Welcome friends to another episode of Small-Minded!
It’s no secret, I love small towns, small businesses, and small-town people. I’m excited to be here for another week to discuss TWO things: Facebook and small-town homecoming traditions.
These topics may seem unrelated, BUT…well, actually they are completely unrelated.
Monday, October 4, was a busy day. In the middle of a mastermind session, having a wonderful conversation with a couple of my business best friends, we started receiving messages from friends and family noticing that Facebook was down. After going to downdector.com and checking in with a few news outlets, we realized there was a massive global Facebook outage.
For nearly 6 hours, Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp were offline. This prompted many in my personal circles and in the media to question if it was a hack or a technical error? And if it is a hack and everything was deleted…what were we to do if we didn’t have social media anymore?
As a social media marketer, I personally loved the quiet time that last Monday brought. No notifications on my phone, no nudges from my AppleWatch with after-hours messages coming in, and time to just be which is quite uncommon in this day and age.
As a mom, I wasn’t distracted by pings, I was just there with my kids. Not feeling pressured to get one last post or comment in before dinner time.
And as a business owner, this may come as a surprise, I wasn’t worried.
I want to remind you that social media is just a part of your marketing strategy, not the whole kit and caboodle.
There are going to be days with glitches or where we have to be offline completely. It’s frustrating, but it is not ours. We can not make physical or technical changes to the software on social networking sites; we are simply using what others have built…and we’re using it for free. Remember, we cannot control that, we are borrowing the space.
If this leaves you feeling a little unnerved, then that’s ok. I challenge you to not just feel unnerved but to think bigger.
- Where else can you market your business other than Facebook that also involves a physical component?
- How can you stay in front of your followers even if social media goes away tomorrow?
- What are some traditional marketing methods that would still be effective and connect with your audience?
- How can you be better prepared for the next time this happens? Because it will happen.
Now let’s talk fun stuff, like small-town homecoming. Hope that transition doesn’t give you whiplash!
The painted windows, Friday pep rally, band blaring music, and parades, still give me chills when thinking about small-town homecoming celebrations from my youth. And seeing other small-town homecoming traditions on social media in September and October reminded me that having a supportive community isn’t the norm, but it is something we treasure in our towns.
Take a listen to Episode 59 of the Small-Minded Podcast for all my reminiscing of what makes small towns SO special in the annual homecoming celebrations!
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