The Importance of Utilizing Multiple Platforms as a Blogger + Content Creator

Are you a blogger/content creator or small business who uses social media platforms to promote and build your brand? Have you been experiencing more and more problems and frustrations with Facebook and Instagram these days or feel like these big and popular social media apps have been failing you lately? If you answered yes to either or both of these questions, this post is for you!

This topic has been on my mind for a while now and is something I believe to be an important message for my fellow blogger and content creator friends out there. It all started back in 2019, then again around October 2021, and more recently, just last week. I’ve been gathering my thoughts and knew I needed to get this message across because of how fragile this situation is.

Let me provide a bit of background first to catch you up to speed.

In the late summer/early fall of 2019, Instagram essentially action blocked me from using their app for 7 days. I was still able to access my account and open the Instagram app, but could not perform any action. I couldn’t post to my feed or stories, couldn’t like/comment/share posts I was seeing in my feed, couldn’t follow anyone, couldn’t respond to comments being made on my own posts or respond to DMs. Literally nothing, which led to me taking 7 full days off from Instagram, not opening the app once since it was useless for me.

Fast forward to October of 2021, we all remember what happened then. The Great Social Media Shutdown of 2021 where Instagram and Facebook experienced their major outage and no one could use these apps for an entire business day.

And finally, fast forwarding to just last week where Facebook disabled my account for no reason and I could not access literally anything in my account for a week.

Can someone please explain to me why the two most popular social media platforms who enable new features all the time to remain superior over their competitors and keep their status of most popular and most used apps keep having these problems? Yet platforms like Pinterest, Twitter, or even TikTok never seem to have any issue of this sort.

As a blogger and content creator myself, things like this can be not only frustrating, but also extremely scary and this is my reasoning for this post today.

Everyone always talks about, “What would happen if Instagram or Facebook were gone tomorrow, how would that affect your blog/creator business?” or something along those lines. While I highly doubt Instagram and Facebook would just disappear, your account very well could any day given the sketchy things that have been happening lately like accounts being disabled for no reason or getting hacked, or whatever the reason may be on the backend of these platforms. So I have to ask it again, if your Instagram or Facebook account were to disappear at random, what would you do or how will it affect your business?

I’m coming up on 6 years of blogging and content creating and the amount of time I have spent into building my community and my platforms over the years makes the thought of losing it all extremely unsettling.

While I have to admit Instagram is my favorite social platform, I am really trying to focus on being as active as I can on other social media platforms this year, even if that means spending less time on Instagram. I absolutely love connecting with my community on Instagram and discovering new accounts and is honestly how I’ve made real connections and friendships with my IG besties. I love having fun little conversations with my audience through DMs every day and it has brought me so many amazing people and opportunities. You guys really are my true friends!

However, I cannot stress enough the importance of being proactive right now and building your same community on other platforms in the event that something were to happen to your Instagram or Facebook account. It’s a good habit to get into now to not rely solely on Instagram and branch out to other platforms, and even letting your Instagram community know ahead of time too so they can follow you on your other platforms! If you already have a blog website, maybe look into starting an email newsletter and build your list of email subscribers. Start a YouTube channel or TikTok and get into video content. Create a Pinterest or Twitter account and start posting consistently. Anything you can do now will really help set you up for success in the long run. Even if nothing ever happens to your Instagram or Facebook accounts, hey, at least you’re already expanding your community by building new connections on other platforms and making it easier for people to discover you!

It’s only January so if you’re still goal setting for the year and planning out your content goals, I’d really suggest making it a goal to explore other platforms!

Circling back to my Facebook account being disabled last week, I was very fortunate to still have access to my Instagram and perform actions as usual, however, the stress level was high considering Facebook and Instagram are connected to each other, I was so sure something was going to happen to my Instagram and I was immediately reminded how I need to be better about building my communities on my other platforms. While I have my Facebook account access back, which is such a blessing, this whole situation was truly something else and was a wake up call that I needed.

Looking back to October 2021 during the Great Social Media Shutdown, what do you remember?

I work a corporate 9 to 5 job by day and am already hardly on social media during business hours so I really was not very affected by it, and if anything, actually found myself to be more productive during work. But I remember seeing everyone take to Twitter all of a sudden after not using the platform for so long, panicking, and really having a hard time coping with the outage and how much it disrupted their business or even personal use, not knowing what to do next.

While I don’t blog full time and love the consistency and routine of a full-time 9 to 5 job, it did get me thinking if blogging and content creation were my full time job, how that could really impact my business.

If you blog and create content full time, on the side, or for whatever purpose use social media and rely heavily on Instagram, I’d say it’s important to almost treat every day like the Great Social Media Shutdown in a sense to get in those good habits of using Instagram less to be more productive on other things and focus your efforts elsewhere. Honestly it should really do wonders on alleviating panic and triggering any unnecessary mental health struggles the next time Instagram and Facebook decide to shut down.