A week ago, this message might have meant absolutely nothing. But when Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram experience a global outage – taking campaigns and sponsored posts along with them – it’s a message worth paying attention to. Especially for brands.
"Ask yourself, if Facebook’s properties shut down tomorrow, would you be effectively communicating your brand's values, ethos and mission to the world?” Chloe Schneider of Bohemia raises an important point. In other words, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. It’s unwise to base the entirety of your business on a platform that’s at the mercy of tech failures, algorithms and shifting attention spans.
Author Luvvie Ajayi Jones took the point further. She advised her followers to build ownership of the way they reach their audiences beyond the “walled gardens” of social media. “You have to have your own website, blog, platform, newsletter, text community. Whatever it is. So you can still reach the people most important to you."
It’s one of the reasons S&T so values this newsletter. Having a direct line of communication to a community of people who care about words and who (hopefully) choose to open and engage with it each week. And yes you will still find us posting niche editing memes on Insta.
The Advice
“If you get people to commit to an email relationship, it’s the deepest, most intimate relationship you can have online. Much deeper than Facebook and certainly more intimate than a blog.”
A quote by entrepreneur Jason Calacanis
The Interview
Homethings has a strong and active TikTok presence and still finds the time to build its community through its newsletter, The Tap. When we interviewed Brand & Community Manager Loïs Mills, she told us: “So many brands use newsletters as a way to just sell, sell, sell but I see our newsletter as an opportunity to breathe more life and depth into our brand and to give Homethings the ‘human’ quality of being multidimensional.”
Sustainable packaging brand noissue is a great example of a brand taking ownership over its online presence. Not only do they have an online blog, but they recently launched a new podcast, Conscious Commerce, showing us that sustainability doesn't have to be a scary word in business.
Our co-founder Kate features as their first guest, addressing how businesses can effectively and responsibly use language to communicate their sustainability values.
We're now all set up on Bookshop.org so you can see what the team is reading and a few of our favourite brand and copywriting books. When you buy from Bookshop.org you're supporting independent bookstores. And we're donating the 10% affiliate cut from our store to BookTrust, the UK's largest children's reading charity.
