For those who were not aware, for a few hours there was somewhat of a social media melt-down as Facebook and its properties last week (Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) were all down for some users, and for a significant period of time.

People were having issues posting Insta stories, others, after logging out, were denied entry back on to the platforms. To say the Internet reacted negatively to the situation was an understatement. Many people flooded to Twitter to share their grouse, shock and sadness at not being able to use the apps they have come to know and love — and are probably addicted to.

Facebook has explained that the downtime was as a result of a ‘server configuration change’, which is very in line with Facebook’s, modus operandi — vague. The incident did much more than cause stress, it taught as quite a few good lessons.

Below are four particularly important ones:

1. DIVERSIFY YOUR PROPERTIES

With stock, it is often advised to have a diversified portfolio so that if something crashes, you don’t lose everything.

It is the same online. If the Instagram shutdown did nothing else, it taught us to Diversify.

Many companies whose businesses were only on Instagram or only on Facebook literally went into a panic. However, one company that I follow sent an email informing their customers that they were still reachable by email and are also active on Pinterest. This was a stellar move. The fact that the company was present on another network helped them to be able to maintain contact with their customers and clients.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying you should be on every platform or that you should build an equally robust following on each. But do have at least a presence on another network, even if you aren’t totally active there.

2. YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS ITS OWN WEBSITE

Listen to the harsh truth… Facebook, Instagram, all these platforms, are not your properties. It is essentially rented space online. Think of it like a home. You rent a place, but your landlord can kick you out if need be. However, Facebook et al is, in some case, worse as unlike your landlord, they are not obliged to inform you before they kick you out or give you the reason why.

For instance, a few years ago a marketing colleague of mine lost his page of more than 5000 FB followers overnight. He still doesn’t know exactly why, but assumes that somehow, somewhere he broke Facebook’s user guidelines.

Therefore, make sure to have your own online space — space you have paid for such as a website, and for which own the domain and pay for hosting. And no, www.suzysshoes.wordpress.com does not count, it just isn’t professional.

Many small businesses and entrepreneurs see social media as a cheap and easy way to have a presence online without the effort or cost of creating a personal website. But the shutdown showed us exactly why a website is still important.

With the Instagram fail many companies were terribly worried, as if by chance it never went back up everything, would have been gone — clients, contacts… everything. Such an event could possibly represent a loss of years of carefully curated content and thousands, even in some cases millions of followers and, more importantly, paying customers.

3.HAVE A MAILING LIST

More importantly, remember social media is really a tool to get people over to your owned properties — your website and eventually, on to a mailing list.

In my discussions with many small and even large businesses, it is clear that they don’t understand or maybe just underestimate the importance of a mailing list — even if they do have a website.

A mailing list is an excellent way to maintain direct contact with your clients. Also, in the case of a social media hack or shutdown like the one two weeks ago, those companies with an active mailing list could use it as a means to reach out to their customers in their emails.

Usually the mailing list opt-in “pops-up” upon entering your website or landing page — another reason why you need a website.

So, if you are predominantly on only one social media platform, make sure to have some other way for your customers to reach you and for you to reach your customers online — such as the email list.

3.

Finally on your list of important things, have a digital or even paper back up. That highly prized mailing list — have the excel version on your computer, not just the one you uploaded into Mailchimp last year. Also have it on a hard drive somewhere and have a hard copy. Do the same for those awesome pictures you took for that client saved in multiple places — on the cloud, on your computer and also on that backup hard drive.

Facebook offers the option to download all your data periodically. So after a few months, download your posts and photos etc. I’ve found this particularly helpful as honestly, there are some photos, posts and pictures that I no longer have (I might have changed computers, etc).

4.

Comments online only reiterated to me just how attached we have become to social media. Whether they were businesses who depend on it, or those who just enjoy using these platforms, so many people were in a panic about Instagram being down.

With more than 1.1 billion users, Instagramis currently the most engaged platform — meaning that people are highly active on that network. They don’t just go there to stalk, but actually ‘like, comment and share’. It’s a network that’s great for building a business if used correctly — many have — so users were rightly in a frenzy when some of them discovered they could not log into their accounts, or share content with their thousands or millions of followers.

Some people made posts about the fact that since Instagram was down, they actually used the time to do more constructive activities such as “talking to other people”. (If you want to see the range of memes and have a good laugh check Twitterand use the hash #instagramshutdown).

The shutdown showed probably more than anything else that social media is a big part of our lives — in how we interact and communicate and now, even in business.

What does this mean? Some of your clients are probably on social media, so don’t ignore it.

As our lives become more and more linked with online, we will become more susceptive to such outages, shutdowns and hacks. As a business, make sure to prepare yourself for these things.

Diversify your platforms, have a mailing list, have a website, and have a backup of the important information.

So be safe online, be prepared, and don’t be surprised. The future is digital, and the future is here. Let us be aware of and prepared for the possible challenges.