Yesterday, the world experienced something catastrophic. It wasn’t a zombie apocalypse, nor was it the start of another World War. However, both Facebook and Instagram were down for a considerable amount of time. This had a devastating effect on many digital influencers and businesses. It has though, shown us 5 vital business lessons we should all take away from the events of yesterday.
1. You can’t run a business solely on social media
Right, I’ve said it, I’ve said it hundreds of times in the past and it further cements my beliefs. You simply cannot run your business through social media alone. Look Facebook and Instagram alongside the rest of the other social media platforms can break or even disappear with the click of the button.
If you have absolutely no other means of income or connection to your customer base, they too will go. Instead of solely relying on social media, think of it more as a tool to complement your business. A way of funnelling your potential customers to your website.
2. A website is essential
A speedy, well-built website is essential in business. Without social media how are people going to find you? You should use your Facebook and Instagram social channels to push people to your website. Therefore you need to have a responsive website.
Benefits of having a good website, not only build trust but also being self-hosted through WordPress and either Bluehost or GoDaddy means that you own all of the content so unlike Facebook and Instagram going down for 1 day, 1 week or forever, you hold all the content and data on the space of the internet you pay for.
3. Email lists are the crux of it all
No doubt you’ll have heard people preaching the money is in the list. It really is, use social channels to really grow your email list. Offer FREE downloads or content, maybe even a discount in exchange for their email address.
Once you have your potential customers in a sales funnel you can send them your latest updates from your blog, drive them back to your site with an offer or even just give them some advice about topics in your niche. This is probably the most important takeaway. Start building your list today!
4. Always have a plan
It’s true, you should always have a multi-pronged attack regardless of what your business does. Social media is only a small part of this and all of your prongs should fit together seamlessly, but also if one prong is missing (either temporarily or indefinitely) then your marketing and community building efforts should still work effectively.
For example, posting content that links on your social channels to your latest blog post which is explaining Spring’s trends which is an extension of the offer in your newsletter.
If you’re a Lawyer Facebook Marketing could work really well for gaining clients from testimonials and word of mouth recommendations, however, you should also be focusing on ranking well in searches in your local area and being found without the use of social channels too.
If your newsletter didn’t send at least you have your blog and your socials to promote across, or if your socials were down you still can promote the new collection through other means. Always make sure a marketing strategy is one of the most important parts of business meetings, or if you are a solopreneur then make sure you check in on your marketing strategy monthly.
If you’re looking for how to align your business, grow your exposure online, increase website traffic and social following then we highly recommend auditing your business. Our easy to implement guide can help you make huge improvements to your business.
Audit Your Business
Struggling to make an impact online? Do you want to supercharge your sales and socials in as little as a couple of hours? We’ve created a fool-proof guide to help you grow your business online, make more money and explode your social media channels with our Audit Your Business Guide.
The guide features an easy step-by-step walkthrough of how to align your website and social …
5. Social proof your business
I hear it all the time that you should only focus on 1 or 2 social media channels and while I agree with that to some extent having a presence on the main four accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter) is always good practice but focus on the ones that bring the most traffic to your website, whilst also trying to drive traffic from other sources such as blog posts, having really good SEO which increases your organic search visibility. Utilise your newsletter, review sites such as TripAdvisor or Trustpilot.
Create your own community away from social media because at the end of the day, tomorrow it could disappear and so too could your business!
What did you learn from the outage yesterday? I’d love to know in the comments below. As always, if you found value in this article I’d love you to share this across your social media.
Drop your email address into the box below and we'll send you our free Social Media Strategy guide immediately to help you create an impacting marketing strategy for your business now.
