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You either don’t have the time or the expertise necessary to properly run your social media accounts, so the next best decision may be to redirect the workload to an in-house marketing employee already on the payroll. For simplicity’s sake, let’s call him Mark. The decision was a smart financial move on your part, and the social media accounts seem to be performing well. Great job!
Except, Mark – who you designated admin on all of your social media accounts – is now leaving the company on bad footing because a new hire got the position he’s been eyeing for years. What happens now?
Well, the responsible thing would be for Mark to relinquish all control over the company’s social handles back over to you….
Unfortunately, though, we’ve seen the horror-story side of this scenario play out far too often. Handfuls of disgruntled Mark’s have utterly obliterated a company’s social media standing through a variety of different methods. Whether it’s through obscene posts, reputation-damaging interactions, inappropriate likes and shares, or even simply deleting the accounts all together – you can easily avoid the destruction of your digital presence in three simple steps:
Why is this a necessary step? Well, setting up a specific, separate email account for your social profiles consolidates all incoming social information into one account and adds an extra layer of security between your employees and your business. Namely, if you are the sole creator and accessor of this specified email account, no disgruntled employee can sweep through and wreck your profiles – they simply won’t have the email access required.
Should you want to take your organization and security a step further, you may even want to create specific emails for each specific social profile. Doing so will create more security layers and allow room for more informational automation – but this isn’t necessary, and some owners find that multiple emails create more confusion.
We completely understand that you won’t be the one working on the accounts or dealing with any of the daily social facilitation, but trust us – it’s best that you always have specified, separate admin control over your accounts. Of course, it’s necessary for multiple people in a business to have admin access. Someone may become ill, not show up for the day, or – worst-case scenario – suddenly die. In any of these events, if the person unavailable is the only one with access to your social accounts… well, you’re out of luck – at least for long enough to cause some serious damage to your business’ reputation.
We recommend giving admin access to at least two high-ranking senior executives to prevent any kind of lockout. When setting up these admin accounts, please remember step #1, and set up the admin accounts separate from the employee email addresses. Create shell emails and give admin access from there to prevent any mixup.
This is the most neglected step that is often exploited by disgruntled employees with disastrous results. If you fire an employee with access to social media accounts, revoke their admin access before letting them go. Yes, this may create some tensions, but those tensions are hardly a price to pay when the potential damages are considered. If an employee is exiting for any reason, take away their admin access before any damage can be done! It’s that simple. If step #1 and #2 have been followed, removing admin access should be a breeze.
Altogether, maintaining safe control over your social profiles is a simple task. Record all of your social media account email addresses, passwords, and access levels with diligence. Change your passwords frequently and add in two-factor authentication when possible. And, finally, add “removing account access” into your exit policy to really secure the procedure in stone. Meanwhile, if you need any help accessing locked accounts, please contact us and we’ll be able to help get you on the right path to regaining and retaining your social media access once and for all. Stay secure, safe, and social – there really doesn’t have to be a tradeoff.
