Why You Should Back the Hell Up: 10 Ways to Protect Your Data

10 ways to protect the data and content that matters to you.

🔥Hot Tip: Social Media is not your Rolodex; it’s not dependable. It’s not trustworthy, complete, or always available. At best, it’s a phone book in a roadside diner with pages ripped out. It’s also not your portfolio or your website, even if you get business from it.

Do not rely on SaaS platforms, any tech that you use for free or with subscriptions, to store your creative work. Do not treat them as your journal, CRM, or database. Don’t leave your content in one place. (Even Facebook isn’t forever; I bet some of you thought it was! Medium keeps changing. It should not be your primary blog unless you’re copying your writing somewhere.)

Do you care about connecting vs. number of connections?

Do you see your posts as more than “content”?

If you got kicked off a platform, what would you do? What about Google or One drives? Ready for a data apocalypse? What if you lost your book that was 85% complete and fully footnoted?

What about that beta that just killed a feature you like? Isn’t that a bummer?!

What about the SaaS who sent a 30-day “download your data or else,” but you didn’t see it, and lost 6 decks from 2 courses, and who knows what the hell else? I mean, hypothetically…

Maybe you clicked OK on a pesky user agreement just to close the box? You knew you probably signed away your rights to your creations, but convenience is convenience. You needed the platform. Now your work — hard earned leads, network, mentors, and friends — are at the whim of a corps or govt agencies that gives zero effs if you lose access to ALL of it. It can happen overnight, and it does.

Let’s be smarter and safer using platforms we don’t own, especially those who show us time and again we should NOT trust them. With zero visibility into their inner workings, it’s likely there’s some corruption somewhere.

Here are 10 things you can do to protect your genius. 
Get in the habit of doing these regularly.

1. Download your data on EVERY social media platform. Have 8 accounts? Take your time, but definitely save anything that you couldn’t do without if it suddenly vanished. 
   
   Check out this video for step by step instructions.
   Go to Account Settings and file a request. 
   Sometimes you have to do it 2 times for different exports. 
   
   Trying to get your data isn’t difficult per se, but it’s still far more convoluted than it should be. They make it annoying for a reason.
   
2. Download copies of ALL documents and files off of your shared drives. Put copies of things onto your hard drive or an external hard drive.
   
3. Get a password manager. STOP using 12345 as your login on both your bank, and your Zuckbook page. I use 1Password, and have a shared “vault” with my partner and one with my team. Texting logins is a no-no.
   
4. Screenshot things you think people will flag, shadow-ban, manipulate, or question. They probably will. After you post, ctrl+4+Space bar. (Screenshots are forever-ish).
   
5. Create your own contact list. If you build it in Google sheets or Airtable, download a .csv regularly.
   
6. Copy important messages to a repository so you can access conversations if you get booted.
   
7. Build relationships outside of social platforms. Learn about people and from people, live or irl. Last names and where in the world they are, not just @ handles. Phones work for phone calls too. Talk to people.
   
8. Newsletter comments are becoming their own spaces, often paywalled, private, shared interests. Talk to writers directly!
   
9. Look beyond one platform or room. Access is a privilege; i.e. not everyone has it. Where are you not meeting people and who are you missing. 750 million “users” on LinkedIn ≠ 8 billion actual humans.
   
10. Back up posts with automations. Allllll my tweets are in handy sheets, and yes, I do refer to them.

Bonus tip: Back the 🤬 up!!

Seriously…for $50/a year you can (and should) back up everything.

Hard drive goes haywire? Thumb drive lost? Rely on a safe, 3rd party to get it back. Like keeping your keys at a friend’s house in case of emergencies.

We use Backblaze and I am not affiliated (yet). I didn’t pick it but my partner’s in tech so I guess we can trust it. JK. Didn’t you read the above?!! Trust no one.

Backup your brain too. Seriously, this would be handy, no? Since you can’t do that yet, if you don’t know about HeyDay [link updated May 26,2025] , check it out! This could be my favorite app of all time. It will relieve you of bookmarking and keeping 1000 tabs open.

Heyday makes sharing research content with others so easy. Personally, I am obsessed with watching this company grow through beta to launch and beyond! It’s the ultimate deep-dive, hyper-focus, and too-much-content-tracking tool you’ve been waiting for. Searching Google sucks now anyway; search your brain instead.

If Google can suck at search, tech is only reliable for one thing; it will change.

“The Cloud” is at best a few decades old. Remember deleting old photos to make room for new ones? Not unless you had a smartphone before the cloud, which was recent! Do you own your phone? Does your employer own your laptop? You never know when a “call” could drop.

If you care about your IP (intellectual property), SC (social capital), DMs (direct messages) Back. It. Up.

Until we own all our own data, be prepared for a platform to poop or content catastrophe.

Copy what matters to you.

Back the hell up. You can thank me later.