In an earlier version of the internet, publishers found social media as a convenient way to reach their audience while expanding reach to new interested readers. It wasn’t long until the gates began to close leaving publishers unable to reach the same audience they had weeks before. Their audience became Facebook’s audience and Facebook began to monetize access to that to keep people on Facebook instead of pushing traffic to other sites. This continued for years until traffic barely trickled out of Facebook dropping from 16% to 2% at the time.
Every writer needs their own website
While Facebook offered a better way to reach an audience, others try to offer an easier way to publish to entice you to their platform. Unfortunately, this can be another form of a familiar problem. Without control of your platform, you are building your castle on someone else’s land. There are many who looked at Substack or similar platforms giving up their sites in the process. Now, even with control of the domain name, they have lost control of their data such as past posts and new ways to reach their audience. The new IndieWeb that is gaining popularity and presents a new opportunity for publishers and content creators .
Federated social media and new ideas like IndieWeb can integrate directly with your content allowing you to publish locally and syndicate everywhere. With that said, big platforms may not offer integration with small web ideas like these. That is where control of your platform and data are key. Classic options like RSS that we have covered before are still popular. Those work with new tools to help you control the publishing and syndication without becoming swallowed by yet another Big Tech platform.
WordPress: The Way to IndieWeb?
IndieWeb publishers commonly use software like WordPress as seen here on their site wiki, https://indieweb.org/WordPress The flexibility of the software and vast library of plugins make it an ideal way to get started. Most AI agents are very familiar with it making it easy to get started. You can use GPT 5.6 Luna now free with unlimited usage in ChatGPT to help with all WordPress questions. Those might include best theme editor for your use case and any popular open source plugins for site features you need from calendars to whole e-commerce systems.
The IndieWeb’s publish locally and syndicate widely concept helps you take and keep control of your audience. Instead of Facebook or Substack’s audience, they are directed to you on your platform in ways you control. Mastodon, Bluesky on AT Proto, and other federated social media help take this to another level by allowing you to control your social pages as well. You can always reach your audience without spending a dollar even if Facebook and others would like to charge you for access.
Stay tuned next time for more on control of your data and publishing!
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