Social Media Carnage

Monday 4th October will go down in history as the day social media went into meltdown. So many businesses felt the brunt of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp outage for a couple of hours.

There is a famous saying, “Never put all your eggs into one basket”- unfortunately, that is what a lot of businesses have done and when something like this happens, it can be so damaging for your business.

Just looking at the overall picture, Mark Zuckerberg’s personal wealth nearly dropped by $7 billion, reported by Bloomberg.

Billions of people could not access their favourite apps as some required logins using Facebook

• People could not access their contacts through Whatsapp.
• Advertisers lost a day’s revenue through Facebook and Instagram Ads.
• Facebook groups were unable to share their content.
• Marketing Place sellers could not sell or post the products and goods for sale.
• Direct Messaging also took a huge hit from the outage of Facebook.

Plus, the inconvenience of not being able to post on these social networks brought up a lot of different views. Some people went and had a bath, read a book, went for a walk, others explored other social networks like Tik Tok, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Some examples of content posted the next day in the Facebook newsfeed

One of the big issues with taking to other Social Networks was an influx of users that have not used these networks in some time. This showed how much some businesses rely on Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp for business.

Some Plan B Solution You Can Implement 

I have spoken so many times about rented space online and this was the perfect example of why your website is so important. Also using other networks on a regular basis is imperative to the success of your business digitally.

When something like this happens we only realise how dependant we are on Facebook. I understand a lot of businesses target markets are on these networks. Think about the future and if this happened again and it may likely, have you a backup plan to keep your customers informed?

One of my suggestions to you is to bring yourself and your staff up to speed with the other networks available out there. You may be surprised that there could be other customers that do not know about you and therefore open up more opportunities to reach them.

I suggest that you update your website with relative content that you would normally post on Facebook and then guide them to your website for this information and expand on it there.  This also increases your visibility and ranking on Google.

Google My Business is another untapped social platform that is so underutilised. There are so many advantages to posting on Google my Business - from backlinks to showing up on other search terms related to your business on Google Search and photos to the location finder.

Final Thoughts.

Don’t just rely on one suite of Social Media Networks, branch out and look at the opportunities others can offer. Direct more visitors to your website, think about it this way, it is your bricks and mortar shopfront online.

My question to you is: Which one of the Networks did you miss the most, we would love to know post in the comments section below.

Always remember to download your data and contacts on a regular basis for these social networks, so you never lose your information.

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If you would like to discuss training, Social Media Management, Website development or digital consultancy services, please get in contact with Alan.