Yesterday’s Facebook and Instagram outage should have taught business owners one thing: diversification is important.
Anyone who invests their money knows (or should know) you must diversify. You can’t put all your savings into one stock… what if that stock tanks? Further, you can’t put all your money into the stock market… I mean.. you know the market HAS crashed from time to time, right?
When you travel, don’t you bring layers of clothes just in case the weather forecast is wrong?
If you own a service business, don’t you have several revenue streams within that business? Shark Tank viewers know a product alone does not, in itself, make a company.
So why should this be any different than your messaging systems to your clients and customers? Yesterday, though two platforms were down, I had plenty of work to do on the others. Here were the people on my mind yesterday:
- The people who have come to me in the past wanting me to run their social for them, but they have no website at all. First of all, don’t be these people. Second, see the first point. I’ve never taken on a client who has a Facebook page and no website. That’s not a business. In fact, they don’t even own their content. As content marketing extraordinaire Joe Pulizzi says, “don’t build your business on rented land.” If you have a Facebook page as the only source of information about your business, get a website developer today. Here is the one I recommend.
- The second group of people on my mind are the MLM (multi-level marketing) business owners out there. You know the people… they reach out on Facebook messenger, lead with a compliment and then approach you to buy their product and join the group. I know this because I’m in one (it changed my health, I’m not knocking the company). BUT 100% of the messaging from some of these groups goes out by Facebook messenger. 100% of the content you can find from other users are in a Facebook group. So when Facebook goes down, it’s like being locked out of your office.
- The third were all the people who came over and joined the party on Twitter. I saw multiple posts late yesterday that people had so much fun on Twitter all day, so good for Twitter. What those people learned is they can still get their hit of dopamine without Facebook or Instagram. Even WhatsApp got in on the fun… I mean, they had nothing else to do yesterday…
So… diversify, people. What if Facebook was still down this morning? What if it never actually came back up? What if the courts rule to limit the power of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg? It’s the what ifs we should all be thinking about, especially as business owners.
Facebook is probably looking at diversifying their backup systems today, I would imagine. Having all the technology under one roof sounds like it might have been what got them into this mess.
If you only have one platform (or you have two but they are both owned by Facebook), pick at least one more you can learn about and start to invest time into. It’s no secret I recommend Twitter. And, if you want to learn from the best, you can catch up on my livestream, Let’s Get Real, from yesterday featuring Twitter expert, Madalyn Sklar. Though Facebook was down, we still went live on LinkedIn and YouTube. Click here to watch and subscribe!
Also, if you haven’t done it yet, change your passwords!
by 
