Social Media – The Perpetual Question
Web2.0 and Social Media Works – I don’t care what the skeptics have to say, but we have proven it and keep coming up with new ideas to implement on a regular basis. Sometimes I feel like I am preaching to the choir here on Agent Genius because if you are taking the time to read here, it means that you get it and don’t need reinforcing.
Today’s post is different – it’s about questioning your business practices and the way that you may be approaching your options. So instead of asking if your blogging and social media outlets are working I will ask this:
What would happen to your business if your blog or favorite Social Media Site were to disappear tomorrow?
What if you had no control of keeping that blog live and it went “poof” into cyberspace? I’m not here to tell you about my personal experience and I’m not here to point fingers, blame others or tell you what blogging platform to choose. I want to plant a seed to see if you are prepared to face a major problem if it ever came your way.
I know many of you are geeky enough to know to back up your blogs and content on a regular basis but others depend on web-hosts to do it for you.
The question still remains – if your current servers went down tomorrow, or your web-host got sucked into a black hole in the blogosphere….do you have a plan?
Who would you blame?
Blaming others for mistakes or problems is not an option, on the contrary, you would have to blame yourself for making the wrong choice not being prepared … or worse yet, for not questioning and falling into the “naive” category. Many of us with successful blogs have been discussing how we cannot place all our eggs in one basket, how there are tons of nice people in the real estate blogiverse but it does not necessarily mean that they would have your best interest at hand. We have also discussed how there are a lot of people out there that seem to know what they are doing, but there is no real way to tell (I know….that one is the most frustrating).
So here I will continue playing devil’s advocate just to make you think and hopefully to help you prevent any future problems with your already successful Internet marketing methods:
- If you only have one website/blog, what would happen if it would go down from one day to the next?
- Does it make sense to have several sites just in case?
- Does an open platform (WordPress or Typepad) make more sense than a proprietary one based on the fact that you would have more control? – This includes sites like Active Rain, other networking sites with blogs, as well as sites hosted on proprietary platforms.
- Same applies to sites like Flickr and even Yahoo or Google (maybe a bit far fetched….but could happen) ….and God forbid Twitter!
- Do you back-up your own content on a regular basis or do you trust your web-host to do it for you?
- Do you know if you own your content, skin, data and could you take it with you anywhere and anytime you choose?
- Would that content/skin/data be compatible with other platforms?
- Do you copyright your content?
- Have you granted rights to that content to the web-host/designer?
- If you have a Lead Generation System, do you back up those contacts on a regular basis?
- Are your back-ups safe and easily accessible
DO YOU HAVE CONTROL?
I am not a pessimist and I don’t like to look at worst case scenarios – but the idea is to keep the Perpetual nature of our business going and be ready for obstacles that could come our way (although I really hope they never do).
My job here is done – make sure you have a plan.
Start spreading the news...
This article published on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 10:49 am | Contact the editor
Topics: Marketing, Service, Social Media, Tech
About this Columnist (Full Profile)
Ines is all Miami, all the time. A Miami Beach Realtor® with Majestic properties, Ines authors Miamism.com, PrimeMiamiBeach.com, and MiamismPix.com and is always on communication’s leading edge. She goes out of her way to engage and be engaged, often using Mojitos to keep the mood light and give everything she does a Miami flavor. You can find her goofing off or instigating trouble at Twitter, Flickr, Facebook or LinkedIn.
Email Ines Hegedus-Garcia
The Daily Hot Sheet
The AGBeat Daily is jam packed with today's news headlines, fresh and neat in your inbox- start the day ahead of the curve.
Comments (29)
Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed
Social Shares & Links Back
- You Don’t Know What You Have Until You Lose It « The Notorious R.O.B.:
[...] a comment » Ines asks a fantastic question: What would happen to your business if your blog or favorite Social Media Site were to disappear [...]
- sheilabragg:
Social Media – The Perpetual Question: Get out of your feed reader and comment on this post- we PROMI.. http://tinyurl.com/5r9y5o
- SalineVance:
@Ines Nice post today on Ag http://snurl.com/6zxp4 Makes me think about my own plan. Others should read and take action.
Benn Rosales
Conal Campbell
Elijah May
Lani Rosales
Tara Steele
Marti Trewe
Charlene Jimenez
I totally agree with you! Don’t put all your eggs in one basket! We tell our clients this all the time. We push our clients to maintain their own hosted blog, and a separate wordpress blog, that is slightly different. We also get them on all the major social sites, get people talking!
Great advice!
Ines,
Great Post. You have officially scared the crap out of me!
Does anyone have any suggestions on great hosting services for WP Blogs?.. I’d like to have a back-up. I currently use HostGator.
Thanks in advance
David – live and learn…..and then share so others can learn as well
Tyler – send me the dry-cleaner’s bill
Ines,
We thankfully always back our site up. If it went down today…I have a back up as of yesterday. I would be be pretty upset if someone fooled around with my livelihood ie my blog!!! We have a (few) wordpress.org sites and I am so glad we went that route. Jay just re-did my site…so we very much just depend on ourselves.
