How to Backup Your Social Media Accounts

Whether you use social media to boost your small business’s marketing or just to connect with friends and family members, losing all the information you have stored in your social media accounts would be devastating. If you’re like many people, you may count on Facebook or Flickr as a place to store your favorite photos, or you might depend on your LinkedIn network to get vital, career-boosting contacts and information. If all of that crashed or disappeared, what would you do?

Did you know that you can – and should – back up the data from your social media accounts? Here’s what you need to know about why and how to back up your social media accounts:

Why Backup Your Social Media Accounts?

A recent Nielson study noted that about one in every four and a half minutes the average user spends online is spent using social media. It’s become an increasingly important part of our lives, and, in some ways, it even defines who we are.

For individual users, social media interactions give them pleasant memories with friends to look back on, and they may even store valuable information. For instance, your friends might send you valuable business information through LinkedIn, and you might share recipes through a group or message on Facebook. If you fall into this category, losing your social networking information could be a hassle, and could cause you to lose valuable information.

In some ways, losing social media data could just be annoying, but in others, it could be more than a hassle. For instance, if you’re looking for a new credit card that’s perfect for your needs, social media might come in handy. Daniela Baker from CreditDonkey says more credit card companies are looking to target markets through social media for specific types of credit cards, so you might want to see what offers you get on Facebook before filling outcredit card applications. If you lose all your social media information and need to start over, you won’t get offers that are tailored to your situation.

Businesses could stand to lose even more by not backing up their social networking information. If you don’t back up your business’s list of followers on Twitter or fans on Facebook, you may lose that information if either of those sites crashes.

How to Backup your Social Media Accounts.

With more users interested in backing up their social media data, several companies are popping up to offer backup services tailored just for social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. The backup process is simple, and, as your social media accounts are always changing and evolving, it’s an ongoing process. The best option is to choose a backup service that you can use for backing up all your social media accounts at once. Two of the most popular services of the day are Backupify and Social Safe.

Backing up Social Media with Backupify.

Backupify can back up information from all social services, an all you have to do to get it going is enter your login information for each service that you use. The service will automatically update your backups every day, and the data is stored on Amazon’s Simple Storage Service. Backupify is starting to offer new premium services for businesses, as well, which add extra security to the backup process.

Step 1. Signup for the Free Personal Account on Backupify. [LINK]

Step 2. Select a Social Media Service which needs to be backed up, I chose Facebook. (Remember: With a personal free account, you can choose only 3 services to backup totaling a 1GB space for the backups)

Step 3. Login to your Facebook and Click on Install button to setup the application on your account.

Step 4. Choose the permissions appropriately, and then click Allow.

Step 5. You are done with synchronizing your account with Backupify.

Step 6. To check the recent and ongoing backups, Click on the Backups tab on the Backupify site.

Step 7. You can also select the items to be backed up by going to the particular service page and clicking on Configure button. You can then select the items that you want to get backups of.

Step 8. To Export the Data click on the Export button next to Configure. It might take a little time to arrange the backup, You will be E-Mailed with the download link.

Backing up Social Media with Social Safe.

Social Safe focuses mainly on Facebook and Twitter, but it allows you to actually own the data you put out there on social networks. Whereas Backupify stores your data on the web where others might be able to access it, Social Safe gives you an application you download to your computer, which will then store away all your social networking data for you. This helps keep your information more private, which is especially important for some businesses.

Pre-Requisites:

• Adobe Flash Player (Optional)
• Adobe Air

Step 1. Go to SocialSafe Registration Page [LINK]. Choose the Free Download followed by Install Now.

Step 2. Let the Flash App download completely then click on Open > Install > Choose location > Install.

Step 3. After the installation is completed, Social Safe Desktop Application will open up. Click on the Gear Icon and Choose Use for Free.

Step 4. Click on Checkbox near Terms of Use, Click on Facebook Icon.

Step 5. Login to your Facebook account and Choose the permissions.

Step 6. After you are successfully logged in, You can choose the Synchronization options like Photos, Status Updates etc, After that choose the Sync Button next to the Sync Options.

That’s it for the Social Media Backup, Its wise to share this information with your friends on Social Networks as it might benefit them. Do ask your questions or doubts regarding these services via the comments.