What The Instagram/Faceboook Outage Made Me Realize

The other week, I experienced my second Instagram outage. Like the first one, I assumed it was my phone somehow and was very annoyed when I tried all the hacks and nothing worked. It didn't break my world, but I thought it was something on my end and I couldn't fix it. So I was actually glad to hear it was a problem with Instagram. But these outages really make me think about the wisdom of having all my eggs in one (or maybe two) baskets.

Instagram is a platform that I just "rent" space on to showcase my work. But someone else gets to ultimately decide if I can use that space and what I can put on it. If I were to get on Facebook, the same rules would apply. And they have those lovely algorithms, which means that only a small fraction of my followers actually see what I post. The point is, I am only in control of what I post. Everything else is out of my hands.

Enter this blog and my newsletter. Email has no algorithms. If I send you an email, you will get it. And unless you get hundreds of emails every day, you're guaranteed to see it. Opening it is up to you, of course. But you know that if you sign up to get my blog posts and newsletter, you will get them. You won't have to wonder if you are missing anything. With this blog and my newsletter, I have much more control. Yes, I still run those things through a company, but I control who is on my email lists, not them, and I control the content and the function of my site. We're pretty much safe unless the entire Internet goes down, and if that happens, well, I probably don't have a business anymore anyway :)

I love interacting with people on Instagram, don't get me wrong. But I am coming to see that it's not probably the best place for everyone to go to stay connected with me. So if you really enjoy following along with my business, I highly encourage you to get on my email list. The plan is that if Instagram goes down or if anything weird happens, that I will go to a weekly newsletter format to keep you guys up to date. For right now, I only send quarterly updates and then a few other emails with information that cannot wait until the next newsletter. Just like Instagram, you can "unfollow" if you decide you don't want to get them anymore! What do you have to lose?