What’s After Facebook?

How small businesses can prepare for the next digital marketing shift

Image a collage created by Jason McBride from licensed Canva images

Mark Zuckerberg has made billions of dollars while smarter people than me have predicted Facebook’s impending doom. The company has become a global behemoth and a critical part of the digital marketing landscape for tens of thousands of small businesses.

Nothing lasts forever, and the shelf life of successful digital media properties is shorter than most other businesses. Facebook may not be in imminent danger of falling into bankruptcy, but its time as king of the internet is almost over.

Small businesses need to start preparing now for a future where Facebook has a much smaller reach.

Cracks in Facebook’s Defenses

Facebook’s dominance has been fueled by an aggressive user attraction strategy, innovative ad technology, and by playing fast and loose with privacy laws and data security. While it has so far managed to avoid meaningful sanctions from any government oversight body, a reckoning is coming.

Currently, Facebook is facing an ad boycott by several major brands because of its refusal to do more to keep hate speech off of the platform. Advertisers such as Verizon, Microsoft, and Sony have pulled their dollars from Facebook. Every day the…