{"id":1197,"date":"2019-03-14T16:34:33","date_gmt":"2019-03-14T16:34:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.getanewsletter.com\/en\/?p=1197"},"modified":"2023-09-29T09:12:07","modified_gmt":"2023-09-29T09:12:07","slug":"facebook-outage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/en\/blog\/facebook-outage\/","title":{"rendered":"#Facebookdown \u2013 what now?! How to use social media to collect email subscribers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday&#8217;s <strong>Facebook outage<\/strong>\u00a0showed us clearly that <strong>we can&#8217;t rely on social media<\/strong>\u00a0for communication with our <strong>existing and potential customers.<\/strong> An <strong>email list that you <em>actually own<\/em><\/strong> is the <em>safest and most sustainable way<\/em> to <strong>communicate with your customers<\/strong> and <strong>nurture your leads.<\/strong> But still &#8211; social media remain a great tool for building one! Let&#8217;s see how you can use social media to build your subscribers&#8217; list.\u00a0That way, you will become <strong>independent from social media whatever happens<\/strong>: whether it&#8217;s another <strong>Facebook outage, your account gets suspended, or your followers stop using the platform &#8211;\u00a0<\/strong>your email list remains safe.<\/p>\n<div class=\"poptin-embedded\" data-id=\"1ec514c90a633\"><\/div>\n<h3>What happened during the Facebook outage?<\/h3>\n<p>Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp were partially down yesterday for 14 hours, apparently due to problems with an overloaded database. While the <strong>#facebookdown<\/strong> hashtag was trending on Twitter, several individuals and businesses found themselves unable to:<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1198 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/03\/instagram-were-back-277x300.png\" alt=\"#instagramdown instagram's post we're back after the outage \" width=\"389\" height=\"421\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>log into their accounts<\/li>\n<li>post new updates<\/li>\n<li>upload photos<\/li>\n<li>use Ads Manager<\/li>\n<li>&#8211; and &#8211; most importantly &#8211; <em><strong>communicate with their audience<\/strong><\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All this for <em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/technology-47562281\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">nearly 14 hours!<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Events like this provide food for thought:<\/p>\n<p><strong>What if social media disappeared altogether one day?<\/strong>! \ud83d\ude31<\/p>\n<p>Are you prepared? Would the demise of Facebook ruin your business too?<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1201 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/03\/emilia_round.png\" alt=\"Emilia Postfity.com\" width=\"117\" height=\"121\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In today&#8217;s post out guest writer <strong>Emilia, a content strategist at a social media scheduling\u00a0tool<\/strong> <strong>Postfity.com<\/strong> will have a look at<strong> how you can prepare yourself and your business for similar situations.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In addition, Emilia will explain\u00a0<strong>why newsletters are still the best way to communicate with your leads<\/strong>, and how you can use social media to<strong> collect email subscribers.\u00a0<\/strong>Just in case another Facebook apocalypse is just around the corner! (OR the <strong>fussy platform changes its algorithm<\/strong> and <strong>slashes organic reach again!)\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Social media are without a doubt <em><strong>a great marketing tool<\/strong><\/em>. But the cries that &#8217;email is dead&#8217; were premature. And incidents like yesterday&#8217;s Facebook outage make it all the clear:<\/p>\n<h4><em><strong>Social media marketing will NEVER replace email marketing.<\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\n<p>Why?<\/p>\n<p>Imagine you <strong>run your marketing <em>exclusively<\/em> on social media.<\/strong> You have <strong>replaced your website with a\u00a0Facebook page.<\/strong> Same with your online store &#8211; <strong>as you can now sell directly on Facebook.<\/strong> You communicate with your audience only on social media platforms. Posts on social media have<strong> replaced your\u00a0blog<\/strong> posts. You also use exclusively Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter <strong>to find leads<\/strong>. And you nurture the relationship with your leads through\u00a0<strong>chatbot marketing, not newsletters.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h4>Now, imagine what happens if:<\/h4>\n<p><strong>&#8211; Facebook outage last <em>much<\/em> longer<\/strong> than 14 hours<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8211; The other social media platforms<\/strong> like Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn <strong>are down as well<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8211; Facebook<\/strong>, Instagram or another social medium <strong>blocks your account<\/strong> (and you can&#8217;t do anything about it!)<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; The algorithm on the platforms you are using changes for the worse &#8211; and <strong>the organic reach drops so much nobody sees your posts. <\/strong>This, by the way, is already happening:<\/p>\n<div class=\"mceTemp\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1203 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/03\/facebook-engagement-stats-2018-1.jpg\" alt=\"Best Facebook post format \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/facebook-engagement-stats-2018-1.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/facebook-engagement-stats-2018-1-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/facebook-engagement-stats-2018-1-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/facebook-engagement-stats-2018-1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/facebook-engagement-stats-2018-1-875x492.jpg 875w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Source: https:\/\/postfity.com\/facebook-marketing-strategy\/<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The falling organic reach rates mean that out of every 100 followers only up to\u00a0<em><strong>five\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>have a chance to see your post at all. Which doesn&#8217;t mean they will. It only means that Facebook publishes your post to their feeds. Unlike email marketing, you can&#8217;t see who exactly saw your post either, so <strong>you can&#8217;t segment your followers&#8217; lists in any way.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8211; The users<\/strong> start<strong> leaving the old platform for a new one\u00a0<\/strong>(Impossible? Well, remember MySpace a few years ago?)<\/p>\n<h2><em>What happens to your business then?\u00a0<\/em>\ud83d\ude31<\/h2>\n<p>If you <strong>don&#8217;t have your own email list<\/strong> and <strong>your own platforms to attract traffic and generate leads<\/strong>, your business is <strong>extremely vulnerable to the decisions made by social media.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s face the truth:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h3>#1. You don&#8217;t own your Facebook page or Instagram account. You don&#8217;t own the followers. Facebook owns them.<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1202\" src=\"https:\/\/www.getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/03\/Facebook.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"3967\" height=\"2635\" srcset=\"https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Facebook.jpg 3967w, https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Facebook-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Facebook-768x510.jpg 768w, https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Facebook-1024x680.