Businesses: you must own your online audience

This past weekend there was a trail running event which I missed b/c I am not on FB anymore! Since closing my FB account I wonder what else will I be missing; sadly, it seems a great deal.

I always tell my clients: own your audience, only use FB as a channel to drive traffic to your own website/app. However, I see them going in the opposite direction.

What is the problem?

When you do not own the audience nor the space where your audience gathers, you miss a lot of tools: newsletters, adding features (except the features FB implements for FB Pages), engagement, full control of what you can say, full control of what your audience can do. More importantly: the wall/river is broken: your message gets lost in a river of noise, unless you pay to highlight it on a banner/ad, but even then it will be mostly ignored.

"You need a FB account" cannot be a pre-requisite for your potential/existing clients to interact with you online.