I was fantastic with Google+

I thought Google+ was a great product. I dug in deep, and developed a solid following on there. Today, that’s worth absolutely nothing.

It’s good to develop strong skills in a particular area, but it’s even better to develop skills that don’t rely on a particular piece of technology or a single service.

My Google+ experience makes me feel like the fish that Stephen Jay Gould referred to when he said:

“Even if fishes hone their adaptations to peaks of aquatic perfection, they will all die if the pond dries up.”

It’s a tricky balance. On one hand, you don’t want to go too wide. Most people that try to be super active on a dozen different social media platforms tend to end up with mediocre outcomes in all them. On the other hand, relying on a single platform for your reach isn’t ideal either — that’s Donald Trump’s biggest problem with having been kicked off of Twitter.

In my case, I should have done a better job of building the public to private bridge that David Perell has talked about. My email list is growing nicely now (come join it!), but I should have been working harder on it years ago. The more you can attract people to places that you truly own (like email lists and blogs), the more sustainable your efforts will be in the long run.