As the CEO of MarsBased, I do a lot of founder-led marketing. I have always been heavily inspired by the founders of companies like Buffer, Ghost or Basecamp/37Signals, whose founders are prominent voices in their space and their content is usually spot on.

As a bootstrapped company, we have never had much budget for marketing, so I've had to write all of the blog posts, produce and edit our podcast and host our own events, with some help here and there from my team.

After ten years of doing this, I'm realising that we're being sucked into a downward spiral of nonsense.

#1: Social Media sucks. Big time.

The golden days of social media are gone.

Twitter has been going down the shitter, Facebook has long since lost its hook, LinkedIn is rotting from within, Instagram is home to a lot of scam, BlueSky feels thriving but in less than three years it'll die, Mastodon is just a couple of engineers keeping the lights on and TikTok causes mental gridlock.

Jokes aside - or not - the truth of the matter is: all of them lie. X claims ownership on all accounts, Bluesky is not decentralised, all of them resell your data, Telegram & others filter your data to governments and security forces, Facebook and Twitter have been used to manipulate elections in many countries, and the list goes on.

What was popular in 2014 is not there anymore. Luckily, no one built a huge following on Google+, but those who placed a hard bet on Twitter are finding now that their audiences are moving on to something else, and their follower count, engagement metrics and, eventually, revenues, will plummet.

Is it better to bet it all on a single platform or to spread it out among a few of them? I've done the latter but I am not an expert in the subject.

Here's my advise, use them to your advantage for as long as they're worth the risk but don't bet your everything on any of them.

#2: Rules change all of the time

You won't beat the algorithm. Some of the most brilliant marketers out there are spending thousands of dollars - maybe millions - to learn how does the new Google ranking algorithm search or whether Twitter now demotes tweets with links to external sites or even mentions.

Some businesses went down the drain when Google changed from Panda to Pangolin or whatever stupid names those versions of the search algorithm had.

Businesses, business models and brands built on top of trends are more exposed to risk.

Build for independence and your business/project won't be affected by these whims and marketing shifts.

#3: Authenticity wins...

One way to stand out from the vast sea of social media and marketing mediocrity is to be yourself but that only works when you are interesting to a relevant number of people and - more importantly - you can reach them.

I love vocal people with interesting takes and blunt opinions so long as they're authentic. If I somehow perceive even the faintest smell of engagement bait, it drives me off like crazy and I stop following that person/brand.

Look, even Ghandi advocated for violence sometimes to get his message out.

As much as it pains me, my anti-capitalist takes on startups and business stand out pretty well on social media. I'd love to see my blog posts or podcast episodes soar on social media, but I get the most attention when I call out fraudsters or slam dunk on ubercapitalist dipshits on LinkedIn.

Look, Keith Rabois is famous for being an asshole to a lot of people on the internet. I have too been insulted by Keith Rabois. But he's the biggest asshole of them all.

Don't be like Keith Rabois.

#4: ... but unauthentic shit sells more

Contradicting the previous point, the algorithms nowadays reward engagement. Unfortunately, this game of incentives is easily corrupted: people use automation tools, bots galore and other tricks to game the system.

This, in turn, will only cause another change in the algorithm and the righteous pay for the sinners.

Over the years, I have conducted a few experiments. I have shared a few pieces of content that I knew would generate outrage and my post has become viral. Take a look at this tweet where I sarcastically complained that in Galicia they don't write their signs in Spanish either (only Catalans seem to get the backlast for this in this country). But there are other examples of this.

I know people who use strategically this kind of content every once in a while to attract more followers and, who knows, because it's fun. Others overdo it like Vala Afshar (Chief Visionary at Salesforce) or Guy Kawasaki. I guess they're so rich that they don't care anymore and they can have an entire squad of overpaid professional baiters posting every piece of viral shit they come across because their real KPIs are: engagement, virality, reach and hours spent frying on acid per week.

... if all is terrible, what do we do now?

Wait, not only everything is terrible, some things are even more terrible than they used to be:

• Open rates in newsletters mean nothing when most email clients auto-open emails for you.
• Some platforms like Substack and X are committed to free-spech but only for far-right nuts.
• I lost my 9000 subscribers email list of Startup Grind because of an internal policy I didn't think through when I joined.
• Instagram can take away your handle and give it away to a celebrity.
• Most influencers I know barely make a living out of their social media efforts. They have to sell services and take projects here and there to make a living.

... and I could go on for hours.

The main takeaway is that the landscape is hostile. Only a really small subset of individuals make money off social media and they're slaves to it. Only a smaller subset enjoy it. On the other hand, one in every 50 women in the US is on OnlyFans. That is terrifying.

While we could succumb to the impending doom, despair and hopelessness, there are a few things I will continue doing to make the world a better place to be in:

• Continue running a healthy self-sustainable business like MarsBased.
• Create employment outside of big cities to help distribute wealth.
• Create content worth reading/watching/consuming telling people there are better ways to work.
• Empower other people through my angel investments and other side-projects.
• Employ friends and family whenever possible.
• Use big tech companies to my advantage even though I know I am the prey.
• Distribute my risk among platforms, projects and investments to play the long-term game.

Stuff worth sharing & asks

As per usual, some are mine!

• If you're doing Secret Santa in your company, here's a great (free) tool.
• I'm creating a mobile app for a side-project with Bolt.new and HOLY SHIT.
• Love to see old-school Spanish economists being wrong about things like bitcoin.
• The Glovo farce continues. Destroying workers rights in the name of ¿¿¿innovation??? (in Spanish)
• Good article to help to see if you should invest through a holding company or not, in Spain (in Spanish).
• 🎙️ We discuss non-neurotypical people (like me) at Foc a Terra (in Catalan).
• 🎙️ Life on Mars - Interview with John O'Nolan (founder of Ghost).
• 👽 We're looking for a marketer at MarsBased!