SOS Guide: What to do when Instagram is down
Picture this, you tap on Instagram, and give it that satisfying refresh only to be met with an error. Either you see the identical posts you saw this morning or worse, no posts at all. The main problem here is that you have the perfect post ready to go, one that is primed and ready to engage your customers with the key message for that day. How do you tackle an outage?
All technology glitches from time to time. Especially Instagram. And given the fact there are over 500 million daily users, it’s no surprise. That’s one stretched server! But what do you do when something isn’t working quite right? Is your feed not refreshing? Have you lost a load of followers? Are your posts not appearing?
The first step - don’t panic or jump to any conclusions. Put the kettle on and take a breath, pop open this post, and have a little read.
Stay calm, pop your phone down
Okay so, things are not going to plan, we can safely say that. Unfortunately, as much as we try refreshing and checking Twitter to see if ‘Instagram is really down’ probably is not going to help the situation. Our first piece of advice? Take a step back for a moment.
As we noted, technology glitches, it’s a given. The chances are if your Instagram is down, so are your customers and even your competitors. No one at that given moment is going to be using Instagram, so it’s best to take our focus and worry away from the situation.
In fact, according to our team of brand marketing experts “If Instagram is suffering any glitches, as a rule of thumb, we suggest once the app starts working again to give it a 12 hours grace period before posting content again. We do this as to make sure that our content isn’t lost in a wave of panic as the app relaunches, plus - you just want to make sure that it doesn’t go down again!”.
One golden shining light of Instagram having a breather? Take that moment to enjoy a little peace and quiet, be rest assured that Instagram is owned by the tech giant that is Meta, will 100% be on the case and the incident will be brief (unless we’re talking about that time that Meta was even locked out of their building of course).
Don’t read too much into commentary
Whenever anything goes wrong with Instagram, you’ll start to see the rumour mill whirring. Suddenly, everyone seems to have the inside knowledge and claims they can give you reasoning for it. You’ll see the likes of Twitter and Reddit beaming with theories, predictions, and well, almost anything to gain those clicks.
Spoiler alert: they know nothing.
Take these posts with a pinch of salt and listen out to what the platform itself says. They are the only ones able to give you the real scoop. The majority of the time you’ll find that these incidents where Instagram goes down are server issues, overloading, or a small problem with the code. As we said, Instagram is a big business, and security is an incredibly huge priority for them - so these internal issues will always be addressed quickly by their team of engineers.
The problem with engaging with these rumour-mongering types of posts is it supports the spread of false information, whilst this ‘fake news’ isn’t perhaps as damaging as something more political or health based - it is still something we all need to be actively aware of. Engaging, and spreading news that isn’t based on fact from a trusted source can be damaging to businesses and individuals alike.
So where should you get your information about the on-goings of Instagram? From the horse's mouth of course! Luckily you can find Instagram over on Twitter where they tend to post an official note to acknowledge issues with their app, another one to follow is Adam Mosseri, the Head of Instagram. As well, as following for the truth behind Instagram issues, he’s a handy one to follow for app updates and developments too.
Remember your owned channels
You’ll always hear us giving this piece of advice to clients: The only channels you can truly rely upon are your owned ones - aka your website and email list. Why? Because you own them, your email list is yours, not the email platform you use and your website. If you’ve paid for your domain the content is also yours.
But why does this matter? If Instagram dropped off the face of the earth tomorrow, you want to be confident your business has a stronghold in the digital space without it. We’re not saying this to panic you, of course, you should invest time and effort into your social channels, they’re amazing tools to communicate with your audience and build brand awareness, but it is so important to divvy up your marketing efforts to cover all potential bases.
It’s easy to get swept up in the vanity of social media and whilst it absolutely serves a purpose, the platforms aren’t future-proof - it’s truly hard to see a world without Instagram but equally, in the years passed we have seen the rise and fall of social media platforms (anyone remember MySpace?). So, keep at your social media efforts, use it as a tool in your arsenal but definitely pay attention to your owned platforms. Asides from the fact they are owned, channels like email marketing have eye-watering amazing stats when it comes to reach, click-throughs, and even conversion rates - did you know that email marketing campaigns can see 50-100 times the click-through rates from Facebook and Twitter?
There we have it, whilst it’s not ideal when a platform messes up your posting plans, there’s always a silver lining. Make sure in the event of Instagram going down, step back, give your phone a break, tune out of any non-factual rumours and maybe look into increasing your use of email marketing or your website’s own blog. Our key message? There’s no need to panic! Bookmark this page for later if you need a little virtual pep talk.
P.s. looking for a non-rumour-based marketing insight Instagram account to follow? You can find us at @thedoersuk
This post was written by our Inner Circle member, Allie. If you’re in any need of Social Media advice or help, do be sure to book a 30-minute discovery call.
