Do you know how to log in to and manage your business’ social media accounts? It seems like it should be straightforward, right?
But what often starts simply – an employee or agency sets up the company’s Facebook page – can quickly snowball into a tangled web of logins, passwords, and access permissions.
Within a few years, that employee isn’t with your company anymore.
Or you hire a new agency.
Or that freelancer went back to work for The Man full-time.
Only then it dawns on you: no one in your business has administrative access to your company’s social media accounts. Or worse yet, someone you no longer employ does!
Do you know who owns the master key to your social media house? If you don’t, finding that answer often means a multi-step, weeks-long investigation.
We’re going through this process now with a client whose Facebook Page is owned by a Facebook Business Manager. While we have access to the Page itself, the client doesn’t know who owns the Business Manager, which in turn owns the client’s Page.
Gaining Admin access to a social media account is more complicated than resetting a password. We’ll have to identify who – A current employee? A past employee? A past agency? – has the keys to the kingdom. Then we have to find that person. And then that person has to give back the keys.
Five Tips for avoiding the “how do we get into Facebook?” scramble
1. Make an employee an Admin from the start. Always. Not an agency, not a freelancer, not your neighbor’s high school student who knows how to use TikTok.
A trusted employee in your company should have full Admin rights to all your social media accounts. Ideally, this is not the fresh-faced, brand new hire. If an agency or freelancer is setting up and/or managing your social media accounts, those accounts should be set up on behalf of the designated employee in your company, using that employee’s email not the freelancer’s or agency’s email address.
2. Make at least one other employee an Admin. And if you’re running a small business, you should be an Admin, too.
Have a backup person. Please. Trust us.
People leave! They move on! It happens. So two people in your company should have Admin access to all of your accounts.
If you’re running a small business, you should be one of those people. It’s your company and you should always have the keys to your social media house.
3. Grant agencies access to your platforms, not the other way around.
Your marketing agency should not own the Facebook Ad Account that runs ads on your behalf. Your business should own it, and then grant the agency access– not the other way around.
This may require an investment of your time on the front-end, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the platform; but a good agency will walk you through the process of creating an Ad Account and will ask you to granting them the access they’ll need if you’re expecting the agency to manage your social media presence.
4. Marie Kondo your social media permissions – remove access from employees and agencies who are no longer working with your company.
It’s funny (and sometimes concerning) to see how many people who are no longer with a client’s company often still have access to the client’s social media accounts. In fact, I personally had access to a former employer’s LinkedIn account for five years after I left. (I actually went in and revoked my own access.)
This is less about avoiding professional sabotage than it is about keeping your digital world in order. The more organized you are about your accounts and access, the better.
5. Start and maintain a spreadsheet of access for every account.
For every platform, list all the people who have access and keep track of exactly their level of access. When you go through a change – an employee joining or leaving, opening a new social media account – update the spreadsheet. Assign someone to do this. It makes sense that your lead Admin is the point-person for this task.
A lot of businessowners kick the social media Admin can down the road. But please trust me: at some point you will need Admin access to your social media accounts.
And based on our years of working with clients, when that time comes, you’re going to want that access. Now.