When Social Media Gets Banned

Last updated on 2 February 2025

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The chaos of a social media ban serves as a good reminder

Unless you’ve been under a rock, then you would have heard about the TikTok Ban in the United States (early 2025). You can just have a google and you’ll be able to find all the information you need to know about the ins and outs of the ban, why it was put in place (briefly) and how it got reinstated (for how long, we’ve yet to find out).

But for a little while over the weekend in late January, TikTok went black for users in the United States. Poof! Gone.

Gone were the millions of videos that creators had made since 2016 when TikTok first came out.

Gone were the dances and the memes. Gone were the comment sections which bring literal tears to ours eyes (mostly in comedy and humour).

Gone went the audiences of hundreds of thousands of people who rely on social media for their business.

Well, ‘gone’ insomuch as they couldn’t access it from the US.

And therein lies the ✨thing ✨

We don’t own our social media. I’ve said it before and no matter what happens on social media, I’ll continue to remind you and also myself. We don’t own it.

My example has always been ‘if Zuckerburg decides to pull the plug, there goes everything we’ve ever put on Meta platforms’. But obviously the same can be said for literally any other social media or online platform or tool.

Whether that be ‘going dark’ in one region of the world (in TikTok’s case, the United States), or just completely pulling the plug.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, per se. We know that we’re using platforms that have been created for us to use. We’re going to use them because they’re fun, they’re entertaining, educational, and informative (sometimes in a bad way, yes), and we can be creative with them.

I’m the same. I love Instagram. I love being able to chat with people, to share what I share, to help people with their blogs via that platform.

But I don’t own it.

You know what I DO own? What you DO own?

You own your blog

If you have a self-hosted blog then you’re not relying on a platform. If my hosting company, Lyrical Host, decides to pull the plug, then I can take my 15 years of content here on the blog with me.

💡 Check out: What Blogging Platform Should I Use?

Heck, even if WordPress.org somehow no longer was open-source software … I could still take all my content with me to the next place. Bundle it up nice and warm, welcome it into its new home somewhere else online, and you as a reader, probably wouldn’t even notice that I had moved house.

Just like how you own your email list and you can take that wherever you go, you own your blog, domain name, and content.

So what does that mean for bloggers?

It means that while yes we want to be on social media and we want to be utilising the platforms that we have available to us, we need to diversify those audiences a little bit more, and not be reliant on just one spot online. When TikTok goes down and that’s where you connect with your people, or that’s where you get business, or that’s where your blog traffic comes from … what then?

Diversifying doesn’t mean spreading ourselves too thin, though.

It means thinking about where your audience is (and yes that might be TikTok), in multiple spots. It means thinking about growing your email list so that you can still send your blog posts to your people via email. It means learning about SEO so that you can grow your blog and always have it accessible to you.

I’m guilty of not doing this, too.

I spend probably too much time on Instagram, and while I tried TikTok in 2024 for a little bit … I haven’t really done anything with it. But I’m thinking about looking into YouTube Shorts and seeing what the dealio is over there for my blogging tips.

I’m also making sure I’m growing my email list, and continuing to put out (hopefully) great blog posts that bring in traffic from search engines like google but also Pinterest.

And these are things you could be doing, too, if you’re looking to ensure you don’t lose it all if something like TikTok gets banned where you are, or if a social media company decides to shut down.

Thinking about starting a blog or getting back to your old one?

If you’ve been thinking about starting a blog or even getting back into blogging after a break, whether those thoughts happened before the TikTok ban hoop-lee-daa or because of it … I’d love to chat!

Here are some ways I could help you out.

🛋 The Blogging Room Membership

This is a monthly membership for women who are looking to learn with others around the world, be resourced and supported, and get the accountability they need to actually write the flippin’ thing and get things done. Learn more about it here.

💻 Blog Coaching

Would rather sit down face to face (read: on Zoom haha unless you’re in New Zealand! Then let’s chat!) and discuss your blog and your blogging goals? We can do that too! Learn more about 1:1 blog coaching with me here.

⁉ Other?

Or have something else in mind? Contact me and I’d love to start a conversation with you!

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I’d love to know what you think! Have you been affected by a social media ban like the one we’ve seen with TikTok? Or perhaps you’ve got a few irons in the fire, as it were.

Let me know where you’re at in the comments!