Do things differently this Groundhog Day

Feb 2

If you’re somewhere in the ballpark of my age, it’s tough to get through a Groundhog Day without thinking of the 1993 Bill Murray film of the same name.

For those of you who are too young to remember, the basic premise is that Bill Murray is stuck in a time loop, repeating the same day (which happens to be Groundhog Day) over and over again. At first, he is confused and annoyed. Then, realizing there are no consequences to his actions since the slate gets wiped clean every night, he engages in reckless behavior – binge eating, committing crimes, having one-night stands, etc. When that turns out to be unfulfilling, he gets depressed and tries to kill himself. But regardless of what he does, every morning he winds up back at the start of Groundhog Day (woken by “I Got You Babe” on the alarm clock radio, just to add insult to injury).

In addition to being an entertaining movie, “Groundhog Day” also brings us an important lesson. *Spoiler alert* In the end, Bill Murray escapes the endless loop of Groundhog Days when he decides to use his time to learn new skills (ice sculpting, piano and French) and spends most of his day helping others. In other words, doing things the same way over and over and acting irresponsibly kept him locked in Punxsutawney purgatory. It is only when he does things differently that things change.

OK, Sue, get to the point. (Sorry for the long windup – it takes a minute to explain a movie plot!)

The point is simply that you cannot improve your social media security by doing things the same way every day. And acting irresponsibly doesn’t help your cause. Social media governance – aka keeping your company’s social media footprint as safe as possible – is something that requires constant attention, diligence and effort. Let’s look a little deeper at the parallels here.

Bill Murray escapes the loop when he learns new skills. There are very few people who wake up one morning being experts at social media governance. Being good at governance requires a broad range of skills and a very sophisticated understanding of how all the component parts connect to and affect each other. It is different than other social media work. But the good news is it can be learned. So invest some time and learn something new. Make yourself smarter every day and work toward being an expert.
He spends most of his days helping others. In my mind, doing good social media governance equals helping others. I recognize that’s a strange way to frame it, but it’s true. When you do proper social media governance for your company, you help the social media team stay organized and avoid security snafus. You help the brand team protect the brand. You help IT and Cybersecurity protect your IT infrastructure from attack. And you help your Compliance folks make sure the company does all of the things it should to avoid legal or regulatory issues. You are in fact helping the whole company when you do governance properly. And keep in mind that regulations like GDPR in Europe are coming with fines as big as $40 or $50 million in some cases, so you are helping the company avoid a hefty financial penalty to boot.
Acting irresponsibly kept Bill Murray locked in Punxsutawney purgatory. I cannot tell you the number of social media directors who have flat-out told me that they know governance is a thing they need to tackle, but they hesitate because they don’t want to be responsible for it. Sorry, but that argument does not fly with me. You can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. You have to address it. And even though it’s a lot of work, the long-term benefits and protection far outweigh the lift. Remember – it’s only when he starts acting responsibly and doing things differently that the calendar finally flips to Feb. 3.

Now, if you are reading this and thinking, “I don’t even know if my company has any social media governance,” you have some homework to do. If you’re at a loss, here are a couple of simple things to get started.

Stand in your truth. To steal a line from Suze Orman, the first thing you have to do when addressing a lack of governance is to stand in your truth. You’ve got to understand if your company has any governance procedures, processes and protocols. You need to understand if passwords are managed securely and how people are granted access to company accounts. The answer may be ugly. But you don’t know what to fix until you find out what the current state looks like.
Make a proper inventory. Create a full list of all of your company’s social media accounts and who is responsible for each one. For bonus points, make a list of your ad accounts too.
Focus on your passwords. If there’s one area where you are most at risk, it’s the passwords to your social media accounts. First, make sure you have them all. Second, if you are keeping them in a Word document, Excel spreadsheet, sticky note or other unsecure place, fix that. Quickly. Leading password management tools include LastPass and Keeper Security. (Read my blog on password security here.)
Create processes. Obviously, part of the struggle here is keeping everything up to date and providing access only to the right people when they need it. In order to do this, you need to have documented processes and a “right” way to do things. Otherwise, you’ll just be stuck in the Wild West (read more about that here).

Bottom line: If you are Bill Murray and do things the same way every day, you will be stuck waiting for that groundhog to see or not see his shadow forever. Time to change it up. And of course, if you need help, you know who to call! (I got you, babe!)

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Disclaimers: I am not paid or compensated in any way for mentioning specific tools. Also, if you’d like to read more content about social media governance best practices, check out my website here.