Would your Business Survive without Social Media?

On 4th October 2021, the world chewed a social media blackout. 

Well, not entirely all, but social media giants – Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp were all down. It took place for about 6 hours and the remaining platforms like Twitter, TikTok etc., went ablaze as everyone flocked there. Twitter and other brands seemed to be enjoying the attention.

This outage happens to be the worst ever yet for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his team. In fact, here is part of the statement he gave following the blackout;

I wanted to share a note I wrote to everyone at our company.

Hey Everyone: its been quite a week, and I wanted to share some thoughts with you.

First, the SEV that took down al; our services yesterday was the wort outage we’ve seen in years. We’ve spent the past 24 hours debriefing how we can strengthen our systems against this kind of failure. This was also a reminder of how much our work matters to people. The deeper concern with an outage like this isn’t how many people switch to competitive services or how much money we lose, but what it means for the people who rely on our services to communicate with loved ones, run their business, or support their communities.

We can all agree that we are all highly dependent on social media platforms. For the most part, this glitch affected many businesses.

How can we mitigate risks and over-dependence on these platforms? 

On 4th October 2021, an influencer went on Twitter to share how it just dawned on him that his career depended on the platforms that went down – Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. His job was centered around the number of followers he had and how easy and fast it was to communicate to his international clients. He went on to say that he didn’t have a backup, and if social media platforms went down for two months, he wouldn’t have an alternative source of income.

Similarly, there are online businesses that operate on social media platforms full time. We need to ask ourselves if our businesses would survive without social media platforms. Would your users still find you? We have some suggestions. 

Mitigate your risks by:

Having a website

A website is your personal space governed by you. You determine its presence online. Once you have designed and developed your website, redirect your social media content to the site. Ensure your website is well optimized and your users can navigate easily. Let them get used to it so that in the event such a glitch happens, they’ll know where to interact with your business.

Diversifying your social presence 

The rule of thumb in investments is, spread your risks. Ensure you have your business across different but relevant platforms. There are many social media platforms to choose from, i.e. – Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, WeChat, WhatsApp etc. Ensure brand consistency across all platforms and link them to your site.

Be mentally prepared

While this may sound like less of a strategy, mental health is critical. When such things happen, some people may be thrown off into a dark space of depression like the influencer mentioned above. It dawned on him that all his hard work could go down the drain in a split of a second, unexpectedly. 

We may think we’ve seen it all; but we may have more adventure ahead of us. It’s time to flex your strategies and stay dynamic. Reach out to our team which is ready to help you come up with a Digital Strategy for your online business.