In the age of online collaboration and remote work, accomplishing tasks with your employees almost always involves sharing access to things like social media accounts, Google drives, servers, and other online tools. And while this sort of team participation is excellent, it’s essential to be cautious about who’s in charge of them.

For example, what happens when that intern you hired to run social media moves onto something else, taking the login credentials with them? Or a disgruntled employee who set up your Google Drive folders deletes all of your stored images?

It doesn’t sound so great, right?

Security Breaches

The person controlling your online drive that stores valuable materials for upcoming campaigns might not take online security as seriously as you do. Therefore, they likely haven’t taken the time to protect or encrypt these folders—leaving them susceptible to being hacked. As the person in charge, you should own and manage these folders, investing in security systems, and allow specific permissions to your staff when necessary.

Loss of Control

When you give someone control of an online asset such as Meta Business Manager, they have an enormous amount of power over your social media presence. If the relationship goes sour and this person no longer works for you, this could be bad news. Without access to this vital social channel, you could be missing opportunities, and your chances of recovering login credentials from the former employee may be slim. If a vendor or employee offers to set up your Meta Business Manager account, you should let them, but always make sure that it’s established using the credentials that you’ve created and that you also have easy access.

Dependency Disappointments

Oftentimes, depending on others to get things done quickly doesn’t always work out. So when you need a post to go up immediately, let’s say for an open house, and the person in charge of your social media is unavailable—how can you get the message out? This is the moment that you’ll wish you were entirely in control of your own social accounts.

Or, perhaps you work with a third-party organization to operate a server that your employees use. What happens when that third party goes out of business? Where does the information stored on your server go? You should always maintain admin control of these online accounts.

Final Thoughts

If you’ve found yourself in a situation similar to anything listed above, then you’re not alone. With the need to have so many different online assets, it’s easy to let control over these slip away from you and into the hands of others.

We suggest doing a quick audit of these online locations every quarter. Make sure that you have admin control and store all of the passwords/ login credentials somewhere safe—this could help you to avoid major headaches down the line.

Need a social media partner to keep your marketing efforts successful and safe? Let’s get in touch.