Hello SErs! Harmony here. Happy Wednesday 🙂
After my debacle with Facebook last month (see my post HERE), I thought it might be helpful to write something on the importance of backing-up your social media accounts.
Honestly, even though I back-up my website/blog regularly, I never even gave a single thought to Twitter or Facebook.
Below, I show you how to make an archive of Twitter …
First, open the ‘Settings and Privacy’ option on the dropdown menu when you click on your profile image …
This will bring you to the following page …
Click on ‘Request Your Archive’.
You will receive the following message from Twitter …
In a short time, you should receive an email that contains a zip file with your entire Twitter account backed up. You will need to extract the zip file and open it.
You will see a few folders and buttons, like this …
If you click on the ‘index.html’ button, it will open up your web browser and bring you to your account. Please note, depending on how many tweets you’ve ever tweeted, it make take some time to load and respond …
As you can see, it gives me an archive of every single tweet I’ve ever posted since I began in 2013.
Unfortunately, this is where things get a bit fuzzy. I have searched and searched for what to do next, or if this automatically repopulates your feed without having to input each one manually (for me, this is definitely an impossible proposition). After all, as this page says, it is an offline archive of your tweets.
Also, there doesn’t seem to be a way of backing up your followers or follows. Which worries me, as I have 21.2K followers right now. I have tried saving the webpage, but only a limited amount of followers save, as the page is a live scroll that updates as you scroll down. Also, I tried a site called ‘Archive This’, but when I click on ‘My Followers’, the URL is a generic one: https://twitter.com/followers rather than linked to my profile. The same with ‘Following’, ‘Likes’, and all the rest. The only page that differs is ‘My Tweets’. I don’t know why Twitter has done this, but it means that Archive This and other such tools can’t archive my private followers page. All rather frustrating.
What my Googling did dig up is that various software programs do exist to help you out. They can recover up to 200 DMs (Direct Messages) as well as your tweets. Two stand out: Snap Bird and Tweet Download. At the time of writing, both remain free. Here is a Youtube video telling you about them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH9J8qkasKs
You can also request your Twitter Data. From the same page that you requested the tweet archive, go to the left-hand menu and select ‘Your Twitter Data’. This opens up the following a page that shows you information on blocked accounts, accounts that you’ve muted, lists you appear on, and your account details and date you created your account, etc. At the very bottom of the page, you have a clickable link that says ‘Request Your Data’. If you click on this, Twitter will send you an email when it’s ready, just like for your tweet archive.
What about Facebook, Linkedin, and all the others?
Here is a post that shows you how to back-up FACEBOOK.
Here is a post that shows you how to back-up LINKEDIN.
PINTEREST isn’t so straightforward and doesn’t have an archive tool. However, this webpage gives you some tips: https://heresthethingblog.com/2013/12/17/pinterest-tip-download-archive/
For other platforms, the best thing is to hit Google and see what you come up with.
I hope you all find this helpful. I wanted to try and get as much info as I could in one place for you to save you having to go through hundreds of webpages like I have, lols.
Thanks for stopping by!
wow lovely post. Arr you hear about this Know About 6 Search Filter Of LinkedIn Sales Navigator For Finding Right Prospect
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Really good information, Harmony.
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Thanks, Jan! 😊
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This is great, Harmony! I’ve backed up my WordPress stuff (I think), but there’s so much more to back up. 🙂
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Right, Julie! I had no idea until circumstances nudged me to look into it 😊
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I had never considered backing up social media data, so this was an eye-opener for me. Thank you for sharing! With all the recent glitches, this post could be a godsent.
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Thanks, Nicholas. So glad you found the post useful. Hopefully, it won’t be needed, but as you say, with all the glitches lately …
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As I always say, better safe than pulling out your hair one by one, screaming.
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Thanks for sharing, Harmony. I never considered SM backup to be an option.
I’ve noticed some Twitter accounts suddenly drop their “following” list to 0. That would really suck. Perhaps it’s just a glitch, but I’ve seen it happen so many times. He/she tweets out a message stating that they are having a problem with their account, but people are already unfollowing them because they assume they were unfollowed. It’s too bad. I’m not sure how it gets fixed or even if it can, but it would totally suck.
Has anyone experienced this? Your “following” list suddenly drop to 0? Thanks again for sharing. 🙂
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You’re welcome, Natalie! I haven’t experienced this yet and hope I never do, as it has taken years to get up to my 20.2k followers! Yikes. I did get hacked, and DMs went out that weren’t from me. However, I managed to get in and change my security stuff. Happily I didn’t have loads of unfollows. 🙂
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I guess if I can’t back up followers on Twitter, I not sure why I would want to archive 95 thousand tweets. Thanks for the information. Good stuff for sure.
