On March 14th 2019, Facebook and Instagram went down around the world for millions of users for 10+ hours.
It was dubbed The Great Facebook and Instagram Outage of 2019. And really, some great memes came out of it!
In all seriousness, though, social media outages (especially ones as long as this) serve as a good reminder to “not put all your eggs in one basket”. Many businesses, especially those solely relying on Facebook and Instagram marketing, became stuck for those 10+ hours. They were at the mercy of the tech giants.
But what if Facebook, Meta Ads Manager, or Instagram were to go down and never resurface? That’s a scary proposition!
It pays to be prepared so that if/when there is another Instagram and/or Facebook meltdown, you’ve done the work to help keep your digital marketing presence afloat.
Here’s how:
Build an email list
Make sure you’re always working towards getting your social media followers onto your email list. You “own” your email list, but you don’t own your Facebook etc. pages.
Use more than one social media platform
Don’t rely on just one or two platforms to market your business. Work on building your presence on others as well. This could be LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok.
Maintain an updated website
Make sure your website is robust and you’re keeping it updated with content (like blogs) & make sure that your email list opt-in forms are visible and easily accessible.
Utilise other digital marketing channels
Be on the look out for new and different digital marketing strategies that could serve your business now (or in the future if other methods become obsolete). These strategies could be SEO, content marketing (specially in relation to your website/blog), email marketing, influencers, video/YouTube, podcasting, events, other social media channels, other paid advertising avenues like Google Ads, Youtube, and WeChat.