No one saw it coming, the great Facebook and Instagram Blackout of 2019 aka the day Twitter and Snapchat won the internet.
For some, it was just another day and for others like me, who not only work in the social media/ influencer marketing field but am also a blogger, well, it was chaos.

As funny as the memes on Twitter and Buzzfeed articles were, there were many things to be learned from that fateful day, especially as a new blogger.

It’s no secret that we all heavily rely on social media on a day-to-day basis. Whether it’s to keep in touch with family and friends, to build your business’s online presence or as a side hustle, the numbers show that roughly a billion people use Instagram a month and Facebook has roughly 2.32 billion monthly active users so going dark meant no one saw any content, ads etc.

From a marketing/business perspective, Facebook and Instagram are used daily to help generate sales and help bring brand awareness among other things. So last week when I tried to log on to both platforms and quickly realized they were down, my initial thought was, “oh shit!” I had a bunch of campaigns due that day for my day job and for my blog, I had just published a new post and I couldn’t do anything but wait.

As much as I don’t rely on Instagram for my blog or personal brand, I do rely heavily on Facebook to generate traffic. So this got me thinking, what happens if it all disappears? No biggie right? Life goes on as usual, minus the social media distraction, unless you’re a blogger or content creator making money off the platforms that is.

Growing a blog and generating traffic isn’t easy at the beginning. It can be very discouraging at first, and then when your main source of traffic goes dark, well, that just adds an extra layer of dis-encouragement.

Hopefully, Facebook doesn’t have another blackout anytime soon, but just in case, here are a few tips to help you prepare for that day.

1.OWN YOUR CONTENT

As obvious as this may seem, not a lot of people are aware that owning your content is key for your brand’s overall online success.

This goes beyond social media and includes your blog or website. Owning your content means you have complete control of the content you provide. While free domains are a good way to get a blog started (yourdomain.blogger.com or yourdomain.wordpress.com), the truth is, you aren’t fully in control.

In short, if WordPress, Blogger, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube or any other social media platform decided to shut down all of a sudden, you WILL lose all your work and content. Followers, images, videos, blog posts, you name it, it can all be gone in a second if you put all your time and effort into social media and a free blog rather than self-host.

For example, all my millenials remember MySpace right? Recently they confirmed that they in fact lost millions of songs, photos, videos and other user content uploaded before 2015…RIP emo pictures of 16-year-old me.

The overall lesson here is INVEST in your brand! Buy that domain and stop solely focusing on social media (which you don’t own). Yes, it can help, and I’m not saying to fully abandon those platforms but keep in mind that it call all go away and what will you do then?

2. GROW YOUR EMAIL LIST

This piece of advice is crucial for me. Prior to this blog post, I had not worked on my email list and boy did I regret it when I published a post and had no way of letting people know!

Yes, Pinterest and Twitter were still available so that wasn’t a total bust but I don’t generate as much traffic from those sites as I do from Facebook.

Truth is, starting a blog is a beast of its own and starting a mailing list can seem like a pain when you don’t even know what you’re doing just yet. If you’re like me you’re thinking, what will I do with these emails? What do I even put in a newsletter? How often do I send one? etc.

Instead of focusing on the who, what where and how’s, focus on building the list that can eventually be more valuable to you than your Instagram followers. Not only will an email list allow you to stay connected to users when they aren’t online, it’s more personal, it’s targeted and the best part is YOU OWN IT and no one can take it away.

The trick to being successful, if you even want to call it that, is to build an audience that not only enjoys and supports your content but is dedicated to you and your brand and an email list can help you with just that.

To help you get started here’s a handy article I found. 73 Proven and Simple Ways to Grow Your Email List

***shameless plug: sign up for my email list if you haven’t yet 🙂 I promise not to spam!

3. WORK ON SEO

We all know that to rank on Google there is a formula. Search engine optimization (SEO) is how your site is read by search engines. What keywords you use in the title, headings, body, etc. all essentially affect your blog’s search rank.

So why is SEO so important? You see, when done correctly, optimizing your content for the web can have many benefits. Not only does SEO help generate traffic by bringing people to your site when they search a given keyword, but it provides a more user-friendly experience that in terms, brings people back to your site.

Though I didn’t quite learn this from the Facebook and Instagram blackout, I did think it was a good mention because of the potential organic traffic it can drive. I can’t begin to tell you, how many blogs I come across on a daily basis that are not optimized. Sure, blogs can still be successful without optimization, but I can’t imagine people finding the content on their own via a search engine. To top it off, blogs that aren’t optimized tend to have a higher Alexa Rank which can hurt your site’s overall value.

For example, the company I work for, is always looking for bloggers to review our products. Not only do we look at traffic, writing style, etc, but we also look at their Alexa Rank to determine the price they will get paid. This means the lower the rank, the more money they get.

Hope this blog was not only helpful but insightful! I strive to write content that you can use to grow your blog, influence and of course pockets 🙂

As always if you have any questions, or want me to do a FREE SEO audit, or Instagram audit, you name it, I’m here to help! Simply email me.

What did you learn from the Facebook and Instagram blackout? Was your blog or brand affected? Should I go more in-depth on SEO? Let me know in the comments!