Two weeks ago, LinkedIn removed my account.

At first, I thought the biggest thing I'd lost was 110,000 followers.

Then I realised I was wrong.

The followers weren't what scared me. It was everything that came after.

For five days, I had no way of communicating with the people who followed my work. No way of explaining what had happened. No way of asking for help. I suddenly realised that I'd spent years building a business on a platform I didn't own.

Thankfully, I got my account back.

But the experience completely changed how I'll build my business going forward.

If your business relies on LinkedIn, here are the 3 things I'd prioritise before it's too late.

The only reason I could ask for help was because I had an email list.

Within hours of sending one email, hundreds of people raised LinkedIn support tickets, shared my story and tagged LinkedIn employees. That support genuinely helped me get my account back.

If I'd relied solely on LinkedIn, I'd have had no way of reaching the very people who wanted to help.

Algorithms decide who sees your content.

An email list doesn't.

Action: Start collecting email addresses today, even if it's only through a simple free resource or newsletter. You don't need thousands of subscribers before it becomes valuable. I only realised the value of mine when I needed it most.

One thing I regret is putting my private community on the back burner.

Earlier this year, I started a private community but it became a full-time job managing it, and I had to close it.

Since then the irony is that I spent more time building an audience than building a place where that audience could actually gather.

That's changing.

I'm rebuilding my community because I never again want one platform to determine whether I can speak to the people I've spent years bringing together.

I'm using Circle AI because it removes a lot of the operational work that used to make community-building feel overwhelming. It helps with onboarding, engagement and organising your space, so you can spend more time serving your members instead of managing software.

If building a community has been on your list, you can try Circle AI for free here and get 1,200 bonus AI credits: Click Here

This surprised a lot of people because the biggest loss wasn't my followers, it was my content.

Those posts aren't just content anymore. They're business assets. I repurpose them into newsletters, workshops, client work and talks.

If they'd disappeared permanently, I'd have been rebuilding years of work from memory.

So I've changed my workflow.

Every LinkedIn post I publish is now saved into a Notion database with the caption and visual attached.

Action: Whether it's Notion, Google Drive or another system, create your own archive. Your content should live somewhere you control, not only on a social platform.

Social media is incredible for building an audience.

Just don't mistake access for ownership.

Because one day, you might wake up and realise the platform owns far more of your business than you do.

Hope this was helpful.

I’ll catch you in the next issue with more tea on how to build an email list.

Cheers,
Fatima