After I started getting into digital marketing a couple of years ago, I kept hearing the word “platform” being thrown around a lot. It was used like this:
Businesses need to build a platform to get their message out.
Writers should build a platform if they want to get noticed by publishers.
A large enough platform helps bloggers land book deals.
The number of ways it was used went on and on, but quite frankly, it annoyed me. I was sick of hearing people talking about platform this and platform that.
As a marketer, I cared more about sales and conversions. I cared about how many visitors turned into customers, not how many turned into Twitter followers.
I felt like Allen Iverson in his famous rant about practice (in case you’ve never seen it, a video is embedded at the end of this post). My rant would have gone something like this:
