You Can’t Rely On Facebook Or Instagram To Connect With Your Customers
Where were you during the great Facebook outage of 2021? While the outage on October 4 may have been a nice break for some, it also showed artists and small business owners why they can’t rely on social giants to maintain their shops and connect with their customers.
Over the last decade Facebook and Instagram have become enormous parts of our lives. At this point both social giants have grown beyond places to connect with friends and family and have become all encompassing hubs for business.
Many small businesses have opted out of hosting their own website and instead rely on their Facebook or Instagram profiles to communicate and sell. Of course having an active social media presence on either of these platforms is good business, but what happens when your profile disappears? What happens when there is a long outage and you disappear from the internet? How will you communicate with your customers? How will you make sales when your only sales channel is gone?
Having a website and more importantly, an email list, is critical for any business. You need to own your own space on the internet.
What Happens When Your Account Disappears?
Facebook and Instagram are behemoth companies with billions of users all over the world. Sometimes profiles get hacked or deleted or disabled for no good reason -- that’s just life. If all of your communication takes place through your account and that is suddenly gone you are completely out of options. You could contact either giant but it’s unlikely that you will ever speak with a human being or have your problem looked into. You are just a small fish in a huge pond.
In addition to losing your account you lose all of your followers -- all of those customers or potential customers you have cultivated. If you’ve never tried to connect with them off platform by having them sign up for your email list you will likely never see them again unless they happen to follow your new account.
Accounts disappear all the time for no reason. They get hacked for no reason. If you put all of your eggs in Facebook’s basket and then the basket is stolen you are fresh out of eggs.
You Need To Have A Website
The way around this is to have your own website! Yes you can still use Facebook and Instagram and yes you can still sell there, but the key is that you aren’t ONLY selling there.
Making a website is incredibly easy with all sorts of services built to create simple and attractive websites by dragging and dropping what you want into place. Services like Squarespace are built specifically for people who want something nice and affordable but can’t code themselves.
If you sell online this is even more important because you want a direct hub for your online business that you control. You can create a site with that kind of shopability easily with Shopify or through Squarespace.
It doesn’t have to be fancy but your business needs a home base. You need a space independent of social media where you post information, communications and a link to your email list.
Turn Your Follower List Into An Email List
If your account disappears you lose all connection and communication with your followers. You don’t own them. But if you had them sign up to your email list you would own them.
Turning followers into email list subscribers is important. You need to own your contacts. Right now Facebook or Instagram owns your contacts. Regardless of what email marketing tool you use to send emails you can export or import your contact list whenever you want because you own that, it’s all yours.
If you don’t have an email program setup don't worry! You can start collecting email addresses through your social channels or your website by posting a link to sign up for a mailing list. You can get started for free with MailChimp or with an affordable Constant Contact account. If you aren’t ready to start sending emails you can still collect email addresses for when you are by setting up a simple form (like a Google form or Jotform) that will capture subscriber information and store it for later.
Final Thoughts
The bottom line is that you cannot rely on Facebook or Instagram to always be there for your business. We have all become comfortable and reliant on social media. Your social media accounts could be gone in an instant and your business will suffer if it does not exist somewhere else on the internet.
Every business, artist or artisan needs its own website, even if it’s just one page. And beyond that, you need to own your following with an email list.
If you woke up tomorrow and your social media accounts disappeared how badly would that affect your business? Let’s try to mitigate that now!
Here’s to your success!