Thursday, August 5, 2010

5 Tips For Setting Up Company Branded Social Media Accounts

More fun then untangling iPod headphones, company social media account lock outs are hours of fun for all the family. 

The usual cause is a well meaning, over-excited punter that has a rush of blood to the head during a social media workshop and charges off to be super helpful and configure (see also take control over) all the accounts. 
 
Leadership in the company need to make it VERY clear that any branded accounts are controlled by the organisation and need to be setup accordingly. You need a centralised point where all the accounts sit and can be administered. No renegade accounts for sub-brands and dinky blog concepts until the bones are in place. 

Five ways to make it easier:

1. Create a new company email address for all social media accounts e.g. socialmedia@widgetinc.com

2. Agree on a naming structure and make sure it's consistent and available across the applications you want. e.g. http://twitter.com/widgetinc, http://youtube.com/widgetinc. Use http://namechk.com to make sure. 

3. Delegate a social media administrator for the company and one or two other senior people to oversee your new socialmedia@widgetinc.com email address. That's it! More people can be added later but keep it tight at the start until the strategy is setup. For example, the Managing Director and one or two others. Think long-term as individuals come and go. 

4. Register the accounts to the socialmedia@widgetinc.com email address using standard naming conventions and standard passwords. Keep it simple. 

5. Have a spreadsheet with all the accounts and passwords and enter all the details as you go to create a master list. Make the list read-only and publish it in a really obvious place on a shared drive or an intranet so if someone is sick or leaves, you won't get locked out. 

It's no fun sitting on the doorstep and having lot's of junk accounts coming up against your brand in search. Keep it simple, standard and centralised. 

Posted via email from cjlambert's posterous

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