4 Ways To Be Prepared for The Next IG Apocalypse

The Great Facebook Outage of 2021 made us all re-examine certain aspects of our lives: how much time we spend on social media, where we get our information without it, and for creators, how much of our business and livelihoods depend on external platforms. Some of us may have realized that no one in our community would know where to find us if we couldn't pop up on their feeds anymore.

If you were freaking out without access to your content creation business on IG, here are 7 things you can start doing right now to protect your assets in the future.

1. Take a multi-channel approach

If there were ever an argument for sharing your content across multiple mediums, the IG crash makes the case. You've heard about expanding your pipeline for monetary gain, but being able to take advantage of outages on one platform to promote yourself on others is a great opportunity. The winners of the week were the tweets, podcasts, and Youtube videos we turned to when our primary scrolling mechanism was no longer available.

How many of these channels does your have a presence on?

Facebook Instagram Twitter Pinterest YouTube TikTok LinkedIn Tumblr Reddit Snapchat Telegram Medium LTK

2. Host content on your own blog/website

Wait, we forgot a major channel of importance in that list up there! Your OWN website/blog 😱

Having a multi-channel presence is super important, as we said, but you still don't own any of those channels. We're strongly in the camp that all digital creators today need their own website where they can post information and share their content with followers. You should be driving to your own blog as often as possible through other social channels!

3. Email can be a great friend

Having an email list is an essential part of running any small business, and content creators are no exception. Whether you offer exclusive content or affiliate discounts to newsletter subscribers or come up with an inventive way to communicate with your followers via email, having a warm email list is the most direct way to get in touch with your community. Take this epic example we noticed during this week's FB downtime:

Of course the stars at Women In Influencer Marketing thought of this, but just imagine if you'd had the opportunity to drive the aimless masses to your content this week! And if you DO already have an email list...don't you wish you'd thought of this? We sure do.

4. But SMS is the new email

I know, we literally JUST told you to get an email list going. But, with changes in privacy rules on the new iOS affecting deliverability rates and spam filters (how we hate thee, Google promotions tab) SMS is poised to become a major player. Don't get me wrong, it's still important to email people. But you might also want to nudge them via text about the awesome content waiting in their inbox. When creating a sign-up list, it's simple enough to ask for opt-ins to both!

Ultimately, if you change your thinking from external platforms (that you don't own or control, like IG) as the host of your business to being just some of the ways you MARKET your business, you'll have more resources that you own and control the next time something like this happens, and your community will have other ways to find your content.