What to Do When a Social Platform is Down 

Recently, Facebook (along with its apps, Instagram and WhatsApp) had its longest outage and while for many it was simply a question of what to do with their spare time instead, for businesses, this is can seem like a more serious matter. When you rely on social media platforms for marketing, outages can be especially concerning, even if they’re temporary. Most outages occur for mere minutes up to an hour, but the recent 13-hour outage is a reminder that these technical problems can last for more extensive periods of time. 

So, what should you do when your business is facing a platform outage? Let us walk you through some actionable steps you can take, no matter the situation:

1 – Make sure the problem is a legitimate outage. It may seem typical when it comes to technology, but before assuming it’s a platform outage, first ensure that there are no issues on your end. That means checking your WiFi connection, reloading your apps, restarting your phone or computer, and other similar steps to check that it’s not just a technical issue pertaining to you individually.

2 – Engage your audience on other platforms. Ensuring your business is posting on other platforms will let your audience know that your brand is still active. It can be as simple as posting on other social media platforms, but you can also take the chance to talk about the outage, make light of the situation with some fun content, or even focus on posting any time-sensitive event or holiday information you were originally going to post on the platform suffering from an outage.

3 – Take this time to think about your strategy. Consider how much or how little you rely on the platform suffering from an outage and how it may impact your business as a whole. If the outage feels like it’s no loss, maybe you should consider stepping up your efforts on the platform; likewise, if the outage feels like the day is ruined for marketing, maybe you should spread your efforts across more platforms to avoid this in the future.

These three steps will give you some ideas of how to react to the situation, and if you’re like many other social media users, how to spend the newly-free time. Remember that when service is restored to the platform to check on your page and ensure that any missed posts are posted, anyone who’s reached out to you gets a reply, and that the social platform is fully back to normal. For any help with these issues or to learn more, contact i3 today!