The Instagram Saga, Part 1 – I Lost My IG Account The Night Before A Launch. Here's What I Did
Welcome to the first in my 2-part series – “The Instagram Saga”
In October last year, my Instagram account was suddenly and inexplicably disabled. And of course, it happened the night before a launch (more on that later).
If you haven’t already – come on over and connect with me on my new instagram account @bec_cuzzillo
There’s been some really big learnings that have come from the whole experience and I’ve had a lot of questions about it, so I am sharing this 2-part series to bring you behind the scenes of what happened, what I did and how it’s shaped my approach to social media moving forward.
In Part 1 today, I’m sharing what actually happened the night I lost my account, what I did to try and get my account back and how, despite losing one of my major marketing platforms, I was able to pivot and still have a successful 5-figure launch.
So let’s get into it.
Let’s set the scene…
Picture this – it’s a Sunday evening in mid-October, the night before my launch of Confident Consistent Cash.
Everything is ready to roll for launch day. I'm sitting there on my couch with my phone, looking back at my Instagram highlights and stories from my previous launch taking screenshots of that content so that I can repurpose and use it as inspiration for this coming launch.
Suddenly Instagram stops loading. I try to get the page to refresh, but nothing,
So I do what everyone does when apps start to bug out – I close the app and reopen it.
And then I get the dreaded message that says “your account has been disabled, if you believe this was a mistake, you can request a review”
So of course I click “request a review”.
I go through the process and a message pops up “we’re reviewing your info, it usually takes around a day, we’ll notify you when the review is finished. If we can confirm your info, you’ll be able to use Instagram again. If we can’t, your account will be permanently disabled.”
No one likes reading those words “permanently disabled” and I start to think that maybe this is more serious that I first thought.
I then get an email from Instagram which says: “Thank you for taking the time to submit an appeal against the decision to disable your account. If you believe your account was disabled in error, you can reply to this email explaining why you believe that your account did not go against our Terms of Use, in particular our policies on intellectual property.”
Now at this point, it’s night time, so I shoot off a quick email that says, in short, “I believe this was an error. All my content is my own, written and created by me. Please let me know what information I can provide to appeal this further.”
Because here’s the thing. They don’t give you any information. They don’t tell you why your account was disabled. They don’t tell you which post violated their policies. They don’t tell you what information you could provide that would prove it.
Outside of saying “I didn’t violate your terms of use” there’s no way to provide any evidence because I’m locked out of my account. Everytime I log on, I get the “we’re reviewing your info” message. To this day, 3 months later, I still get that message
And that is still the one and ONLY email I’ve ever received from Instagram about the whole thing.
Here’s what I didn’t do…
I didn’t freak out. I didn’t spiral. I didn’t make it mean anything about my launch. And for the most part, that’s how I approached it the whole way through.
And I’m really proud of myself for that. I think it speaks volumes to the amount of mindset work I’ve done over the years. Of how much I trust that I can handle anything and that my business can handle anything. Shit happens in business ALL the time.
Once upon a time, I would have freaked out about the whole thing. I was going into a launch without one of my major marketing platforms, I had lost all my DMs, all my previous content, all my followers. It could have been very easy to make it mean something and go into crisis mode.
But what would be the point of that, how would that serve me? It wouldn’t.
So one of the big personal reflections for me is a recognition that the mindset work does pay off. Instead of spiralling, my go-to reaction in this situation was like, “okay, this is a bit shit, what can I do to fix it?”
Of course, it was annoying. Of course, it was disappointing. And I definitely didn’t have the time or the desire to be chasing Instagram ON TOP of pivoting a launch – that’s not my idea of a good time. But in those situations, it is what it is, right? It was outside of my control, so I wasn’t going to waste more time than I needed being frustrated at the whole thing. I was just going to get to work.