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Right. You’d think they would suss out that we care more about followers than tweets that have a short shelf-life, lols. Thanks, John! 🙂
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The Twitter engineers are like FB and WP and were born in the same test tube. 😀
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Reblogged this on Plaisted Publishing House and commented:
Backing up your social media
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Thanks for the reblog, Claire! 🙂
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Oh gosh, I have to back everything up at work but I never considered backing up twitter or Facebook. It is a good thing you have brought this to my attention as I would not have thought of it.
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Hopefully, my hindsight can work as some of your foresight, lols! I hope you never need it but you never know. Thanks, Robbie 🙂
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Now we need a safe place to store our backups! I have most of my stuff on Dropbox and live in fear of the program getting hacked or crashing. I’ve had memory sticks before that say the file is corrupt when I try to reuse them, so now I just do a lot of praying to the science gods, lol
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Oh, Jacquie! I have similar nightmares, lols. I guess nothing is ever guaranteed, but we do what we can. 🙂
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Reblogged this on Archer's Aim and commented:
Great tips from Harmony Kent today on Story Empire. Stay prepared with a social media backup…
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Thanks for sharing, P.H! Have a lovely day 🙂
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You are welcome, Harmony.
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I may be thinking wrong, but I never back up anything but my fiction. Even my blog isn’t backed up. Tweets and even blog posts have the lifespan of a gnat. I might lose one or two things that have a longer lifespan, but as long as my followers are still with me I can write more. Yeah, occasionally someone googles and finds one of my older posts, but it isn’t that often. I even have a couple that are consistent producers. Am I missing something here? If there were a way to make sure my followers would re-connect I would absolutely back that up. Open to any advice.
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Hi Craig, Old posts on your blog aren’t the pertinent point of backing up your website but your whole site platform. If it crashes or anything, without a back-up, you’ll have to redesign from scratch. A website back-up would also contain your blog followers, so that would prove useful. I plan to continue looking into how to get my Twitter followers back in the event of a total meltdown, lols. So, watch this space! 🙂
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The followers are the important thing, them and the ones I follow. I would hate to have to rebuild everything, but maybe the place needs a facelift anyway. Maybe I should backup for the sake of my following.
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I’m like Craig, I’ve never backed up anything either. I do have original hard copies of my blog posts. More than anything, I’d want to back up my followers, but I’m not sure that’s doable using WP’s free site. Maybe just an export? Ugh!
I back my writing up to three different sources (computer, stick, and cloud), but never thought about social media. Eesh!i may have to give the Twitter back-up a try. Thanks for an informative post, Harmony!
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Oops! It looks like this post is giving more work to you all, lols! Thanks, Mae! 🙂
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Reblogged this on Viv Drewa – The Owl Lady.
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Thanks for sharing, Viv! Have a lovely day 🙂
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It’s not something I ever considered. Thanks, Harmony.
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I think I just assumed it would all always be there on the web, lols. 🙂
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I did, too. I wasn’t a location I had to manage (like my website) so I figured the responsibility was on them. I knew, on some level, they were within their rights to lock me out or delete me, but I never considered my stuff might just be lost.
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Gee, I never considered backing up social media, either. Oddly enough, I just received my data from Twitter, which I thought I may need someday. Thanks for the advice. I’ll be looking into backing up social media along with everything else. Oy.
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I know, right, Sue! So much to do other than write!!! lols. Good luck with it all 🙂
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Good luck to you, too, Harmony! Hey, were you able to recover your FB? Shame on them for what they did to you.
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No, Sue, I never did. I am no longer anywhere on Facebook. Twitter is now my main platform 🙂
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Good post. I’ve honestly never given thought to backing up my social media accounts.
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Me neither until now, lols! Thanks, Joan 🙂
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This is a great resource! Thanks for taking the time to compile this, Harmony. 🙂
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Thanks, Yvi! I’m so glad you find it useful! 🙂
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Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog and commented:
Great tutorials from Harmony 😀
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Thanks, Chris! And I appreciate the share! 🙂
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I appreciate the post, Harmony 😀
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Reblogged this on Legends of Windemere and commented:
A very useful tutorial.
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Thanks, Charles! And thanks for the share 🙂
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Happy to share. Have a fun day. 🙂
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Thanks, ksbeth! I’m only sorry I couldn’t find a definitive way to restore Twitter, lols 🙂 Have a lovely day!
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good advice
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