I lost something…

Imagine if one of your social network (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or any other social network) account were suspended and deleted. What would you do?

A couple of weeks ago, my personal Instagram account got disabled by Instagram without prior notice. I know some persons this had happened to in the past. I never would have thought it’ll happen to me.

Why? Because as a Social Media Strategist, I know how Instagram works (or so I thought… Lol).

One minute I was scrolling through my Instagram feeds and the next minute I got kicked out of my account.

First I thought I got hacked. But then I didn’t receive any notification about any strange login to my account (I’ve got my Two-factor authentication turned on).

At first it was funny, then confusing. But then, I was hopeful I’d get it back in no time. I thought it’ll probably take a couple of hours because I reached out to the service provider and they said they’d investigate it and get back to me within 24hrs.

Did I get it back after 24hrs? NOPE!

Infact, after 32 hours or so, my Instagram account vanished like it never existed.

So this is an account I’ve grown for over five years and recently became really active to make professional connections and great friends.

I also used it to save great memories I didn’t share on other social media networks. So it was like a storehouse for me.

POOF! It was gone. Just like that!

Then it hit me that I may have actually lost something.

How did it make me feel? Overwhelmed!

Was I prepared for what was coming? Of course not! But then, I looked at things in the bright side (like I always do).

Well I was able to set-up another personal Instagram account. Most importantly, I learnt a lot (the hard way though… Lol).

What happened to me could happen to anyone (it happened to people before me). The social network system is basically designed to act like that when it’s triggered by any suspicion (true or not). Sadly, we can’t do much about it.

With this, consider the possibility that any social network might turn off a particular feature or the entire network itself.

So here are some things you can do if something like that happens;

• Have a backup account. If your connections are valuable, do have a backup account or get their contact number(s) so you could stay connected with them outside social media.
• Do you have valuable social media posts you don’t want to lose? Don’t rely on Social Media such as Instagram and Facebook to backup your pictures and videos. Something like Google Drive, Dropbox or other storage networks would be a better long term choice.
• Download your Profiles and/or Pages. Several social media networks allow you to download your profiles and pages.
• Apply these to your blog posts too. Backup!

While it may seem a bit paranoid, you don’t want to find yourself kicked out of a social account without access to your most valuable pieces of content and out of reach of your powerful connections.

You can also set a reminder on your calendar for regular social media, content, and contact backups.

By doing this, you ensure that when one of the social media services you use crashes you don’t lose valuable information and connections.

Hope you find this useful.

Yours truly, Grace ♡