Facebook’s bad day and how you should approach social media with your marketing
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are all currently down while it’s stock plunged today in wake of whistleblower revelations and a searing 60 minutes interview yesterday.
What should you do?
As I write this, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are all inaccessible via the web or mobile apps.
“IT’S ALL GONE — All of Facebook is down, as far as we can tell, everywhere. Users are reporting that Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp are unavailable from desktop and mobile browsers, as well as through each individual app.”
Today, their stock dropped nearly 4.9% when 60 minutes revealed the whistleblower who copied thousands of documents and supplied to the Wall Street Journal which published their “The Facebook Files” series.
What should you do?
Start working on your email list.
And, start blogging anything and everything you’re putting on social media, onto your website first.
“What would you do if Facebook disappeared tomorrow?”
I’ve been asking clients to consider what they would do if their social media disappeared without warning. I was mainly thinking of how social platforms have been suspending or pausing accounts for various reasons to illustrate the lack of control you have through these leased lands.
Most customers I know are not replicating the content they’re posting to social, back on their websites.
That’s most likely due to how easy it is to post to social and how hard it is to post to our websites.
A clip from last week’s This Old Marketing revealing the #1 & #2 channels for generating revenue with content. Spoiler alert: it’s not social media.
The other thing I’m constantly harping on is building your email list. You own your email list. Nobody can take that away from you the way your audience can disappear on social media.
Just last Friday, This Old Marketing posted episode 291: “9 Content Marketing and Creator Economy Strategies”.
Listen to this 2 minute clip I grabbed where Joe Pulizzi did a study on 1,400 content entrepreneurs — people building businesses with content — and what their top two channels are for generating revenue.
Email Newsletters and Easy Blogging: Our Specialty
We’ve been working hard at building a marketing platform for this exact purpose: building and keeping your audience despite what happens with social media and making it as easy to post to as social is.
We’re also trying to help our clients think more deeply on their posts so that it’s more than a picture and a short blurb. Those pictures and short blurbs should exist and be posted to social but there should always be a deeper continuation of the content on the website.
These chunks of content should also have a relation to other content which collectively lead to a desired outcome. Buying our products, using our services or lending support to our cause.
Most, if not all people don’t think of producing content for their website as fun. I want to change that. You should have a website where you have to drag yourself away from wanting to produce more content. More videos, more conversations, more audience members thankful and eager for your content.
Actionable tips you can do right now
Cultivate your email list
Export your addresses from your your email program and meticulously go through the addresses. Remove any role based emails like “info@yourbusiness.com” — the name before the @ should be real names. This, for many is a pain in the ass, but it’s worth it. Have others in your organization do the same and build a comprehensive list of people that you and your colleagues have all communicated with and then set up a MailChimp account, import that list and start planning an email campaign.
Post any social media posts to a blog on your site first
Anything you post on social media should also be posted on your website. That can be hard since social requires so little. But, you’d be surprised how much more to a story you can add when you have the room and the tools. You also don’t have to write a ton of content. If you post a video, for example, the copy in the blog post can be a short summary of what you’ll see in the video — the copy can be a teaser to get you to watch the video.
Don’t worry about the post length or the SEO suggestions about having a certain amount of copy — just be sure the post has value for someone.
Make your social posts and emails a teaser of more available on your site
Don’t give it all away on your social posts or in your email. Inspire people to click-through to get more. Once visitors get to your site they can explore more content and then reach out to you if they find you’re what they’re looking for.
Don’t worry how big your audience is
It’s fine if your email list is tiny but high quality. It’s ok if your website traffic is also small. As long as you’re consistently reaching out and genuinely producing helpful content, you’ll begin building your buzz.
So many people I’ll meet in person tell me how much they enjoy my social posts or emails though they’ve never liked or responded back to an email. Several times I’ve gotten likes or comments from people I’ve not communicated with in years.
But whatever you do, make your website your homebase and keep it fresh and informative.
