It’s commonly overlooked. I wish I could say that it never happened to me, but after reviewing my Facebook pages and social media tools accounts, I realized that I had made the same error a couple of times. One thing is certain: I’ll (hopefully) never make the same mistake again. Leaving people as managers on your pages, profiles, and tools is potentially dangerous.
The topic came about as I was taking over a Facebook page. We were doing our standard audit and I noticed that someone had posted something a couple of weeks before that was of questionable taste. There was only one person who was supposed to be in charge of the page and she was adamant that she didn’t post it, nor did she ever see it (an unacceptable notion in itself). We quickly deleted it and the went into the managers together.
I had just been added and should have been the only other person with access to the account. What we found was disconcerting. Eight other people had access to manage the account. Two were from a social media vendor that had not had them as a client for over a year. Three were current employees that didn’t have any business being a manager on the account. One was the GM – that was fine.
The last two were ex-employees, one of which was fired a couple of month before and did not leave as a happy camper.
There are numerous examples of instances where companies large and small were embarrassed by an ex- or soon-to-be-ex-employee posting on social media profiles. It’s extremely important to keep a tight hold on the reins. If there are plans to part ways with an employee that has access, cut off that access before making the separation. If an employee resigns, they should be removed immediately. If a vendor gets fired, cut them out completely.
On Facebook, simply go to “Edit Page” and click on “Manage Admin Roles”. This will take you to a list like the one you see above. On Google+, go to the “Dashboard” and click on “Managers”. You’ll have to be the Owner; managers cannot delete other managers on Google+. Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and any others is a matter of a password change.
It’s not just a matter of removing managers and content producers. You have to check your apps. Go to “Settings”, click “More, then click “Apps”. Do not handle this with a heavy hand. In other words, don’t start removing apps unless you’re sure that they are tied only to the person or vendor in question. When releasing a vendor, it’s good to go over the apps with them so they can tell you which ones they were using and that should be safe to remove.
Finally, go in and change the passwords for any other shared social media tools. If you’re posting with Hootsuite, for example, you don’t want to remove it as an app. You want to remove their access to the tool by changing the password. If the person in question was the owner of the email address for the account, you may be in trouble. You may need to start a new account and transfer over any data or scheduled posts. This is a pain and it’s the primary reason why you should always use company owned email addresses when setting up accounts. If their access to email is taken away, than a simple password change will work. If they created the account with their personal Gmail account, then changing the password is not enough as they could always do a password reset.
These are your company’s social media accounts. They must be handled appropriately. Do not let carelessness lead to confusion or even disaster.
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