Are you leaving money on the table?

[Healthelp]

What would you do if Facebook decided to close down? What would you do with all your contacts? Many people rely on the inbox there and rely on it as their website. Basically, if you are not capturing your contacts and putting them into your own email system, you are leaving money on the table. Facebook changes all the time, you don't have to play the game. Creating your own email lists (the proper way) puts you in control of when, and what info your leads get to see and how often! Social media is meant to be a gateway to you directly!
What are your thoughts?

[talfighel]

Linda,

Great post.

You also can not rely on one traffic source. You need to have multiple places getting you a bunch of traffic. If on dries up, you still have others getting you traffic.

[Catherine L]

Wise words, indeed.

1. Build an email list.
2. Use multiple traffic sources.

This is the way to go for long-term stability.

[Robin Bull]

I don't use FB all that much aside from my fan page and managing the fan pages of my clients. I have other ways to generate traffic. I try to save FB just as my occasional time waster.

[mwldream]

For me most of my likes are also subscribers on my mailing list so it would never cause me too much grief.

[workathomebum]

I mostly use FB to follow bands I like and certain sources of information, like Business Insider, Psychology today, the local library etc. So my opinion might be a little skewed from the average FB user-- but I think if you have no means of contacting someone besides on FB, you probably wouldn't miss them much if FB suddenly shut down. If they're not already in your contact info in your phone or by regular email, then you're probably not too close to them anyways.

Just my view on it.