Earlier I talked about your homebase and how it’s the one place where all of your stuff should end up.

The importance of this is that it’s something you can control and change.

But it alone may not be enough for you.

Even if you work hard to build it up, you won’t just have clients show up knocking on your door. For that, you need to attract them.

And to attract them, you need to put some of your "stuff" elsewhere.

These other places are what I call satellite sites (because they revolve around your homebase like how satellites orbit Earth. Or like a radar system orbits a secret volcano lair…)

The prime example of this is with social networks, especially Twitter.

You can create on them, but then your content is under the platform’s control and risk. In extreme cases you could lose what you’ve created there (e.g. content, connections, permission to contact people, etc.)

But if you create on your own site and broadcast that to Twitter, you can take advantage of keeping control while still using the reach of Twitter (or Facebook, or any other satellite site).

This strategy becomes really effective when you use multiple satellite sites. One creation on your site might turn into a few tweets on Twitter, a post to Facebook, a share on Google plus, a Github project…

The other side of using satellite sites is that you need to draw people back to your homebase. Basically, get people off of Twitter or Facebook.

Once again, this is because of control.

At any time, a satellite site can shutdown or change and you might be unable to reach the people you’ve connected with. But if you drew people back to your homebase and got them to subscribe to your newsletter, then you can reach them on your schedule when you need to.

Remember, these satellite sites are much larger than you. They have their own purpose and reason to exist. They might not be actively hostile towards you, but they also don’t really truly care about your business. At least not as much as you care about it.

Play by their rules and use them to get what you need. But don’t be afraid of dumping them when they don’t work.

Eric Davis