Don't Let Your Employee Sign You Up for Facebook

I did a pre­sen­ta­tion a few months back at a NARI meet­ing about SEO, Blog­ging and Social Media, and most of the group had the ​“deer in the head­light look” when I asked them if they knew much about Face­book and online mar­ket­ing. But, I’m quite sur­prised when I see a con­trac­tor who does not have a Face­book page whether they use it or even know what it is or does! So, why my blog post title? When your employ­ee comes to you and says, ​“Hey boss. We need a Face­book page. We are so ear­ly 2000ish!” Don’t just say, ​“Go for it…sign up…get it done!” Be a lit­tle more cau­tious. What I’ve dis­cov­ered is if an employ­ee is going to have access to your com­pa­ny Face­book and then gets fired, quits or is laid off, you will have a very hard time fig­ur­ing out how to login when you are ready to begin using Face­book for mar­ket­ing. I recent­ly spoke to a painter who asked for my help mar­ket­ing on Face­book, and we were unable to get into their Face­book login page. In this case, they had hired an out­side com­pa­ny to sign them up for Face­book. That is even worst. Because they can­celled ser­vices, the com­pa­ny would NOT release the login infor­ma­tion. So now this paint com­pa­ny has a live com­pa­ny Face­book page with no access! Anoth­er large paint com­pa­ny recent­ly laid off an admin assis­tant who had signed them up for email mar­ket­ing ser­vices on iCon­tact. When I tried to access the site, I could not. No one in the com­pa­ny knew the pass­word, so we had to start from scratch! The bot­tom line is this: if you decide to have a mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny or an employ­ee sign you up for Face­book, any online program/​campaign or even cre­ate your web­site, make sure you are the Admin­is­tra­tor and know all the pass­words. The email address­es should be yours, not your employ­ees. Also, read the fine print if you are deal­ing with an out­side company.