What I Learned from the Facebook and Instagram Outage: The Importance of Having an Email List
As a photographer and online educator, I’m on social media a LOT. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, you name it. It’s important to have quality content and good engagement on social media, we know this. But what about the importance of having an email list?
Well, friends, today after two hours of technical difficulties, I had quite the ah-ha moment about my email list.
How it all started
This morning I was supposed to do a Facebook Live at 11:30am in my education group, but I noticed early in the morning Facebook wasn’t loading.
I figured it had to do with my internet, but everything else seemed to be working just fine. About an hour and a half before my scheduled Facebook live was when I first realized that Facebook and Instagram were actually down.
I wasn’t too worried, since sometimes there’s a brief maintenance issue and both sites are back up in usually a couple of minutes. Thirty minutes pass and that’s when I started to worry.
I checked Twitter (because apparently that’s where I go when things like this happen) and there was meme after meme about #FacebookDown and #InstagramDown. It was hilarious and although I had a few good laughs, the problem was not getting solved and there was NOTHING I could do about it. So I sat and waited, refreshing every couple of minutes.
Nothing.
The time came and went for my Facebook Live and I felt so helpless as I was met with an error screen.
I hated the idea of disappointing my people and I knew I had to come up with a solution.
Then it hit me: email isn’t down!!
Instead of just sitting around, worrying and refreshing Facebook every three seconds, I sent an email out to my list to let them know about the outage and that I would hop on the Live as soon as I can.
I immediately felt relieved knowing that I was able to reach my people and let them know what was happening.
And, I actually got several responses thanking me for the information from people who didn’t even know these sites were experiencing a worldwide outage. They thought it was just them!
This Outage Reminded Me Why We Should All Have an Email List
I know it’s rare for things like this to happen. But at the same time, it DOES happen and therefore you need to be prepared.
Here’s the takeaway: Your followers and your likes aren’t actually yours.
If sites like Facebook and Instagram are down, you’re stuck. If these channels decide one day to vanish, all of those curated followers and potential clients just disappear, and years of hard work goes out the window just like that.
Scary, right?
Heed My Warning!
Make sure you’re focusing at least some of your efforts on building your email list in addition to your Facebook likes and Instagram followers.
If you need ideas about how to build your list like a pro, check out this blog post! And once you’re ready to take your email marketing to the next level, I HIGHLY recommend checking out ConvertKit.
Check out Convert Kit
ConvertKit has helped me grow my list by over 300% since switching over from Mailchimp. In addition to growing my list, I was also able to save money and keep my list way more organized by making the switch. Follow this link to check out Convertkit! New users can try it for free for two weeks :)
