Updated January 11, 2016
If your favorite social media platform suddenly disappeared today, how would you reach your followers?
[bctt tweet=”If your favorite social media platform suddenly disappeared today, how would you reach your followers?”]
This is a daunting question to think about, but it happened to me.
About two months ago, I could not access my Instagram account. Every time I logged in, I got a screen that said “Oops, an error occurred.” It was the weirdest thing, and would not fix no matter what I tried. It was torture. I didn’t do anything wrong, that I knew of. After a long, stressful week, I was able to regain access by reporting my account as hacked.
During my “Instagram Detox”, I was so angry. I was mad I couldn’t get on and look at photos. I was mad that Instagram support is a black hole of nothingness. I was mad that I was missing out. I was ready to give up the platform altogether. I felt like Instagram had failed me.
However, I realized a very important lesson – never put all your eggs in one social media basket. If all of my followers were on Instagram, there would have been no way for me to reach them to promote new blog posts.
I’m sure you hear a lot of conflicting advice about social media. How you should focus on one and be amazing at it. There’s a lot of Instagram “gurus” who tell you that Instagram is where it’s at and where you should focus your efforts for your blog/business.
But again I ask…
What if your favorite social media platform disappeared? What if you were hacked? What if you got locked out, even if it were for a short amount of time? How would you be able to reach your followers and readers?
When I lost my Instagram account for a week, fortunately, my traffic did not suffer. I was able to reach my readers through Facebook (albeit not as many as I’d like), Twitter, and Pinterest. Those that are subscribed to my RSS Feed, Bloglovin’ or my E-mail List came to my blog as usual.
Here’s the thing with being a blogger on social media. You have to ask yourself, “What do I want my social media followers to do?” For me, it’s to visit my blog and become a subscriber. I want them to return.
What’s the point of having followers just to have followers? Just because a blogger has 30172891.5K Instagram followers doesn’t really mean anything unless those followers are engaged and do something.
If you’re only worried about how high your Instagram numbers are, I’m afraid you’re missing the point to this whole blogging thing. Why do people think having 10K+ Instagram followers automatically makes you legit? Hey, I’ll admit I want to get there, too.
I know many of you guys may disagree with this, but I feel like growing my accounts as equally as I can has helped me more in the long run. Some of my accounts grow faster than others, but at the end of the day, I have a larger combined follower count keeping this mindset. I will say, I am not awesome at every social media account. I am definitely not the expert. I’ve made it a big goal of mine to grow my social media accounts as equally as I can, but more importantly, I want a community of readers who will return.
I want you guys to be here in case another social media account fails me. I know you will be. Right?
This is really great.. especially for a new blogger like me. I obsess over the fact that my “followers” on my blog are small, but really… my pageviews are good, I’m getting comments, and getting new Instagram followers so I try and relax.. but it’s hard! I’m still slightly obsessed with that low “followers” number. This was good advice and a good reminder!!!
This is such an important post! It’s imperative that bloggers use all forms of social media. Do I actually do this? Well, not exactly. But it’s my goal in 2016 to do so!
I will be 🙂 always!
YES to all of this. In fact, for a long time, I didn’t really understand the obsession with Instagram (I know, crazy). I’m a big fan of growing your following equally. Engagement is so important and it’s better to have more people engaged than lots of followers!
Giving you the hallelujah hands emoji.
That whole debacle that you went through really opened my eyes. Instagram has been randomly suspending accounts too lately, I won’t lie it’s the social media platform that I put the most effort into and the one I see the most growth so it terrifies me. Great post, Meg! 🙂
What a great reminder this is for me Meg! I definitely need to utilize Pinterest WAY more!! Love your skills girl!
this is a great reminder that I need to keep up with my other social media platforms too! I love instagram the most, but I obsess over the amount of followers I have–it’s hard not to!
Thanks for writing this!
I agree with you, but at the same time, I have really stepped back from most social media aside from IG and FB. I don’t have the content to put on pinterest, and twitter annoys me in the fact that you have so many people follow so many accounts that I’m sure my stuff gets lost in their feed.
Great post girl! I agree that growing all your accounts is equally as important. I think we all have favorites for sure but we can’t neglect them all for just 1.
Great post, friend! I never really thought about it like that, but I am glad that I have diversified where I share my content so I’m not limiting myself to only one social media outlet! xo
Such a good question!! And although as of lately I tend to take my own breaks from Insta more often than not, I think I would be super stressed with the fact that I was locked out and not know what to do about it. Glad you’ve got it back and thanks for putting it all into perspective!!! The numbers thing is definitely something I’m learning to let go and really haven’t look at a whole lot lately. XO
This is great and such a critical question to ponder.
I’ve concentrated mainly on 3 social media platforms and no matter what, I focus on SEO because that will help bring in new followers and people regardless of what’s happening on social media.
Thanks so much for sharing!
xoxo
SUCH A GREAT POINT. I can focus all my attention on one social media platform, and it could have issues at any time. Or the app can go down. And on an even greater scale, who cares if I have 1 million followers (no, not really), if they don’t actually interact? It’s obvious when people have bought or somehow bribed followers when not many people actually like the photos – and I have to admit, I don’t have a ton of likes on my photos either. Hoping to continue to build a real, genuine community, rather than a really big number that sits at the top of my page!
Great Post! It’s about quality not always quantity! Engaging with your followers is really important to me not just gaining followers just to have them. Thanks for sharing 🙂
xx,
Christine