Tyler – I use bluehost; they saved my butt a few months ago when some idiot (me) deleted my blog – they pulled a backup from three hours prior.
Ines – I don’t know about the preaching to the choir analogy – when I was in the choir I was too busy chewing gum trying to not get in trouble during the services.
We also use Bluehost and are very pleased with them.
Monika – that’s because Jay is DA BOMB!! You guys have it all under control. (glad to hear it)
Jim – LOL – spit that gum out boy!
This is a thought provoking post.
My blog gets backed up daily, automatically (via a plugin) and an copy is sent to me via email and stored on my server (I use Media Temple). In addition, my hard drive is backed up in basically real time via Carbonite (*highly* recommended).
This is one thing I tell people who blog exclusively on platforms like ActiveRain, RealTown, proprietary sites, even wordpress.com and typepad. You *never know* what could happen. These companies could go out of business, be sold, change their terms and conditions, whatever.
If I woke up tomorrow to find my hosting company had gone belly up, or burned to the ground, I could have my blog up and running in less than an hour.
I like that piece of mind. Since my business depends almost totally on the Internet, it’s critical that I maintain as much control over it as humanly possible.
Now should the Internet go away, I’d have to rethink a lot of stuff. (Don’t laugh. While the Internet isn’t likely to go away, it’s almost certainly going to morph and change — it’s never really standing still, and those using it shouldn’t either.)
That’s really scary. I’m happy I have two sites in the engines.
Really, really scary
Jay – some are smarter than others and you my friend are always willing to share….thanks for that (SMART)
Kevin – scary only the first time….then you learn.
Unfortunately about a year and a half ago my site was with Advanced Access and it along with about 30,000 others went down for almost a week. Ouch!!! When it happened for a second time (Shorter term this time) I had to say goodbye. I have all the pages of my site backed up but the problem with these 2 outages was server related. I did the only thing I could think of that made good sense, I changed hosts and platforms and could not be happier. I hope no one has to go through what I went through but having the backups made the move much easier.
Mack – thanks for sharing – can’t even begin to fathon not having an Internet presence for a week. OUCH!
Ines, I assume my host backs up and assumes is the word I give you tonight. In the AM I will call and check and if not make other arrangements, No, not talking about my AR blog but my WP one.
Thanks for getting me to do what I know I need to do.
Missy – If all else fails and I get one single person to double check their back-ups, then it was well worth it.
Ines,
We have experienced being hacked and our site went down due to a WordPress upgrade meltdown. We were down for two weeks as I tried to get my previous hosting company to fix it. They couldn’t and that is when we changed to Blue Host.
We changed to Blue Host because they got us up and running in a few minutes and we weren’t even there customer at the time.
Monika has addressed our backing up on a regular basis.
I am glad we are self hosted and I love WordPress as I can do a lot and I have full control.
Great post, Ines. I have assumed that my vendor is backed up. Since our vendors are not banks subject to a Paulson bailout, well, you know about assume.
It makes an ASS of U and ME.
I really don’t have time for all this realistic, be-prepared, girl scout nonsense, Ines, so please stop harassing me.
Ines,
It is funny how the universe works sometimes. I have a my browser close in the middle of an “automatic” upgrade to WP 2.65 resulting in some funky display issues in IE and you have created the timeless but always necessary backup, backup, backup post.
Jay – I’m sure you are ready now if it ever happens again – I hate that we learn from our mistakes instead of being ready from the start.
(love the avatar btw)
Thomas – I’m sure you will check on your vendor now
Lisa – LOL
Jeff – definitely necessary….can’t say it enough.
Ines, if we didn’t make mistakes then we would never learn anything.
It is a hard lesson to learn but when we learn from our mistakes we come back twice as strong, as I am sure you will do, with no problem.
You are a great blogger and real estate agent so that is why you will succeed.
Ines, this is important. We think that the hosts back up everything so why should we worry but even they can fail.
I’m putting a back up hard drive on my Christmas list!
BTW, enjoyed seeing your presentation at the Web 2.0 Panal at NAR with Jeff, Teresa and Cyndee.
yeah. that sucks. i’m going to stop talking now.
Jay – we do come back stronger. I just wish for people to learn from my mistakes so they don’t have to go through what I’ve gone through.
Sharon – thank you!! there are plugins also to back up your stuff on your own server or someone elses – there are plenty of options out there, and I’m glad you enjoyed the panel – it was a lot of fun.
Mariana – shut UP!
Hey Ines – oh how painful those lessons have been. And I can’t even quantify what I’ve learned through the kind of messes you’re talking about. One thing I am doing is taking more control of my sites, and will never again be that totally dependent on something proprietary or something I don’t have far more control over.
Lessons learned and now going forward….
When I grow up, I want to be like Jay & Monika…
Hey Ann – makes us stronger and better people…what we’ve learned in the past 2 years is pretty amazing, no?
Thank you Annie. LOL