Important Social Media Preparations

Your social media manager knows everything about your strategy – your passwords, posting schedules, content options, analytics and your audience. But what happens when and if your social media manager leaves your company? In a perfect world, your social media manager would leave you with all of the login information in an easily accessible place and would leave you a plan of action until you can rehire. But sometimes, that’s not always the case. So the question is do you have a plan in place to handle this situation?

1. Have multiple administrators. It is always a good idea to have multiple people with the ability to access your social media. Not only to help fill in content should your social media manager leave, but also just in case your manager is out sick or on vacation.
2. It’s important to set up a  password database for all of your social accounts. This seems to be self-explanatory, but you would be surprised at how often it happens when the social media manager leaves and the owner cannot access the accounts.
3. The second your social media manager gives notice, it’s time to get organized and take action. This includes passing the baton to someone who is equally suited to represent your company’s voice online. Get them settled in on your social media profiles.
4. We recommend changing your passwords the day your social media manager leaves. There are more and more cases of previous employees accessing social accounts after they have left. If unfortunately the departure wasn’t a pleasant one, then this could lead to big online problems for your company.
5. Don’t forget your social media tools! It’s important that you change the passwords to any tools that you are using such as Hootsuite. Even if you change your individual account passwords, they can still be accessed through the management tools should you forget to update those logins.
6. Some social media allows you to link your personal profile to a brand page. Be sure to remove the previous employee from your accounts if they are currently an admin.
7. Don’t reuse passwords that you’ve used prior. Some profiles won’t allow you to reuse old passwords or they will prompt you to recreate one after a certain amount of time has passed. It is best practice to create brand new, fresh passwords for your accounts.
8. In between the gap of hiring and training a new team member, make sure that you or someone you trust is maintaining your content schedule. Be sure to keep up with your social media. Fans notice when a normally active account suddenly goes silent.

By taking care of simple organization from the very beginning, you will save yourself and your company a lot of complications later on. Take the time to knock these tasks out now, while it’s easy! Be ready to adapt to any situation and ensure social media success no matter what happens.

Have you ever been in a situation where your social media manager left? What did you do to prepare for their departure?