E-commerce

How to avoid social media suspensions as a small business – Girls Get Off

When Viv Conway’s Instagram account was suspended for the first time, she panicked. 

By the third time, she was almost unfazed. As the co-founder of Girls Get Off (GGO) – a small brand selling sex toys and trying to normalise discussions around sexual wellbeing – censorship on major platforms has become just another cost of doing business.

“We don’t even say the word ‘vibrator’ now,” Conway told ISB. “We say ‘electric toothbrushes’.”

Social media platforms can be a volatile place for any small business, let alone one that sells sex toys and champions sexual health. Accounts are suspended with little warning, appeals are slow or ineffective, and owners often find themselves cut off from their communities overnight.

If that wasn’t enough, the algorithm can remove accounts seemingly at random. The last two times that GGO’s account was suspended, and then reinstated, Conway was told that she hadn’t actually violated any guidelines.

“When we got it back, again, they said we’d done nothing wrong and they’d made a mistake,” she said. “So I don’t understand why it’s happening.”

Unfortunately for small businesses, these platforms are often an indispensable marketing tool.

“Sex toys are so hard to market because we can’t use paid ads,” Conway explained. “Instagram has been our main channel because it’s just allowed us to connect with customers. And also, a lot of sex toy brands are owned by males – so when you’ve got a female-focussed brand, you’ve got to lean into your point of difference and be the face behind the brand.”

Platforms like Instagram are often a leveller for small businesses like GGO. As Conway pointed out, her business can’t rely on SEO and name-brand recognition like many of its large competitors. Moreover, Instagram offers small businesses crucial features like Trial Reels that can place their content in front of new customers – when a page isn’t suspended, that is.

How to avoid social media suspension

Importantly, it’s not just sex toy businesses that are up against a volatile algorithm. Conway explained that an acquaintance of hers, Merritt Watson of the lolly company Pik n Mix, also had his account randomly suspended. But with a business that skirts the lines of Meta’s community guidelines, GGO has had more than its fair share of suspensions. Over the years, its founders have developed a few preventative measures to avoid suspension – or protect the business against its worst impacts. These include:

• Using coded language and props: GGO’s Instagram crosses out explicit words, uses innuendos like ‘electric toothbrush’ or ‘massage’, and shows props like papayas instead of depicting genitalia outright.
• Monitoring and editing flagged content: Conway said she checks constantly for flagged content on Instagram, which can be done in settings. She deletes (or edits, if possible) anything that has been flagged. 
• Keeping contacts within Meta: Conway recommended keeping emergency contacts of Meta insiders on file in case of emergencies. ISB has previously heard from SME owners that having a Meta representative – or someone else on the inside – has been a crucial method of restoring accounts.
• Running backup accounts: GGO has separate social media accounts in case one gets suspended.
• Connecting social accounts to different email addresses
• Diversifying across platforms: Aside from Instagram, GGO has a Facebook group and podcast.
• Building up owned traffic sources, like email lists, through lead magnets.

What to do if your business account does get suspended

Based on her own experience, Conway published a step-by-step guide to her LinkedIn for other business owners: “What to do if your Instagram account gets banned”. Her guide includes contacting Meta, pushing through generic messages, and using others in your industry to help plead your case.

As someone who has had her account suspended – and reinstated – three times now, Conway urged other affected business owners to try their best to stay calm. 

“It’s a stressful moment, but your account can’t just disappear in the abyss,” she said.
”Meta wants you to be on the platform and it wants you to be delivering good content to its users. So it’s not really within their best interest to delete people’s accounts. But hopefully they can work harder to figure out a better system.”

• This story was originally published on Inside Small Business.