One morning you open your phone and, instead of your business page, you see a message that the account is locked. No warning, nobody to call. Thousands of followers, years of photos and reviews, every conversation with customers - out of reach.
It sounds dramatic, but it happens every day: a hacked account, an automatic suspension by mistake, a rule you did not even know you broke.
Social networks are roads, not a home
Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are a great place to be discovered. They are busy roads with a lot of people passing by. But the road is not yours. You do not set the rules, you do not decide who sees you, and you do not decide whether you can log in tomorrow.
Using social media is not the problem. The problem is when it is the only place you exist.
Three things you do not control
- Access. An account can be suspended or hacked, and getting it back can take weeks, if it happens at all.
- Reach. Today a post reaches, say, 5,000 people; a month later, 300. You did nothing differently - the algorithm changed the rules.
- Contacts. Followers are not your customer list. You do not have their emails or phone numbers and cannot export them and write to them outside the platform.
You pay for ads to reach people who already follow you. That is rent for your own customers.
- Creative Idea
What to do this week
You do not need to leave social media. You need to lower the risk. Most of the steps below are free.
Protect the account
- Turn on two-factor authentication (2FA) for every profile with admin rights
- Add at least one more trusted admin to the page, so everything does not hang on one profile
- Never log in through “verification links” sent in messages - that is the most common way accounts are stolen
- Keep a copy of your photos, prices and key texts outside the platform
A place of your own that nobody can switch off
- A website on your own domain. The address is yours, the content is yours, the rules are yours.
- A Google Business Profile. It is free and shows you on Google Maps, independent of Facebook.
- Your own contact list. Emails or phone numbers collected with consent - from the website, at the till, from orders.
- A link to your website everywhere. In profile bios, in posts, on your business card.
Turn followers into contacts
The goal is to gradually move people from the road to your home. Give them a reason to leave an email or phone number: a discount on the first order, a useful guide, a heads-up about a new collection. That way, if the account disappears tomorrow, you can still tell your customers where to find you.
There is more on the difference between your own website and a “rented” platform in own website or rented platform.
The one-question test
Our free guide “How to keep your business alive in 2027” has one question worth asking yourself: if Facebook suspended your page tomorrow, how many customers could still find you? Read the chapter on “rented land” - free, no sign-up.
If the answer worries you, write to us. We will show you the smallest setup you need to have a home of your own online.
