Third party platforms: beyond your control..?

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Regardless of whether you thought the hit film The Social Network was sensationalist, inaccurate or plain dull, they did get one thing right: “Okay, let me tell you the difference between Facebook and everybody else – we don’t crash, ever!” says an angry Mark Zuckerberg (the character).

“If the servers are down for even a day our entire reputation is irreversibly destroyed.”

So how do you ensure that when you’re using third party sites like Facebook, Tumblr and the rest that when the site goes down, your data and community doesn’t go with it?

Miraculously, Facebook managed to get by without such a disaster until earlier this year – but at 500 million people (and counting) using the site, we can probably cut them some slack.

Other social networking sites have not been so lucky. Twitter and Foursquare have had infamous teething problems over the last eighteen months and we can now add Tumblr to the casualty list.  Delicious is also on the watch list after Yahoo accidentally revealed the popular social bookmarking site is on the “sunset” list – in other words, it’s likely to be sold off or closed down in the not too distant future.

Reliance on a single, third party owned and operated site is clearly fraught with risk, but what alternatives do you have when your audience is spending most of its time on social networks and almost no time on your website?  There are a few ways you can try and minimise that risk.

In a tactic that was distressing to observe, Tumblr had to use Twitter to keep its community updated about its recent server outage:

“This has been a slow and painful recovery, but we’re almost through. We’ll have more info to share as soon as we can post to our blog again.”

While it seemed a little embarrassing, Tumblr has actually been quite clever in using Twitter not only as a marketing tool but as a way of backing up its audience and fanbase.

If Facebook were to – in a highly unlikely scenario, despite recent DDoS hacker rumours – be hacked, closed down or destroyed tomorrow, what would happen to the businesses who have built their entire consumer base on that platform? And what happens to the data that is stored there?

If we accept that Facebook will always know more about our fans than we do, are we as happy to accept that Facebook is the only channel through which we can connect with them?

While you may have gained a specific audience through Facebook, don’t miss the opportunity to connect with them through other channels. People do still use email, and giving people the choice about how you contact them is just good customer service.

And creating a social CRM (customer relationship management) system, in which you own data about your customers, learn about their preferences and talk to them in their preferred medium is an excellent way of minimising risk and building good relationships at once.