Why Interior Designers Shouldn’t Rely On Social Media Alone To Reach Their Audience

Oct 15

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Well, unfortunately it's time for another social media rant about why interior designers and architects shouldn’t rely exclusively on social media to grow their audience. I wish it were not so. A few months back it was Pinterest, and now its Instagram.

Earlier this week I was waiting in line at my favorite Italian deli. It always has a long wait, so I checked my @scaledupstudio Instagram account. Instead of my account appearing, a notification screen flashed saying my account has been suspended, essentially because it questioned my identity.

The screen stated I had 30 days to disagree with their decision, and then a little radio button to click if I want to send a message to IG telling them I disagree. (Would anyone NOT click on that button, legit account or no?)

Then I had to go through a verification process that ended with me writing on a piece of paper my name, username, and a code they sent. Then I had to make the paper visible while taking a selfie and upload it to IG for identity verification.

This was fine until I went to upload. The image was too small (thought I was doing them a favor by choosing a smaller file size) and kept uploading sideways. Error message + endless beach-ball spinning. I finally clicked the IG support and was immediately told that IG support is "closed." This was at 11:30 AM on a Tuesday, PST. I finally uploaded the image to IG's liking and was told the review process would take "about a day” and they’d send notification if my account is reinstated.

I was incensed that my benign interior design account was somehow flagged, and I was definitely unimpressed with their “A.I.”(Intelligence, artificial or otherwise, not so much IMHO.)

To add insult to injury was the fact that I was running my first FB/IG ads for my Interior Design Services Guide through my Scaled Up Studio FB ads account. Instagram clearly isn't connecting any dots. (Credit card info plus linkage to my other Facebook and Instagram account, Greenhouse Studio.)

I was unhappy also because the ads have been going quite well, especially for being my first attempt, but I had to turn them off because it would be really weird to run an ad sponsored by a non-account. I'm guessing they'd show them exclusively to Facebook users, but 95% of my sales have come from Instagram, so no bueno.

Imposter Instagram accounts

None of this is horrible in the grand scheme of things of course - far from it. However, I find it totally perplexing that in the AI's “infinite wisdom” my little IG account somehow raised red flags when there are literally imposter-accounts galore out there that you must repeatedly report to get them to do anything.

I've run across 3 accounts just in the last month or so where people post the same profile pic and name it as close as possible to a large account I’m already following. Then they follow you to get you to think you're being following by this huge account. They DM and attempt to lay out some ridiculous “investment opportunity” where I’m apparently supposed to then hand over my bank account. As if.

But clearly these imposter accounts aren’t on IG's radar for a time because they can have thousands of followers. One imposter account that followed me was a fake of mega entrepreneur Alex Hormozi, and had 73k followers!

Two weeks ago another imposter account incident happened to the business I took my Facebook ads digital course from. Her account is about 17k and someone did the same thing, this time peddling crypto nonsense. Myself and others reported it but it still took about a week or so for IG to shut it down.

Hacked Instagram and Facebook accounts

Instagram accounts also get hacked. I've encountered two interior designer's accounts in the past year. One was around 33k followers and the other was 75k. Both were hacked and had bitcoin ransom demands made. Both repeatedly tried contacting Instagram and got crickets. One account was obliterated (75k - heartbreaking) and the other paid up.

My theory is they target business accounts that are substantial enough that the owner cares a whole lot if its deleted but not so huge that they will make Instagram take much if any action. (In other words, I doubt they’d be dumb enough to target a Kardashian.)

I was having dinner with a friend who owns a software company and telling him about my account being shut down. He told me his Facebook ads account had just been hacked last week. The account kept running but the hackers began running their own ads that were charged to his company’s account.

My first question was did he have 2-factor authentication for the FB account? He looked chagrined and said “This is IT security 101 and what I do, and yet we didn’t have 2-factor set up.” But they sure do now.

I had just set up my Meta-FB ads account and elected to do 2-factor. It’s not a big deal at all since Meta is good about not making you constantly do it from a known browser so it’s not annoying.

All of this makes a strong case for 2-factor authentication, even for your Instagram account. Tedious? Possibly, but side benefit - I bet I'd be less likely to "impulse-check" social media as often as I do now. The real benefit? I bet hackers go for “low hanging fruit” and will bypass an account set up with 2-factor for easier prey.

[Instagram’s help page on enabling 2-factor authentication]

Instagram account resolution and my social media soapbox

On Thursday I checked in on my account and went pale and clammy. Before when I’d check on its status, I could see the Scaled Up Studio account name. This time it had disappeared completely. I thought “Wow, they really deleted it.”

I decided to try signing in from scratch just because, and voila, the account repopulated. So that was that. I’m still waiting on the notice from Instagram telling me it’s been reinstated though. (They promised they would…)

So my account disappeared on a Tuesday and was resurrected on a Thursday, less than 48 hours. No doubt they sensed the Kraken was gonna be released if they didn’t, and those Instagram crickets got it together and responded accordingly. 😉

Circling back to my social media soapbox…

My point with all of this is any social media account doesn't actually belong to you.

If you've read much of my stuff, you know I preach about how your website and email list are the only digital assets you "own." In other words, you have control over them and they can't be taken away on a whim. Social media? Not true at all.

Your social media accounts are free. You aren't a paying customer of Instagram, TikTok etc., so you have ultimately very little say or recourse if its A.I. mysteriously decides to flag you and shut you down, nor do you have leverage if some hacker gets in and demands a ransom.

Expect their response to your plight to be fairly indifferent.

Your website and email list

Your website and email marketing service however are a different story. You pay for your website, both the domain name and the hosting platform. You pay for your email marketing service (newsletter).

Website platforms like Squarespace have extensive security features and getting hacked is rare. I've never even heard of it happening until I googled just now and yes it's possible, but they have preventative measures you can take and 24-7 FAN-tastic customer service. (Wordpress sites are different - they're public forum-based, theme-based, or plugin-based, so the level of security and support varies tremendously.)

Your email list hosted via your email marketing service provider can be downloaded at any time into a spreadsheet. We should all be doing this at least once per month. Again, you’re paying for this service.

I have 2 email service providers, Flodesk for Greenhouse Studio and ConvertKit for Scaled Up Studio. Downloading my latest subscriber list into a spreadsheet for safekeeping in either platform is just a click of a button, and both both have very responsive customer service.

Conclusion(s)

I don’t mean to paint a picture like everything can happen on social media and nothing ever happens to your website or email marketing campaign provider since that’s not the case. But the latter two have a much lower incidence of problems to begin with, and since you’re paying for these services, if for some reason something does happen, you have resources you can draw on to resolve it.

When Instagram went dark exactly a year ago, many lost income because it was their only means of communicating with their audience, but as super online-entrepreneur Amy Porterfield said, “I sent an email to my subscribers that day instead and earned 17k.” She was of course, advocating for putting your highest priority on building an email list and for using your social accounts as a means getting people onto that email list.

In other words, the social accounts are a funnel for getting people onto your website and email list and not a means unto themselves.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below and let me know: do you use social media as your means of reaching your audience, or are you also building an email list? Why or why not?

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