What to do when Instagram goes down… again

Last week I lost 400 followers within just a couple of hours and though I was confused, and a little shocked, I wasn’t scared. That is because over the years I have insulated myself from things outside of my control - like this recent hiccup we saw from Instagram last week - more on this in a bit. But today, I want to walk you through how to diversify and avoid putting all of your eggs in the Instagram basket.

First, let’s chat a bit about what happened last week on Instagram. The messages people received from Instagram said their accounts are being closed due to them not following community guidelines - even if that wasn’t the case. This was a double-edged sword - either you were booted from Instagram for no reason or for people who didn’t have their account suspended, they have logged in to see their followers drop significantly as a result of so many people being suspended. Twitter was full of folks posting about the issue and some were having a similar experience as I did. One account posted a tweet that said, “Has Instagram mass suspended accounts? Just dropped about 200 followers randomly.” Instagram eventually did announce that they are aware of the issue and are looking into it - and then soon after released a statement that said, “Earlier today, a bug caused some Instagram users to have issues accessing their Instagram accounts. This led to a small number of accounts seeing a temporary change in how many people follow them. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for the inconvenience.”

Per the website, DownDetector.com, where users can report outages, there were reports of an issue starting around 9 a.m. EST and those reports were beginning to decline by noon. So, the outage didn’t last long … but, the concern is, what if this was permanent, what if this lasted days, weeks, or months? What would you do? Do you have a backup plan? Let’s talk about a few different ways to create more baskets in your business.

Build a website

Having a website as an influencer or content creator provides a sort of “one-stop-shop” for your audience that you can’t necessarily present on social media. Websites provide you with the opportunity to share about yourself, your business, your products or services, and your recommendations, and direct them to the other areas of your business - like social media. It’s the landing page of your business, the place they should be able to go and get all of the answers. Why is this important in this scenario? If one of the followers I lost last week was never able to recover their Instagram account, they would know they can just go to www.katiesteckly.com and I will be there, and they can find other ways to join my community through there.

Beyond just having that security, it’s also a great way to monetize your business and potentially grow your email list. You can have popups or email list sign-up forms embedded in your website for the convenience of your audience, so they can join your email community and always be up to date with what you’re doing with your brand.

This brings me to my next point…

Build an email list

I have said it before and I will say it again, we don’t own Instagram or YouTube or TikTok - so it’s important to have a strong email list full of subscribers that you could reach out to if something crazy happened - like Instagram having a horrible, unexpected outage. An email list has a lot of benefits beyond it being a safety net, it can also help:

Build a Stronger Community

I always looked at my email community as my ride or dies, those true VIPs that wanted to take one step further with my community. It just seems more personal to have an email conversation. The message is not on a public timeline or newsfeed. Your email subscribers have the ability to ask you questions directly in private with confidence. This helps build trust and connection.

Monetize

Of course, as business owners, we want to continue to find ways to grow our income as well as our audience - and email marketing is a great way to promote your products, services, affiliate links, and more. Having that trust with your audience is most important and because you have developed trust, your audience is more likely to trust your opinions enough to buy from you or purchase something you recommend.

Have a second (or third) social media platform

I normally recommend that you have two social media platforms, a timely platform and an evergreen platform. In case you are unfamiliar with these terms:

Evergreen content is content that stays fresh and useful, even if it's months or years after publishing. Similar to a forest of evergreen trees, the content keeps growing and gets stronger over time. This would be something like a Podcast or YouTube.

Timely content is content that really only lives on a platform temporarily and might be more focused on in-the-moment trends, versus a topic that could be useful later on as well. This would be something like Instagram or Twitter.

Now, I could talk about the importance of having both of these platform types for days, but relating this back to this podcast episode - the reason you should have a second or even third social media platform is so that you have a backup social media platform in case one of them fails you. Just like having an email list, this is a secondary home for your audience.

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I think you are getting the point. The idea is to find different ways to communicate and “house” your audience so that you are covered if one of these Instagram outages becomes a bit too permanent. If you ever see me disappear on one of my main platforms, just know you can find me on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and you can also join my email list - the link will be in the show notes. We actually send out a weekly Creator Letter that provides weekly Reels trends, current news, recommendations, and of course - social media tips and advice. And, you can always hit reply if you have any questions!