Sit with me for a second and imagine this, after countless hours, thoughts and passion poured into creating content, ideas pulled from the depths of your imagination, and then the promotion. After sending those DMS, where you “pestered” your friends and loved ones to share and tag people. After the moments of fun and meaningful engagements, people commenting about how good your stuff is, or how it meant a lot to them and came out at a time when they and the world needed it, how you should keep going and never stop because what you are doing serves a purpose and has meaning. After all this, you start getting a following; more eyes are now on you, and your satisfaction and pride in your push and determination approaching an all-time high, then you log in and are asked to log out. It's a glitch you think, it barely registers as a standout event, until you try to log in and get a response like this account has been breached our policy and has been deleted, or suspended, or someone else has hacked your account. The way your heart will skip; like you misplaced the most important thing you need to present in the next 2 seconds is guaranteed.I think this is one of the highest things that qualify as a creator's hell.
Social media serves one major purpose; a vehicle to connect with your target audience/customers. A tool to get your product and service to as many people that need to know about it with high-speed feedback at the click of a button, which if you are marketing inclined, you know is more material for content and advertising to show others your content gives satisfaction. But, if you are business inclined; you would think even further. The platform is not mine, and what is not yours can easily be taken away from you.
If you saw the now-deleted tweet thread by Twitter support on Sunday, then you got a quick glimpse of this nightmare. In summary; twitter was proposing a new policy of removing accounts that were created with the major purpose of advertising certain platforms, diverting Twitter followers off the platform. This even got the former CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey to comment; simply asking "why?" Freedom of speech at its best, but I digress.
So how can I preserve the content I have? You may be thinking:
1. Always have a backup: Like I have mentioned in a previous post about documenting, always have a backup. This could be distributing one content across various platforms, except it's a targeted attack, the odds of losing all your accounts are pretty low. Still, you need to store your content on the cloud, or in like 2 separate hard drives. May sound paranoid and feel like too much work, but you should see your content as Intellectual property that can work for you time and time again, while you sleep, it spreads the word for you without needing you to open your mouth.
2. Get a website: This is so you are not completely subject to the rules of other people's platforms, you get followers and direct them to your platform where they know they can get all things concerning you. Products, feedback, merchandise.
3. Statistics: A content creator knows that his only leverage or claim to being an influencer is how many people listen to or view their posts. Not having a way to still reach them if you should lose your account, is a gamble that is guaranteed to leave a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach when or if the deed should ever happen. So think beyond just creating content, think to own.