If you're building a brand, you'll probably find your strong point at one of the big social media platforms: Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn or YouTube or Pintrest or some other one. A majority of your new fans and followers and customers will come from these places. That's great and smart -- if you're doing business, do it where the people are.

What this post asks however, is, what would you do if one of those mediums was no longer available to you in the same form as it is now?
I don't have any insider information; I don't think Facebook is shutting down operations any time soon. What I  am saying, though, is that the platforms that many of us built our names on don't belong to us; we don't have as much control over them as we think.
Think about it: LinkedIn could have a huge malfunction and accidentally delete your entire carefully-built profile and all your precious contacts. Nothing you can do about it. Facebook, as we've seen by their recent actions, is driven by prospects of profit these days. What happens when Facebook  takes away any features which are now free and says, "pay up or lose it"?

You need something you own 100% and have complete control over. Your own website or network is where you call every shot, lord over all changes and decide how and when the money comes in. Nothing any other company does decides what happens on your platform; you're in charge. Always.

You need to build your own ark. Your ark is your sanctuary on a rainy day (and a sunny day).  Your ark is the place your fans and customers can find you any time and all the time. Your ark is your main hub of activity, where I can find out all I need to know about you, can easily get in touch with you (no "I-barely-check-it" excuses on your ark), and keep up on everything you want us to know. Your ark deserves the bulk of your attention and energy. It is yours, after all.

You don't own your Twitter profile or your Facebook Page. Twitter or Facebook could change their minds about how they do things whenever they want and we are all beholden to those decisions. That's reality. We can sit back, deny the possibility and ignore it. Or we can build our arks -- our  houses -- and make them our homes. Who knows -- we may need to actually live in them one day.