Recall last year, on the 4th of October 2021, when social media platform Facebook and its subsidiaries, Instagram and Whatsapp faced an outage that made it globally unavailable for a period of six to seven hours.
A large percentage of people blamed it on their internet service provider, while some others disclosed that they felt their data subscription had elapsed which prompted them to renew their internet bundle subscription, but still couldn’t access these social media platforms.
Soon they got to the realization that the issue wasn’t a faulty internet connection or a finished data subscription, but rather it was the fact that these social media platforms were down due to an internal technical issue. Despite the fact that users and business owners on these platforms had to switch to other available platforms, the consequences of the outage was pretty high.
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Many were cut off from interacting with family and friends, while a majority of those affected were small business owners who solely rely on these platforms to run their business, as well as connect with customers as they faced an unexpected financial hit.
Some of these businesses experienced a fall in engagement, and traffic while others had their sales taking a hit in direct correlation to their social media channels being disrupted due to the unexpected outage.
After the outage was resolved, it sparked an open conversation for businesses most especially small businesses that are subject to these social media platforms functioning, with no other strong foundation, on the need to own a business website.
Ever since the outage, many small businesses began to spread their presence on other platforms. There is no disputing the fact that these social media platforms have been phenomenal in how businesses operate.
Through it, businesses are able to gain access to resources, increase their worthiness, cultivate strategic partnerships as well as increase their contact with customers and suppliers. Albeit, over-reliance on it can put them in a vulnerable position, if an unexpected outage occurs.
Imagine a scenario where there is a shut down of all social media platforms running for a week or a month, this automatically means that most businesses especially small businesses with no website will cease to exist. This is why it is advisable for small businesses to own a website that cannot be affected by a social media outage.
Also, early last month, Twitter experienced an outage that disrupted services for millions of its users. The micro-blogging platform attributed the outage to “trouble with internal systems,” but did not further elaborate. It also experienced a similar issue in February this year, which lasted for nearly an hour. Although outages on these social media platforms rarely occur, small businesses should be intentional about owning a business website.
The Need For Small Businesses To Have A Website
There is a strong need for small businesses to own a website, because even when an outage occurs on social media, customers can still get through to the business through their website.
A lot of people have described businesses that solely rely on social media platforms as “building on rented space”. What this implies is that they do not have full ownership of the platform they are building on, and it can be easily taken away from them by the real owners leaving them to start from scratch.
Social media has the ability to help businesses succeed and have a huge reach, however many businesses make the mistake of using them as their digital homes, downplaying the value and importance of a website.
The Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp blackout that happened last year October should be a wake-up call for small businesses. We live in a world of uncertainty where anything can happen at any time.
Business owners, who do not own a business website need to ask themselves if social media was down for a week or month would their business still operate.
A business must have a home for it, which is a website and not a social media page. By creating a website they have the advantage of having a digital space that is theirs and cannot be affected by any social media blackout as customers/clients can still reach them on their website.
Also having a business website gives business owners the autonomy to post whatever content they want to, unlike on social media platforms, where a content can breach policies which can make the business page to be suspended or deleted. A business that relies solely on social media takes many nights of sleep away from its owners as the unexpected can happen at any time.