The night TikTok went dark.

It’s like a fever dream now, but on the night of January 18, TikTok stopped working in the United States and stayed gone for around 12 hours. As I wrote a few months ago, this wasn’t the first time a popular social media platform ended. Over the last ten years, I’ve seen plenty of popular platforms fall, but this one felt different.

Many content creators have spoken about the political implications of the 12-hour disappearance, so I won’t dive into that. I want to discuss the ephemerality of social media and what it means for those who decided to make this our career.

Why Social Media Is More Like Smoke Signals 

People normally compare social media to traditional media, but it’s much more akin to using smoke signals to get your message across. The ability to convey messages across long distances, gain attention in real-time, and mean multiple things to people depending on context makes both social media and smoke signals work. On the other hand, a dependency on outside factors (weather for smoke and servers for social) and the risk of misinterpretation are the downfalls of both means of communication. 

What separates smoke signals from social media is the latter’s ability to produce complex messages. But, as we saw on January 18, social media’s dependency on outside factors is nearly impossible to overcome. Content creators, strategists and managers should never lose sight of social media’s fatal flaw and plan accordingly.

The Power of the Audience Funnel

So, what should you do? 

The answer exists in an area often ignored in content creation for social media: marketing. A core concept in marketing is the idea of the funnel, and marketers use it to map out an audience journey from awareness to action. The action in this case is to diversify your audiences’ connection points and provide avenues for deeper engagement with hopes of transforming your views into a community.

Think about it like this: you use a platform like TikTok, with its penchant for discoverability, to cast a wide net to your brand. This is the beginning of the funnel where awareness is key. If your content is interesting enough, you’ll see engagement such as likes, comments, shares, saves and follows. This interest in your content takes them one level deeper into the funnel.

Now whether they are followers or you are a staple on their algorithm, you need them to know the benefit of following you deeper into the funnel. This is where you want to diversify their touch points with you and convert their awareness into actions.

How to Build a More Resilient Digital Community

So, what does this mean? 

TikTok is renowned for its ability to reach people, but beyond the TikTok shop, it doesn’t offer as many options for action because it lacks the link and membership support that Instagram, YouTube or a website can offer. Utilize your other platforms to create exclusive experiences. Broadcast channels on Instagram, Patreon accounts, Discord servers, newsletters and YouTube’s membership feature are all built to create a feeling of community for your audience while providing you with a direct line to your followers. 

Your audience will shrink with each step, and that’s completely natural. The victory is that you’ve created a plan where you aren’t dependent on one platform, and you have a better understanding of your core audience.

Marketing Lessons for Social Media Professionals

Finally, I’m not a marketer at all. I’ve merely picked up bits and pieces from research and the marketing folks with whom I’ve been lucky enough to work. If this piqued your interest at all, I highly recommend you start learning about marketing concepts and how they help you with content creation and useful engagement.

And to my marketing folks who read this and are now frustrated with how simplistic this is, don’t be too hard on me because this is who you are frustrated with…