You Need a Social Media Backup Plan

Small businesses have found a serious option for marketing in social media, and that may be especially true with small businesses.

Social media offers an impressive ability to target specific markets, although that can take effort to identify the right targets for a given market and demographic. Nevertheless, with the above ability to focus and often impressive, relatively low costs, social media may be a small business owners best friend.

Until it isn’t!

As Facebook users recently learned, there are times when social media doesn’t work because - like most things digital – they can go down. And while Facebook’s owner Meta had the platform back up in a relatively short time, there was considerable concern and in some cases near panic. Many businesses promote programs, sales and other events via Facebook and the inability to simply log in can be problematic, even catastrophic.

Your Options

So, what can you do? Just like nearly any digital effort, you have a backup. It’s not something you can put on a spare hard drive or cloud space, but a backup for the FUNCTION of Facebook, which is communicating to a identified market.

While that may not be possible to do entirely, there are options that can get you through a crisis. A good one would be an email campaign on Constant Contact, Mail Chimp or even a computer application like Max Bulk Mailer. You may have done this in the past and quit because of time and money but this emergency backup situation shows why it’s a good idea to maintain these lists and keep them current.

Another option is other social media sites. Facebook is among the oldest social media outlets and often has advantages for many small business marketing efforts. However, others can help fill in or even do a better job for some demographics. This is an entire discussion by itself but enlarging your social media footprint is a good plan for several reasons. You might find that your business reaches an entirely new and lucrative market.

Other Choices

And finally, there is always your website. Although many no longer think of websites for “breaking news,” it’s a good bet that those who visit your social media site(s) and find it down will turn to your site. A temporary box explaining the social media blackout and updating relevant news would be a great idea. Just remember to remove it when the crisis ends.

None of this will be the last word in the issue as social media is still evolving and, with that, so are the number of threats – and opportunities.