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Last week, I showed you how you can use YouTube to rank your pages on Google. This is a technique that I highly recommend. But there is a downside – you don’t own your content that you post to YouTube.  That’s right, many companies are discovering that their YouTube channel is not their asset, but YouTube’s. In fact, I had a friend that was recently banned from YouTube. He was posting content that YouTube deemed to be too similar, with the direct intention of “driving people away from YouTube and onto another website,” so they banned him from posting. The amazing this was, he was providing valuable content – it was not spam. He appealled his case to YouTube and was denied.

The technique I described in last week’s article of course is meant to do exactly that: create similar videos all with the intent of driving traffic to your website. What this means is that it coudlget you banned from YouTube.  So should you still do this? The answer of course is yes, but you may need to do it slowly so as to not raise any red flags with YouTube’s AI (artificial intelligence) bots. But remember, you don’t own your YouTube channel and therefore, you cannot rely on it for hosting important content.

This goes for all social media, podcasts, websites and any place you put content on. When you don’t own the asset, you can’t call the shots, and any income stream derived from those places that you have content on could at anytime pull the plug without warning and kill your livelihood. If you want to control your own content you need your own platform. That is why…

I recommend having yourown website and hosting your own content. Clearly, you want to use social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and of course YouTube to get discovered, but you cannot rely on them for hosting your content or deriving your income from them. I personally use most of the social media platforms, and I syndicate my podcast to iTunes and IHeartRadio. But my blog posts are hosted on my website. My podcasts are hosted on my website. I do not use a free hosting service that can go away.When hosting videos, a paid service like Vimeo is better for storing long term content (although it is less effective that YouTube for being found). Free services have their place and can be very effective for marketing, but it is much like renting versus buying real estate.

Remember, if you want to control your own content you need your own platform.

If you’d like to get more information about this for your business or you need help making this happen for your business, check out my coaching options at http://bit.ly.coachingwithgreg.