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The Daring Author
The Daring Author
Own The Audience, Not The Algorithm
The screen said my profile was disabled and the floor dropped out. No warning, no human, no appeal link that worked. That single moment exposed just how much of my author business lived on borrowed land and how quickly a platform can rewrite your plans.
I walk through the messy middle of what happened next: losing access to Facebook, the scramble to secure my page and readers group, and the mystery of whether ads were still billing against assets I could no longer see. The one thing that saved me was a quiet decision months earlier to add a backup admin. From there, we map the practical safeguards every creator should set up now: multiple admins across pages, groups, ad accounts and pixels; documented campaigns outside the platform; spend alerts; and separate profiles where allowed. If you run Facebook ads or host a community, these steps reduce risk and speed up recovery.
The deeper lesson runs beyond checklists. Social platforms are brilliant for reach and discovery, but they are not a stable foundation. We talk about shifting the centre of gravity to owned channels: a fast, clear website; consistent email marketing with real value; and community spaces where member details are portable. I share simple ways to move readers from feeds to your home base with ethical lead magnets, clean onboarding sequences, and SEO-friendly content that compounds. We also confront the emotional side: panic, acceptance, and the resolve to rebuild better, with more control and less dependence on algorithms.
If you’ve ever wondered what happens when the algorithm pulls the plug, or if your audience would still find you tomorrow, this conversation hands you a plan. Subscribe for more practical storytelling on authorship, platform strategy, and sustainable book marketing, leave a review to help more writers find us, and tell me: what will you secure first today?
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Hello and welcome back to another chapter of the Daring Author podcast. Now, this episode is one that has just recently happened, and I thought, why not talk about this? So the prompt is that like when Facebook disappeared, the wake-up call that changed my business, and that is the title of this episode, and that is exactly what happened to me over the weekend. I opened up my phone, I went to go into Facebook, and it kicked me out. Notifications gone, everything gone, and I was in the panic. Like, what is happening? What is going on? Then I opened up my laptop and I went to login and it came up with this error, and it says, Your Facebook profile has been disabled. There, yeah, you can't literally, it was against community guidelines. There was no detail of what community guidelines that I actually went against or what was happening, and it was just literally just taken away from me like that. There was no contact, there was no way that I could um talk to Facebook about it. There's no option, literally, searched everywhere to actually talk to somebody at Facebook about this and to make a claim and find out why it got disabled. And the panic really set in. I did let some of my emotions come through, the like shock, the frustration, the disbelief. And then in that and then in a moment where I took a deep breath and was like, okay, let's see what we can do here. And what I realized was how much power I'd handed over to something that wasn't even mine to begin with. And the story went that I could just no longer get access, messenger was gone, everything, profile, everything. And one of my main concerns was getting access to my Facebook page, getting access to my readers group profile, I could build it again. That that's fine. I might lose a lot of data, I might lose a lot of connections, everything like that. I had like nearly 5,000 friends, followers on this profile on Facebook and completely gone just like that. No notice, nothing. And it was such a big wake-up call. And my main concern was getting access to my Facebook page that I was running ads in there. And I thought, how does that mean the ads are gone? How am I gonna update this? This is where the panic went in. And then I was working out, do I actually have anyone as admin? And that was a huge thing for me of like wake up call. Is there other people that I have as admin? Now I have another Facebook profile that is under my other legal name. So I could switch over to there, and but I didn't give myself access as admin on that profile. Luckily, I gave my partner Dylan access as admin many, many months ago when I was setting up the new Facebook ads process, setting up the pixel, um, setting up a business asset in the back end of the Facebook ads, and I set all that up, and they did recommend in the course that I was taking to add somebody else's admin just in case anything like this happens. And I thought, that would never happen to me. And oh boy, did it. So luckily he had access, he didn't have access to the ads though, which was quite interesting. The ads, the business asset was completely gone, wiped. But I didn't know if the ads were still running, if money would keep coming out of my account, even though I don't have access to the Facebook profile. It was all really stressful. And luckily, I could get access then back to my page. My Instagram was separate, so I could still access that, and then I could access. Luckily, I once I got access to my Facebook page, I then was able to get access to my group because I had my page as admin on the group, and that was the only thing I had as admin. So I've changed that now and given admin to some people that I trust, so that if this something does ever happen like this, and I need to rebuild a whole new profile, those assets I still have access to. So a reflection on this, like, is very much how much trust and identity were tied into these social media platforms. And like, how many of us build our entire worlds on this borrowed land that we don't own? How many of us rely on likes, reach, algorithm to measure everything? And it's been an interesting wake-up call of being more diverse and knowing that if all of these got taken away, my business could still run without these social media platforms, and that is what has been the biggest lesson. Because I thought, okay, what is what is the universe trying to teach me with taking this away from me so quickly without warning? What is the lesson here? And it was so much for me to not sit in that stress and panic and really move through that and be like, it's okay, I am safe. It is not the end of the world. We can rebuild from here, we can move from here, we can rebuild and build it even better than what it was before. I think it was such a lesson in that. And don't get me wrong, the social media channels are definitely amazing with our reach, being, you know, getting into the algorithms, getting into finding new readers, all of that. Like it is it is good. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have social media accounts, but being diverse with it and where we move people from those social media accounts into our world, into our email list, into our website. Like that is the hero, that is the king in that. And really, that has been the biggest lesson of this is rebuilding, rebuilding the homes instead of the social media, instead of the social media channels being like, if we look at like a pyramid and we look at funnels and all of that stuff. Yes, the funnels, the social media channels bring in all of the different readers and all all the all of the different parts into that, but how can we nurture that more into our actual platforms that we own and have more control over? Website, email list. Maybe it's a platform outside of Facebook groups that you build your own network on a different platform that you have more control over. And when people sign up, you have their email so that you can still contact them. Every time we get a we get a follow on Instagram, everything like that, we don't own that. We don't we don't have their details unless we set up a sneaky funnel of automations that might reach out to them if they want to join the email list using platforms like Mini Mani Chat, something like that. Yes, but that it was just such a big wake-up, wake-up call. Like I really feel it like social media is the party where people are gathering, yes, people are following, seeing things, but your world is very much your website, your email list. Like that is the branch and that is the home where we want to push, not push, but like we want to lead everyone to if they do feel called to join those different parts. And I really think the emotional shift that I felt was like looking at the diff looking at everything from a whole different lens. And it was like looking at it, you know, if Facebook can disappear, what else can? And what like like what legacy and what else am I what other places am I leading people to? And I haven't been, like I'll be totally honest, like email marketing. Yes, I have all the automations for my bookshop, funneling people in, bringing them into the new, like doing that in the background on its own automation, great, but then like sending newsletters. Sometimes I am a bit slack on that, so that has been a wake-up call to make that more a priority as well. In that, um, yeah, it it was a huge thing, and I wanted to share these tips with you as a lesson from me that you know you could wake up tomorrow and it all be gone. So adding backup was a huge thing for me of adding backup admins, all of that. If you don't have any one that is admin at the moment, make sure we you add some people, even if it's your partner adding them, even though they won't even go in there or anything like that, but knowing that you can access their account no matter what. And then it might be your PA, it might be one of your besties, author besties, something like that. Just have backup, trust me on that, and really start building your home base. Don't wait for a collapse to then reclaim your control. Build an empire outside of it, not just a feed. Build an empire, build your homes, build your world outside of these social media channels, and that is the number one biggest lesson here. So I hope you take that from my lesson and what I've learned, and taking that into emails, website, other king here, and building that out because something can be taken away just like that. So that is it. I'm gonna leave it short and sweet, and I hope that this is a great lesson for you to take.