The Ecommerce Guide to Social Media Back Ups

We all know that creating a backup of your hard drive and all your small business data on a regular basis is important -- but have you ever thought about backing up your online and social media accounts? Imagine what would happen to your small business marketing campaigns if you suddenly lost all your online social contacts, history and customer insights. Of course all business owners need to keep up-to-date records of all online communications for legal reasons, and while email is often backed up; tweets and Facebook messages can be overlooked.  These business communications also need to be archived. Something else to keep in mind is that you don't really own the online account and the data associated with it. Any online account you create (e.g. Facebook, Gmail or Twitter) can be suspended or the account can be terminated without warning if you are suspected of violating the terms of service for that particular site. The site may also close its virtual door without warning and leave a small business without any access to the contacts you have made and the data you have created online. Small business owners spend a lot of time in social accounts, and these are just a few of the reasons why it is important to have a system in place to create backups of your online account data. Options to Back Up Your Online and Social Accounts There are basically two approaches to back up your social media data. You can create backups of your social accounts from within the service itself, or you can use a third-party backup tool to archive data across multiple social and online accounts. Creating Archives From Within the Social Site Some of the common social media and networking sites provide tools that will let you create an archive of your account that you can download to your computer. In choosing this method, you would maintain the archive and it would become part of your usual small business back-up process. If your small business uses only personal profiles for making contacts with customers, then you may want to look at backing up your account or exporting contacts from within the site itself. Here are the step-by step instructions to create a backup of Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. How to Back Up Your Facebook Account Facebook offers a way to download your complete profile. When archived, the backup file includes an HTML page that lets you preview all the content in your profile.  To download the archive from Facebook follows these steps: Login to Facebook Go to Account > Account Settings (located in the top right-hand corner of your profile page) On Account Settings , select the following option: Download Your Information Facebook will generate the download and send you an email notification when it is ready. You will be prompted to enter your account username and password to download the archive (zip file) of your account to your computer. How to Export LinkedIn Contacts On LinkedIn you have the option to export LinkedIn connections to email applications including Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Yahoo Address Book, or Mac OS Address Book. To export your connections, follow these steps: Login to LinkedIn Click Contacts > Export Connections (located at the top of your home page) Leave the Export to field as it appears and enter the security text when prompted Click Export, and then save the file to your computer After you have saved your LinkedIn contact list, you will then be able to import the contact list from within your email application. Using Third-Party Services and Tools to Create Social Account Backups Not every social media or social networking site will offer a way for you to back up your online account from within the service. Twitter, for example, experiences such volumes of messages that it would be difficult (and costly) for the service to keep a record of every single message ever sent.  In fact, Twitter only allows people to access their most recent 3,200 tweets. The good news is that if the social service itself doesn’t provide an online backup tool, there are a number of third-party backup and recovery services that automate the process of archiving all data associated with your online accounts. Most third-party services most store your backup online, so be diligent in reading the service’s privacy policy to make sure it will not have access to any of your personal data. Remember, backing up your online data and only storing it with another online service is also a risk. Be sure the service also provides you with a way to archive the data to your local computer. 3 Ways to Back Up Social and Online Accounts 1. Backupify is an online service that builds a single, searchable archive of all your online data. The service backs up your authenticated services either weekly or daily, based on your subscription plan ( see pricing ).  Backupify supports Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Calendar, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Blogger, Google Contacts, Picasa, Zoho and LinkedIn. 2. SocialSafe securely export your Facebook and Twitter account data to your hard drive. There is a free and upgraded Pro version (see pricing). SocialSafe works on Windows and Mac computers. 3. BackupMyTweets.com : This online service lets you backup more than the last 3,200 tweets that Twitter lets you access. The service will back up your existing tweets and check every day for new ones. A free and premium subscription is available (see pricing).  Other "BackupMy" services are available for online email accounts, blogs and online photos. More Facebook Small Business Ecommerce Tips Want to get a better handle on integrating Facebook into your small business ecommerce marketing plan? Try these Facebook tips and guides for small business ecommerce sites: 5 Facebook Apps for Small Business Ecommerce Sites 3 Facebook Apps for eBay Sellers How to Add Facebook Like to Your Ecommerce Site How to Customize a Business Facebook Page with Apps 3 Apps to Boost Your Facebook Business Page Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.