog live and it went “poof” into cyberspace? I’m not here to tell you about my personal experience and I’m not here to point fingers, blame others or tell you what blogging platform to choose. I want to plant a seed to see if you are prepared to face a major problem if it ever came your way.

I know many of you are geeky enough to know to back up your blogs and content on a regular basis but others depend on web-hosts to do it for you.

The question still remains – if your current servers went down tomorrow, or your web-host got sucked into a black hole in the blogosphere….do you have a plan?

Who would you blame?

Blaming others for mistakes or problems is not an option, on the contrary, you would have to blame yourself for making the wrong choice not being prepared … or worse yet, for not questioning and falling into the “naive” category. Many of us with successful blogs have been discussing how we cannot place all our eggs in one basket, how there are tons of nice people in the real estate blogiverse but it does not necessarily mean that they would have your best interest at hand. We have also discussed how there are a lot of people out there that seem to know what they are doing, but there is no real way to tell (I know….that one is the most frustrating).

So here I will continue playing devil’s advocate just to make you think and hopefully to help you prevent any future problems with your already successful Internet marketing methods:

If you only have one website/blog, what would happen if it would go down from one day to the next?
Does it make sense to have several sites just in case?
Does an open platform (WordPress or Typepad) make more sense than a proprietary one based on the fact that you would have more control? – This includes sites like Active Rain, other networking sites with blogs, as well as sites hosted on proprietary platforms.
Same applies to sites like Flickr and even Yahoo or Google (maybe a bit far fetched….but could happen) ….and God forbid Twitter!
Do you back-up your own content on a regular basis or do you trust your web-host to do it for you?
Do you know if you own your content, skin, data and could you take it with you anywhere and anytime you choose?
Would that content/skin/data be compatible with other platforms?
Do you copyright your content?
Have you granted rights to that content to the web-host/designer?
If you have a Lead Generation System, do you back up those contacts on a regular basis?
Are your back-ups safe and easily accessible

DO YOU HAVE CONTROL?

I am not a pessimist and I don’t like to look at worst case scenarios – but the idea is to keep the Perpetual nature of our business going and be ready for obstacles that could come our way (although I really hope they never do).

My job here is done – make sure you have a plan.

** original article on AgentGenius.com **