Walking out the Door with the Twitter Password: A Few Words on Social Media Maturity
by Matthew Lees
Mathematical Maturity
My high school calculus teacher often talked about “mathematical maturity.” It became a phrase we dreaded hearing, because, when he used it – usually in the negative (i.e., that someone wasn’t being mathematically mature) – it meant that person had tackled a math problem like an amateur; that they weren’t using all the information or tools at their disposal; that they were doing things the way a child would. Ouch.
But if you demonstrated your mathematical maturity, it meant you didn’t complain if a problem was particularly knotty; that you pulled different techniques out of your mathematical toolkit; and that you took things seriously.
Who’s Got the Twitter Password?
In three unrelated instances over the past few weeks, I heard three different people pose more or less the same question: “If the person at your company who manages your Twitter and Facebook accounts leaves the company, what do you do if they forgot to tell you the passwords?”
If you’re the one tasked with setting things straight, you’re definitely facing a challenge. Who wants to track down and call up a former colleague to recover a password? Sure, most people would be helpful (if, in fact, they actually remember the passwords). But there’s also the possibility for ex-employees to cause mischief.
The real problem, though, arose before the employee left the firm. The organizations in the scenario above never should have let it get to this point.
So why did it happen?
Largely, I think, because we’re still in the early stages of the social media phenomenon, and things are still being done on an ad hoc basis. Many organizations are seemingly OK with people setting up Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other accounts on their own. And they’re not thinking through the ramifications.
Social Media Maturity
To me, social media maturity means having the systems, processes, resources, and organizational mindset to get the most out of what social media has to offer. It means thinking things through and being prepared for different eventualities. More specifically, it means:
1. Knowing your business goals – There’s a lot already written about business goals and determining ROI (including several posts on this blog, including this one), so I won’t delve into it here, other than to say this should be the starting point in any social media or online community initiative.
2. Clearly defining roles and responsibilities – It’s essential to set expectations and know who’s responsible for what (including passwords).
3. