Diversifying Your Social Media Portfolio

The Great Facebook Crash of 2010

by David Pollack

Ever had a financial advisor tell you that you should diversify your portfolio?  It’s the modern equivalent of the old warning not to put all of your eggs in the same basket.  Diversifying a financial portfolio is a way to ensure that even if the money you’ve invested in one area is lost, you have investments in other areas which are growing or remaining stable.

So, in a world where your online brand is one of your most valuable currencies, why would you fail to diversify your social media portfolio?

What’s being called the “Great Facebook Crash of 2010” has taken the popular social and business networking site offline for most users for the past 48 hours.  For businesses whose company page is a companion to or even more popular than their company website, this crash means much more than not being able to wish one’s kindergarten playmate happy birthday, or losing crops on Farmville.  It means losing constant contact with customers and partners, a severe logjam in information release via status updates, and a generalized loss of internet presence for their online brands.  For companies who have a Facebook company page in lieu of a company website, the outage is even more damaging.

Options for diversifying your social media portfolio:

• Company Twitter account, as well as individual accounts for various department heads and/or specialists.
• A company LinkedIn page.
• An interactive blog
• An interactive part of the company website that allows for customer comments.

For all of these options, you should have backup.  When one goes down, increase vigilance and interactivity on the others.  And, of course, if you put all of your eggs in the Facebook basket, I hear MySpace is still functional!

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