It is getting harder and harder to be seen in the tsunami of stuff posted on various digital platforms.

The platform owners are wholesalers of eyeballs, their business is monetised by being the choke point between those who create material, and those who may benefit from seeing it.

Since the purchase of LinkedIn by Microsoft, the changes being made to generate a return on the $US26 billion paid have all been designed to build the case for monetising the access to the other side of the equation.

I have no problem with the principal, being paid for value delivered. However, for a small consultancy, wanting to inform, educate, demonstrate expertise, and add value, the costs can become significant.

There is an option.

Be really good, be different, and be of value to the few who really care.

Everything posted on the various ‘social’ platforms is first posted on my own digital home base, a point of distribution I own, so make the rules by which I operate, www.Strategyaudit.com.au . The alternative is to rely on platforms others own, where they make the rules by which you have to play.

For those who sometimes find value in what I write, subscribe to the posts on the site, rather than waiting to see them on LinkedIn or some other place, because you will miss most of  them.

Once subscribed, you have the option of reading them, or just skimming and moving on, the choice is yours, not that of an algorithm designed to extract rent for the privilege.

If the posts become less than valuable, unsubscribe. Easy.

For many years now the path has become increasingly clear: to be seen, you must own your own your digital real estate, not rent it from someone else. 

The recent changes in the LinkedIn algorithms have halved the number of people who see what I post, and moved them geographically. A set of eyeballs in Sydney is for me terrific, New York or Mumbai is of less value.

At some point soon I will simply stop posting outside my own digital real estate, relying on that oldest of marketing tools, word of mouth, to spread the word. At least then I know that those who see the stuff really care, perhaps learn, and might start a useful conversation, which is why I do it.

This is the last post for 2019. I hope it has been a good year for you.

As I sit here in Sydney, ringed by fire, and observe the impotence of the public governance  we have somehow inherited, the hubris and self interest that prevents sensible debate and change across our economy and social services, I can only believe we are at a tipping point. I remain an optimist, and hope against hope that 2020 sees the awakening of a feeling that we have to not only demand change for the better, but dig in and generate it, one by one, until it becomes unstoppable.

Merry Christmas, and I will see you next year