There is a really good chance someone in your life has told you to never put all of your eggs in one basket. In the event you were ever tasked with moving every egg you owned from one point to another, this would be sound advice. It may not be necessary but, if the basket fails, you are suddenly out all of your eggs. I am sure any seasoned egg transporter would tell you that is a very bad thing. Never putting your eggs in one basket may be a sound proverb but, is it universally true? In social media, it’s starting to feel that way.
In the media world, there would be some baskets I’d be willing to put all my eggs in. For instance, NFL media rights. If I am CBS, NBC, FOX, or ESPN, this is a very expensive no-brainer. I have 50 years of history telling me the NFL delivers massive ratings every single Sunday. There are few things that reliable, though, which makes this old proverb applicable to our industry, especially in terms of promotion.
How you promote your product is critical in determining how much it is consumed, that is why putting all your promotional eggs in one basket is certainly a poor idea. X, formerly Twitter, is an excellent example in this discussion. The social network became what felt like the exclusive home to the discussion of live sporting events. In fact, it seemed live sports were what dominated Twitter. One could almost believe there were equal amounts of people watching the game and watching Tweets.
It was that belief that led every sports show and show host to make certain their Twitter presence was as prominent as possible. Twitter became the home of breaking sports news, it was an audio and video home for live shows, Twitter Spaces became a sports talk network unto itself. Even stodgy, old show hosts who had declared social media the downfall of modern society finally relented and signed onto the platform. In the sports talk world, Twitter felt as necessary as the microphone.
Then, overnight, Twitter had a new owner, an owner never known for being comfortable with the status quo. When Elon Musk purchased Twitter, he made no bones about the fact that he did so with changes in mind. To this point, most of the changes have been minor enough that it has not impacted in a major way how the sports world uses it. The changes have been plentiful enough, though, to show you just how small changes can impact an entire industry.
Twitter is the prime example of why it is a bad idea to have all of your promotional eggs in their basket. The changes in live video, story links, verified accounts and other areas could just as easily have been the elimination of those things. If the exclusive delivery of your show is Twitter video, what is your plan if the day comes when Elon Musk decides to charge for the right to stream video live?
Worse yet, what is your plan for the day Elon Musk might decide to charge for watching live videos on his platform? Musk is well within his rights to make those choices, they may even prove to be highly profitable but, if they don’t work for you or your audience, that is extremely bad news.
This is why we should cast a wide net in terms of promotion. Social media and video streaming platforms offer a free or low-cost option for promoting and delivering our product. In fact, these are the reasons why the barriers to entry in our profession have never been fewer. That said, we can’t afford to simply depend on just one. The minute they change something as small as their algorithms, our shows could be sunk.
Diversify. It is the only smart way to do this. We depend too heavily on promotion of our product to place it all in the hands of one platform. When we do that, we take a tremendous risk; if social media overseers decide overnight to make sweeping changes, our eggs are scrambled.
