You've set up your Reel and you have your hashtags ready - a certain success! And then... Instagram won't load. It keeps spinning and trying... is it your internet connection? Maybe you think you will go to the Curious Kirby group on Facebook and see if anyone else is having the same issue... but that won't load either? What is happening?
You are not imagining it, Instagram and Facebook are both down today (still down at the time of this writing). These things happen. Websites go down, or you have some account issues with them, or they get hacked/hijacked. The key is to not trust your complete existence in one source (and Facebook owns Instagram, so the two together are still one source). How do we get seen when our primary social network is not working?
First and foremost, this is why having an email list is important. And backing up that email list. Even if your main email tool goes down, as long as you have that list, you can just move to another email tool. You own your list and have a plethora of options when it comes to email. No one tool can take that from you.
Similarly, having your website can act as a backup for when social media goes down. Can your website server go down? Of course, which is why I do like to have my domain on a separate service when possible so that I could point to a placeholder if my service is down. In my case, I do maintain a number of services that could be found with Google as well.
But for social media, what are the alternatives? Many artists find that Facebook is the number one sales platform with Instagram important for maintaining connections with clients and other artists. Any of these tools can go down so I will list some tools with their competitors so you can at least start a minor presence to use when needed. Some, like Pinterest, are pretty useful to maintain as much as possible even when others are working.
Your backup for your Facebook page, which is where people see new work, you announce your events and people can reach out to you:
Your newsletter (can I emphasize how this is the most important thing?)
Your website
Your backup for Facebook Groups, which is where you collaborate, share successes, get help for problems:
Discord.com (click the link and join my Curious Kirby Creatives Discord)
Your backup for your Instagram page, which is where you nurture those relationships, show work in progress, exhibit your creativity and get noticed by new people:
Don't worry about posting the best possible post for any of these - just post something so people know they can reach you and so that you get indexed in search engines. You can use trust Canva.com to help you design for all of these. And then relax and work on art. Instagram and Facebook will be back again before you know it.