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Facebook-875x581.jpg 875w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 3967px) 100vw, 3967px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A single decision of Facebook to shut down your account due to &#8216;violations of terms and conditions is pretty much irrevocable. If you&#8217;re building your audience only on social media, you can<strong> lose your follower base overnight.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This won&#8217;t happen if you&#8217;re <strong>using your social media to build your email subscriber list.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h3>How to build your email subscriber list using social media?<\/h3>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1186\" src=\"https:\/\/www.getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/08\/pexels-photo-1089555.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/pexels-photo-1089555.jpeg 1920w, https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/pexels-photo-1089555-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/pexels-photo-1089555-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/pexels-photo-1089555-1024x683.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/pexels-photo-1089555-875x583.jpeg 875w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>As we already mentioned, Facebook and other social media are great marketing tools &#8211; especially for building <strong>brand awareness\u00a0<\/strong>and <strong>reaching new potential customers.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You should, however, treat social media as<strong> marketing tools for the top of your sales funnel<\/strong> (the very beginning of the customer journey):<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1204\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1204\" style=\"width: 4032px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1204\" src=\"https:\/\/www.getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/03\/53306454_364299060828125_7842631357900521472_n.jpg\" alt=\"Customer journey\/ sales funnel \" width=\"4032\" height=\"1960\" srcset=\"https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/53306454_364299060828125_7842631357900521472_n.jpg 4032w, https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/53306454_364299060828125_7842631357900521472_n-300x146.jpg 300w, https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/53306454_364299060828125_7842631357900521472_n-768x373.jpg 768w, https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/53306454_364299060828125_7842631357900521472_n-1024x498.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/53306454_364299060828125_7842631357900521472_n-875x425.jpg 875w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 4032px) 100vw, 4032px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1204\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Social media are great for the top of your sales funnel &#8211; but make sure you capture these leads and make them subscribe to your newsletter as soon as possible; Source: MWLive<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&#8230;and make sure you <strong>funnel the followers on your Facebook page \/ Instagram account down\u00a0<\/strong>the customer journey &#8211; and <strong>convert them into your newsletter subscribers.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That way, you will <strong>gain control over your communication with those leads<\/strong> &#8211; and won&#8217;t fall victim to any Facebook outage again.<\/p>\n<h3>Here are 7 ways how you can convert your Facebook\/ Instagram followers into newsletter subscribers:<\/h3>\n<ol>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Offer a downloadable \u2018freebie\u2019<\/strong> to\u00a0<\/span>those who follow you on your Facebook page and to the members of the group some valuable materials to download from the landing page after subscribing to your newsletter.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Organize a webinar\/ Go Live<\/strong><\/span> &#8211; and collect newsletters from the participants of the webinar via a landing page (with a subscription to the newsletter &#8211; however, this must be clearly stated for the subscription to be in line with the GDPR)<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>After the webinar, give the participants an opportunity to download notes from the webinar<\/strong> <\/span>\/ or the webinar video &#8211; from your landing page &#8211; also provided that they subscribe to your newsletter;<\/li>\n<li>Offer your followers <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>a free email course<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Start a closed group on FB and ask for an e-mail as a condition for joining the group in question.<\/strong> <\/span>(A bit radical, but on the other hand you\u2019d be better off with just a handful of really determined people in the group, than a whole bunch of spammers and \u2018dead souls\u2019.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Use a &#8220;Pinned post&#8221; on your Twitter and Facebook page<\/strong><\/span> to advertise your free email course subscription.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Use Facebook Lead Generation ads<\/strong> <\/span>to collect even more signups to your webinars, freebie downloads, and email course signups.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Hope this helps you prepare for another Facebook outage &#8211; and develop a more balanced and sustainable marketing strategy.<\/p>\n<p>Do you have any other ideas on how you can <strong>protect yourself from future social media outages?<\/strong> Or maybe <strong>you have another way of collecting subscribers on social media?<\/strong><\/p>\n<h4>Let us know in the comments!<\/h4>\n<p>P.S.: For more ways how to collect email subscribers <a href=\"https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/en\/blog\/grow-subscribers-list-fast\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">check out our earlier post<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.getanewsletter.com\/en\/blog\/grow-subscribers-list-fast\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>About the author:<\/h2>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1215 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.getanewsletter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/03\/emilia_cropped_DIY_marketingguide.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"142\" height=\"154\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Emilia is a content strategist at a social media\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/postfity.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>at a social media scheduling\u00a0tool<\/strong><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/postfity.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Postfity.com<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>She loves travelling and running. Currently, she&#8217;s running a Social Media Academy with Posfity, where she teaches small business owners how to do social media marketing effectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday&#8217;s Facebook outage\u00a0showed us clearly that we can&#8217;t rely on social media\u00a0for communication with our existing and potential customers. An email list that you actually own is the safest and most sustainable way to communicate with your customers and nurture your leads. But still &#8211; social media remain a great tool for building one! Let&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":18249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[3,26,59,40,41],"class_list":["post-1197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tips","tag-email-marketing","tag-social-media-marketing","tag-subscriber-list","tag-subscribers","tag-subscribers-list","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/getanewsletter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}