Just a few weeks ago, one of the biggest Oh Shit! moments of 2019 caused worldwide panic. People across the globe screamed “Oh Shit!” in unison. Many day-to-day activities stopped and food bloggers and Instagram models lost hope completely.

What caused this panic? … #INSTAGRAMDOWN!

On the morning of March 13, Instagram and Facebook users lost access to their accounts, and hilarity ensued.

At first, the panic was slow growing. Users began noticing some unusual activity. Unable to upload new posts, they frantically refreshed to see if it was a WiFi issue. Instagram users deleted and reinstalled the app to find the app had locked them out and they could no longer enter the platform at all.

As the hours went on, the hysteria heightened and users began fearing “what if Instagram never comes back?”

For some, it was 24 hours before their accounts were restored, but it seemed like a lifetime.

As a marketer who works in social media management, this was a problem not just for our personal accounts, but for our clients as well.

So what do you do when not one, but two of the leading social media platforms go down?

After you send messages out alerting clients of post delays, here are five things you can do when social media goes down:

1. Find Another Platform (aka flock to Twitter):

Who was the real winner during this whole #instagramdown ordeal? Twitter of course. With the real addiction we have to social media, IG and FB users desperately sought a platform to share their struggle. Many dusted off their unused Twitter accounts to rediscover their old followers.

Don’t be afraid to rediscover some of the other neglected social media platforms, because one of the most fun aspects of the day were the hashtags created on Twitter. #Instagramdown and #facebookdown created a social media frenzy and a stream of memes that couldn’t be missed.

2. Reschedule Posts:

In your social media planning platform, whether it’s Airtable, Hootsuite, Planoly, etc. make sure you go in and reschedule your planned posts until the issue is resolved.

3. Find New Avenues for Live Video:

If FB and IG are down, so is livestreaming through those platforms. So, if you have any events during this time you were planning on streaming to your followers, it may seem you’re out of luck. However, there are a few solutions to this dilemma.

– Manual Video – You could take a video on your phone from the normal camera and upload after for followers to view.

– YouTube Live – YouTube offers a livestreaming option, so you could still stream the event as it’s happening and share on FB or IG at a later date.

– SnapChat – Though it doesn’t capture long video, it’s like the original version of Instagram stories where you can capture and share small video moments from your events.

4. Research Trouble-Shooting Techniques:

#Facebookdown/#instagramdown was a unique situation, but more often than not the answer to your problem could be solved pretty easily.

– Help Forums – Pursue the help forums on the platforms. It’s likely to be a problem someone had in the past and was answered.

– Help Ticket – If not, submit your own ticket into the help sections and hopefully, someone can offer advice.

– Hootsuite – Try posting from a third party social posting service. A solution I tried was uploading directly from Hootsuite instead of scheduling posts. Though it didn’t work on March 13, it could be a solution if you are locked out of an Instagram or Facebook account that is still linked.

5. Sit back and enjoy:

At the end of the day, sit back and enjoy the memes, funny tweets and banter, because everything will be back to normal eventually.

Here are the best of #instagramdown memes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ED_S59BO8wI

For your Oh Shit Moments call #teamKickSomeAss (401) 681-4900