The argument for centralizing social media
One of the most fundamental mistakes companies make is allowing people across the organization to “own” various parts of social media with no centralization and no coordination. The larger the organization, the bigger of an issue this becomes.
So let me plant my flag in the ground here: There IS a right way to manage social media for a company, and it IS by centralizing control of all things social under one team and one set of rules. It’s the only way to achieve the required control for regulatory and legal purposes, and it’s the only way to ensure you are limiting the abundant number of risks related to social as much as possible.
Now that doesn’t mean that one centralized team or person needs to be in charge of all the posting, community management and work related to all the channels. That would be crazy. This is purely about centralizing ownership and control of channels so the company has a full picture and has access to everything with its name on it. This about recordkeeping and governance… individuals throughout the company can still run all of these pages, but within the framework set by that centralized team or person.
As I have written before, many companies begin their social media journeys in what I call “The Wild West.” This is a state in which people are just doing whatever they want on social with no oversight at all and no rules. That’s phase one. What I’m talking about here is phase two: someone has identified social media management as a thing that should be managed but their solution is to let folks do what they want and stick their head in the sand. Don’t do this.
So why is centralization and overall governance of social so important?
Understanding your footprint. There is no way to know how big the problem is without tracking the number of social media channels associated with your company or brand. If you own and control the three main social media channels but are blissfully unaware that people across the company have independently started 28 other channels, you are wasting resources and time at the very least, not to mention confusing your fans. You must know the totality of the social media presence for your company – which means someone has to pay attention and be tasked with tracking. No one will volunteer.
Protect your brand. Unfortunately, companies will always be fighting the battle against two things: (1) Well-intended employees who start social media channels on their own (2) auto-generated channels that Facebook and other platforms generate when people check into your physical business locations. Without eyes on all of these “rogue” accounts, you will never know how your brand is looking to the public, and without owning these accounts, you can’t make changes to protect your brand or ensure consistency of brand. Your Social Media Policy should clearly prohibit people from just starting anything they want.
Recordkeeping and compliance. It might not be sexy, but a good reason for doing centralized social governance is so that you have clean and complete records. Should your company ever be sued for something regarding social media posting, or should you ever be fined for violating say GDPR in Europe, you need to have records that show how many accounts there are, who has access, etc. “I don’t know” doesn’t fly with regulators or law enforcement.
Analytics. Once all channels have been identified and ideally connected to a social media management system, then you can look across the organization at overall metrics. You can track trends and patterns. You can share best practices amongst channel owners. And you can see at a glance what’s going on with “our social.”
Support. For some platforms – namely Facebook and LinkedIn – the level of service available from customer support directly corresponds with the amount of money your company spends on advertising. If everyone in your company is running $500 worth of ads per month but everyone is acting independently, your company isn’t getting credit for its total spend and therefore may be receiving lesser (or no) support from the platforms. This can be highly detrimental if you happen to need help. Plus, having a total figure of spend on advertising is a good thing to have as well for budgeting purposes.
Now let’s look at it from the other side. What happens if you let everyone do what they want? In my experience, you end up with a whole, whole lot of these problems:
People starting channels for any of about 9 million invalid reasons, including “My boss said we need one” and “Our competitor has one.” These channel owners tend to start channels without considering fundamental things like strategy, budget, resourcing and branding. And honestly, most of these channels wind up abandoned.
The branding goes insanely sideways. People don’t understand corporate branding, and they mess it up in all kinds of ways. Remember, the public doesn’t care about your internal divisions or politics. They look at your company as one entity, and they may be confused by different branding across your online presence. They will call you out for saying one thing on Facebook page A and a different thing on Facebook page B. Ideally, you should work with your brand team to create standards for social media channels and posts.
People who aren’t trained in crisis management try to manage crises – which often leads to more work for the people who DO know how to manage them. No one likes to work really hard to resolve a crisis of your own creation.
No one has access to anything but their own channels, which can be extremely detrimental if an issue blows up on a channel the corporate team doesn’t have access to. If you needed to post an official response from the company, you can only do that if you have access to the channel.
Passwords are not centrally managed, meaning each individual is responsible for their own. People often make easily guessable passwords like “CompanyName123.” They forget to change the password. They don’t change it if someone leaves the team. And a myriad of other reasons. The company should know all of the passwords. They should be maintained and rotated regularly (read more here). Again, no one will volunteer. It has to be part of someone’s official job.
Risk goes WAY up in about 1,200 ways. I won’t bore you with more.
For larger organizations, this is really, really important just because of the volume. It is not unusual for large global companies to have hundreds of social media channels. When you are operating at that scale, you are talking about hundreds of people around the globe who need access (including agency partners), ad accounts that need to be set up, etc. It must be centrally managed to have any kind of recordkeeping or control.
To be 100 percen thonest, if you have a very large organization and you want to go from a free-for-all to having everything under control and locked down, it will take some time. It will also take leadership buy-in to affect change. But it is WELL worth the effort.
A few tools will help if you have budget to add to your toolstack:
Social Media Management System: These systems are designed to help companies with multiple channels manage them all in one place. People can post, reply to comments, view analytics, etc. all within the tool. They also allow whoever is in charge to see across the board for the company, and they provide clean and accurate records (that will hold up in court) about who had access to what and even who posted a specific item, if there is one specific post in question. Tools in this category include Sprinklr, Khoros, Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Buffer, etc.
Password Manager: If you really want to take your password management to a new level, invest in a password management tool such as Keeper Security or 1Password. (Note: I no longer recommend LastPass due to their numerous security breaches.) These help you migrate your passwords out of a spreadsheet or Word doc and into an encrypted environment. It also allows for secure sharing of passwords and helps you create and rotate passwords when needed.
Governance tool: There is one and only one true social media governance tool that I know of: Brandle. Brandle allows you to build an inventory of your online accounts (website domains AND social) and then metatag your brains out. Then it also goes out every night and patrols for new channels that match your identified keywords that are not in your inventory – ergo identifying new rogue channels to manage for you.
(note: I am not compensated by any tool vendors for mentioning them)
Bottom line, if no one has control of your company’s social media, no one has control. And that is a B-I-G problem. It mystifies me that companies have one tool, one process and one preferred method of operating for things like email, but when it comes to social, everyone thinks they can just do whatever they want. What if your IT department let everyone in the company use any email hosting service they wanted? That would never fly, right? Endeavor to make it the same for social at your organization. It will pay huge dividends in the long run.