How to Survive a Facebook or Instagram Hack on Your Business
As an entrepreneur, you know how important social media is to your business. It is a key element in your business operation that requires money and resources. And it’s no surprise that so many businesses host their online communities there.
Social media is used to communicate and engage audiences as well as share details about your business to the world. Many businesses also use social media as a means of establishing themselves as experts in their field. So you can see how your social presence is everything in business.
Now imagine waking up to discover that presence was gone. Imagine all your social content, gone. Your access to your community, gone. Your Facebook pixels, customer data, and contacts, all gone. And all in a single night. How would you react?
Sharing from personal experience, here.
Unfortunately, that is what happened to us at the SweetLife Company, and I want to ensure this does not happen to you. But it is through this horrific experience that I am able to impart some major knowledge here.
Many may think they are safe, and that this could never happen to them. But the reality is that this can happen to anyone at any time. If your business is dependent on social media, platforms you are at risk.
So let me be real with you. Facebook and Instagram are not above being hacked… even when you have done everything correctly in order to protect your accounts. In fact, this has happened more times than I want to count. To make matters even worse, these larger corporations are not as invested in your business as you are, and they will not fight as hard to recover any lost assets.
If your Facebook account is hacked, the first step to try to regain control of your page is to start by claiming it has been hacked through this link https://www.facebook.com/hacked. However, there is no guarantee you may be given an opportunity to even submit a support ticket or reclaim your account or even talk to someone.
That is why I am making it a point to share this information with all business owners. I want you to know how you can protect your business and sleep soundly at night knowing your company’s survival is not based solely on social media.
This is not about internet security. This is about arming yourself with methods that you and your team can deploy should you ever become a victim of a cyber-attack. If your company has a social media presence, and it should, I am speaking to you.
Safeguards to Protect Your Business in the Event of a Cyber Attack
Now, if your accounts are hacked, and you are not prepared you will need to start from scratch. And I don't want that for you. The upside to this experience though is that, although we had to start over with our social media presence, it was not completely from scratch.
There were a few measures we had in place that did save us. I’m sharing other methods my team and I learned the hard way. These measures will aid you in protecting your accounts, and will allow you to recover as quickly as possible.
Here are 4 safeguards you need to have in place to protect your business.
Safeguard 1: Build your email list in a separate email marketing manager that you own.
Ensure that your email list and your contacts of leads and clients do not solely reside on Facebook or any other social media. Don’t let these social media platforms be in control of when and how you communicate with your contacts. If you don’t have these contacts elsewhere right now, you can quickly fix that.
Here’s what you do: Make a quick post to your contacts informing them that you don’t want to lose contact with them due to all that is happening with accounts being hacked as of lately. Provide them with a link to sign up for your “Emergency Email List.” You can now use this information to create an independent database.
Safeguard 2: Have multiple administrators for your Facebook page.
Add another administrator to your Facebook business page such as an assistant or a business partner. It is also important that you give access to an administrator that does not share the same IP address as you or within your household in the event that your WiFi is the account that was hacked. This will ensure that you both are not locked out.
Safeguard 3: Create a custom hashtag for your business.
This safeguard is especially important in order to regain your social following. A custom hashtag for your business will make it easier for your followers to find your posts especially, if they are following your hashtag.
Yes, all your posts will be gone, but as you post more content with that hashtag, people are going to see it. When you create that hashtag, place it in all of your social media posts now and for the future.
So in the event that you may need to create a totally new social media account (raising my hand here), your followers will be able to find you once they know or follow your custom hashtag. Another great benefit to this is that you can ping those followers that have commented and followed your hashtag and easily reconnect with them.
Safeguard 4: Keep content organized independently in a secondary storage.
Of all the safeguards, this will take you a bit of time to execute. This technique is by far the most crucial of all the tips listed. It is also one of the standard operating procedures needed in order to grow and scale your company to business to six and even seven figures.
All the content that you have created for your business, including all important documents, social media copy, etc. should be stored in a secondary, cloud storage area such as Google Drive or Dropbox for business. So rather than creating the content from scratch if you are hacked, you can pull your content from your secondary storage.
With a few tweaks and updates, you can then repost content that is still relevant to your new social media page. Get started on creating a system for organizing and archiving your content.
Protect what you’ve built.
As a business owner, you should have complete control over your business, and that includes your social media presence. Don’t ever allow yourself to become completely reliant on third party companies such as Facebook and Instagram when it comes to communicating with your contacts.
The truth is that these platforms are not invincible or impenetrable. They can still be hacked even with all safety features put in place. And let’s face it, with everything that’s going on in the world today, there are some bad people with intricate tech skills and way too much time on their hands.
And while you might become a victim of hacking like I did, you do not have to throw your hands up in defeat. Take precautions now for the what-ifs, and make sure you always have the upper hand, the control, and the confidence to know that your company can keep on churning…with or without Facebook.
