The Importance of Succession Planning in the Digital World and How to Keep Your Page Safe
This story came across our Project Administrator’s desk over the summer, and she had to share it with us. From our local news channel in Charlotte: Person who owns restaurant’s Facebook page refuses to give up control.
For many readers, this may seem ridiculous or even kind of funny. However, to our team, and to any business owner with a social media presence, it’s terrifying. Because not having access to one of your business’ main P.R. and marketing streams means that someone else has control of it - and they can do and say whatever they want as your brand.
When businesses are bought and sold or there is a change in leadership, we tell our clients to treat their social media pages like they would their bank accounts. You wouldn’t allow a former partner, or a fired marketing director to have access to your bank account, right? So they shouldn’t have access to your social media accounts either. According to WSOC-TV, “When a business changes hands, both sides should talk about who gets the social media accounts, like you would any business asset. In fact, the contract should spell it out specifically.” It’s true that a social media account, like any other item in a contract, is a business asset with a history of marketing materials (photos, videos) and a clear connection to the brand’s followers that may have taken years (or a decade) to develop.
The reality is nine times out of ten, social media managers, former employees or business partners are going to do the right thing - and probably don’t want continued access to an account they no longer work for. However, we have seen that when it does happen that one time out of ten - there is very little you can do about it.
This happened to us when were managing a client’s LinkedIn page back in 2018. One morning the page was just… gone. We learned that the day before, the business had let go of one of their employees who had administrative access to their LinkedIn page. In retaliation, that employee deleted the LinkedIn page. A petty move, but nonetheless damaging. We had to begin rebuilding the page from scratch including re-connecting with the hundreds of followers that the page had accumulated over years of hard work. Not only that, but the deletion of the account completely reset the algorithm history of the page which meant that starting a new page meant “starting over” in terms of vying for space on the algorithm. We were no longer an established, trusted brand, and therefore we had to rebuild that credibility.
Thankfully, this former employee stopped there, when they could have done much worse. They could have maintained control of the page, and deleted everyone else from having access, like in the local case of this Charlotte restaurant. Or they could have begun posting as the brand using fake and inflammatory language. In fact, some people - who must have literally nothing else to do in their lives - have created almost exact looking pages to mimic a brand, but post deceitful language all the while claiming “freedom of speech.”
While online speech, and the deconstruction of the fifth amendment, has evolved within the complexities of the social media landscape, there are some tasks you can do to protect yourself and your brand from any headaches or worse.
Always have control of your own business page. Be the person who establishes the page. Be the person who submits their email and phone number for two-factor authentication. No matter how much you trust someone else to handle your social media, NEVER remove yourself from the page for as long as you own the business. This may seem like a no-brainer, but we’ve worked with people who don’t want the extra notifications in their Facebook feed (hint: you can turn these off) and therefore ask us to solely manage their page.
Be mindful of who has what type of access. You can certainly add employees to your social media account, especially if they are going to help with writing and posting. However, nearly all platforms have an option just under “administrator” which will allow people to work in and write on behalf of the channel, but who do not have access to make purchases tied to your business account or - most importantly - delete the page entirely. Facebook has even added a layer of protection between ad agencies and business owners. If you, like many business owners, hire an agency to run Facebook ads for you, you can give them access to the page in order to do that all while billing just those ads to your business credit card. As both a marketer and a business owner - I consider this a win-win.
Finally, always, always, always remove people right away from your accounts if they are no longer with the company and change your passwords just to be safe. Although accounts like LinkedIn and Facebook are connected to a person’s personal profile on each platform, X and Instagram still require a username and password to sign in. Even if you have removed the people/profiles that you don’t want to have access to your social media, you should always change the passwords. We recommend this to our clients at the end of our contracts. You never know who may be unintentionally logged in on their phone or computer and one misplaced Instagram post can end up on the wrong feed. It protects everyone when this fail safe is put into place.
We’ve said it before, but we’ll say it again: treat your social media pages just as you would your banking accounts. These are assets to your business and should be handled as such. After all, if they weren’t important, why would people bother holding onto them?