The recent outage of Facebook was an eye-opener for marketers who were solely relying on it for their marketing activities. Though there have been many such instances, the length and reported impact has made this event more meaningful for marketers.
Within a matter of hours, businesses witnessed severities of the social media outage. Many of them experienced a drastic fall in their engagement and traffic. While others faced severe consequences as their sales were continuously taking a hit.
Though the outage has been resolved, the conversation that has now been cracked open is worth discussing. One major lesson that all of us, as business owners, learned was that if we rely on Facebook as our only platform, then we’re at the mercy of the creators. So, we need to think of other avenues besides these typical ones.
The new marketing strategies should include diverse ways to engage people without interruptions or blackouts by using Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp platforms.
Here are some ways and tips that can help you avoid communication disruptions due to social media outages:
Email Database
People assume that email is dead. Well, it’s not! For example, this year, we did over a quarter million revenue in one quarter just through an email campaign. So, rather than relying on Facebook, you can utilize an email database.
Note that when sending out a campaign to thousands of people, the first thing you should do is build your database by genuinely providing value to them. Therefore, setting up a powerful lead magnet is integral. In this way, they will want to join an email list or give you an email list.
Don’t exit social media completely!
Switching to email campaigns does not mean that you alienate social media platforms. After all, your target audience is present on these platforms. So, some kind of representation is essential because you do need engagement! In addition, social media platforms can be put to great use for collecting emails and building up a database for your email campaigns.
For instance, if your Facebook page description includes your lead magnet link, it will generate a lot of traffic, and when clicked by the visitor, you can capture their email. Furthermore, by joining a networking group on Facebook, you will exchange emails with people and connect with them.
Advertising Platforms
If you want to be in the advertising sector of marketing, it’s a good time to diversify the channels that you are using. Start looking at all the other advertising platforms such as Hulu’s, where you can create your ads. Furthermore, if you’re in e-commerce and have a product-based business, you can advertise directly on Amazon. Google advertising is super successful when it comes to local advertising or service-based businesses.
Head over to the App Store or Google play
It is an ideal time to begin exploring other platforms like TikTok and Snapchat. You can even go to the App Store or Google Play Store and search for “social media.” Then, see what the top-performing social media applications are that you might not be using (Tip from Gary V Crushing it)
By diversifying your platforms, you can continue conquering the minds of your target audience without facing any hurdles that might create a “brand vacuum.” So, for instance, if you are relying solely on Facebook, but your competitors have taken an all-rounder approach and have other means of marketing. Then, during an outage, they can easily slip in and take your place.
Podcasting
Apart from advertising platforms, you can start podcasting. It is huge right now and is not going away anytime soon. Getting your voice on the podcast can help build your authority. When other industry experts speak on your podcast, people know who you are, and they begin to trust you.
In addition, it is an excellent method to generate leads and collect email addresses to expand your database. This is a great tip for small business owners and advertisers. They can increase awareness about their company and brands by developing engaging content like podcasts.
Website
We couldn’t do anything but sit and wait after the Facebook business went down. However, this would not be the case with a website, which is your owned space. A website is your best sales agent that works 24/7.
Rather than investing your time and money in a platform that can go down and risk your business efforts, you can split and spend that investment with a trusty website. By using powerful SEO, you can generate a lot of traffic to your website. In addition, by story branding your website and transforming it as your best sales agent, you can turn these visitors into customers in no time!
The Facebook blackout is a super valuable lesson that websites are still influential. Since websites are your own spaces, it doesn’t go down with them when Facebook goes down. So this Facebook outage incident is an excellent opportunity to transport your current Facebook audience to another platform so you won’t lose anything when Facebook goes down again.