One of the biggest bonehead blunders taking place in business today has to do with CEOs delegating the set-up of their Facebook business page to the intern or youngest employee. Why?
First of all, it trivializes the critical role social media plays in managing your brand and reputation. While Facebook and MySpace might be second nature to a 20-something, that doesn’t mean they have the ability to put social media in its proper context. By that I mean – social media will only be effective if it supports and enhances your strategic objectives.
Understanding how to set up an account on Facebook, doesn’t automatically infer they understand strategy, marketing, messaging, and branding. Just because I’m a frequent user of Word, doesn’t qualify me for a Pulitzer Prize.
Next, delegating the set-up of an organization’s social media sites to the college intern or the friend of a friend is asking for trouble. Did you know that the individual who sets up your Facebook business page owns the master administration rights to that page forever…and ever. That’s right. By allowing your assistant’s friend of her nephew to set up your Facebook page under his personal account, he can say what he wants when he wants whether he’s on your payroll or not. Yes, it’s true that you can contact Facebook to report his inflammatory comments or mischievous behavior. (That of course means you’d have to actually get a response from Facebook which is tougher to find these days than high-paying job in the textile industry.)
If Facebook responds at all, they will likely just disable his account, not transfer ownership. When they disable his account, they disable the business page that goes with it. That means that you win the battle…but lose the war. You will have to start over by creating a new business page and attracting fans from scratch. That’s not a good thing if you’ve already attracted hundreds if not thousands of Facebook fans.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that the CEO be responsible for the set-up, monitoring, and updating of a Facebook business page. But I am imploring every CEO and business owner to own the account, whether they plan to use Facebook or not. (How do you do this? Click here for a step-by-step guide on the proper way for the CEO or business owner to get started on Facebook.)
After a Facebook user account is created and the business fan page is attached to that user account, the CEO or other senior manager can then assign the intern or employee to be an administrator of the page. As long as the intern or employee remains an authorized administrator, the company will have complete access to design and update the page. But if they should leave voluntarily or be terminated for whatever reason, they can be removed as administrator and the business page will be protected from unauthorized changes and updates.
Finally, the senior manager, who “owns” the Facebook fan page, must take a few minutes to set-up his or her privacy settings. This is extremely important for the manager-owner who doesn’t want to connect with friends, family, and employees on Facebook but does want to engage with customers and employees professionally (although the lines continue to blur between public and private life.) I’ll be writing on the “how-to” secure your privacy in a future post. Suffice it to say right now that an individual can be active user on Facebook but only be found by or connect with friends of his or her choosing. In other words, if you don’t want others to invite you to be their friends, you can do that. Just say no! If you don’t want certain people to see everything you post, you can do that too. Just set your preferences.
The problem with “oversharing” on Facebook and other sites isn’t a problem with Facebook, but its users.
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