Here’s what I did to try and get my account back…
I did a bit of a deep dive. I wanted to find examples of people who got their account back after having their account disabled. And yes, these magical unicorns do exist. So I absorbed all the information I could about it. What I discovered is that there is conflicting information around what worked for some and what worked for others, which wasn’t super helpful. But I sifted through it all and decided to email instagram every few days to follow up. It’s worth nothing that none of those emails were answered.
I decided to pay for Facebook verification so I could access the support you get through there. Facebook and Instagram, they’re both owned by Meta, maybe they could help me? It was worth a try. Again, no dice.
I set up some Facebook Ads so I could go through their Facebook Ads support too. Any information you read online will ultimately point you in this direction. If you want support from Facebook, the best thing you can do is pay for a Facebook Ad and put in a support request through there. This was by far the best support I received throughout the whole experience. But despite that, it still didn’t get me anywhere.
So it was at this point, 4 weeks in, that I decided…okay, let’s make a plan for the case that I don’t ever get this account back. What’s the plan from here?
Now I’m not going to dive into that right now because I have lots to share with you on that front in part 2 of the series – stay tuned.
What I want to share with you now is…
How I pivoted my launch…
Losing my instagram account the night before a launch is obviously NOT ideal – BUT I didn’t let that derail things. I really lent into the mindset of – its always working out for me.
Now I can’t unequivocally say that it didn’t impact my launch – in fact, I believe it did have an impact. Mostly because I had to spend what little time I already had on chasing instagram, in addition to everything else. Remembering that I’m also running a business, I’m a full time toddler mum, I’m in the middle of a launch and I’m spending my precious time emailing instagram, researching everything I could, chatting with Facebook support AND making last minute changes to my launch. Of course, there were impacts…
BUT I still had a very successful 5 figure launch.
Now there’s a couple of reasons for this.
I’m an old hand at launching: I’ve done this many times now and I have a solid team behind me who know our processes back to front (sometimes better than I do) so pivoting a launch and making changes isn’t hard for us. It was easy to make those changes because we have a solid rinse and repeat launch process and our launch was already planned out so it was just a matter of making some changes here and there and adding in some new bits and pieces.
I have a diversified marketing and content strategy. Essentially, all of my eggs were not in the proverbial instagram basket. So if you ONLY have instagram or facebook, this is your sign to make 2024 the year you diversify your marketing and at the very least, build an email list. In the past, you may have heard me say or others say “make sure you build your email list because you don’t own your social media following and it could all disappear overnight” – well, it’s true. Take it from me, do not put all your eggs in the instagram basket.
The reason I was able to still have a successful launch is because I’m not solely relying on instagram for my marketing. I have the podcast, I have my email list and I have Facebook too.
So here’s what we did…
We kept releasing weekly podcast episodes. That didn’t change.
We added in some additional emails to our launch sequence to create some additional touchpoints for people.
I then leveraged both my personal accounts across Facebook and Instagram.
As I do with every launch, I also did personal outreach behind the scenes and had lots of conversations with people in DMs.
And as a result, we had a very successful launch, despite losing my instagram account the night before we went live.
So what are the biggest takeaways here?
If you’re only relying on Instagram for your business, you’re playing a risky game. Build your email list. And look at how you could create content off the platform – whether that’s a podcast or a blog or a youtube channel. Don’t put all your eggs in the Instagram basket.
Solid systems, processes and planning is essential if you ever need to pivot quickly. Shit happens in life and business all the time. You might need to change things at the last minute. Having solid systems and processes and a plan in place is going to make that so much easier.
Your mindset is so key. It can really make or break the way you respond to situations in your business and life. You can’t control everything and when shit hits the fan, as it will inevitably do at some point, how you approach that mindset wise is going to be the thing that allows you to turn that shit into gold. It’s all in how you approach it.
I hope this was insightful and interesting for you today. I’ve had so many conversations with so many of you over the last few months about it and I knew that it was something that I wanted to come onto the podcast and share with you in this way.
Next week I’m sharing Part 2 where I’ll be chatting through what this means for me moving forward and how I’m approaching content this year after losing my account. See you then!