Facebook Down: Don't let your business go down when social media does.

All Facebook company apps went down today (Oct. 4, 2021) including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. If your business is relying heavily on one or two apps, let's rethink how we strategize your digital presence.

If you’re freaking out then you need a better plan!

Even if you're not freaking out, we still need a great plan! I want to talk about how to avoid having your business being affected too much by social media. And to avoid going down when social media does!

As a small business, I would hope that you have taken advantage of social media to reach your target audience and grow your relationship with your customers and clients. However, I also hope you have taken measures to stay connected with that audience off of social media should something happen, like Facebook going down, just as one example.

For small businesses that rely heavily on an online presence (and who doesn't these days?!), a platform going down or ceasing to exist can be damaging.

And let's face it, a digital presence is pretty much a necessity in today's business marketing world. Your audience expects it; A large percentage do their research on these apps before making purchase decisions.

Social media can be great to expand your audience by possibly hundreds of thousands, helping you reach a global audience and boosts business and sales.

But what happens if it goes down or your account is suspended for whatever reason? Your audience can vanish overnight. All that rapport gone. You lose contact. Putting you back at square one in building an online audience.

If you currently heavily use on one or two apps to build your business’s digital presence then you are relying on the success of another company (like Facebook) to keep yours afloat.

So what should you do? Here are my top tips to build a strong online presence:

Diversify your following!

Make sure your digital following is spread across various platforms.

Don't rely on one company to keep your digital presence afloat.

Use a mix of Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google My Business... These are all owned by different companies.

Be sure to cross promote your content across various platforms and drive traffic to your website and a lead generation, like a free guide, that people can download in return giving you an email address.

Have a website with great SEO

Build a website with great SEO and quality content!

YOU OWN your website!

Get familiar with what keywords people are searching related to your industry. Create your own content in the form of blogs to generate traffic to your own site.

Allow people to subscribe to your blog as well, this helps you to start a contact list of interest prospects.

Build an email campaign.

If one day your social account goes kaput. Then what happens to all those followers and leads?

They're gone!

Start building an email list today if you haven’t already! This allows you to stay in touch with interested prospects. Don't rely on any third-party, like social media, alone.

All it takes is one email per week to stay top of mind with an interested audience.

Check out this blog on how to avoid losing everything to social media, because today this is more important than ever. You can also check the status of Facebook an other platforms at downdetector.com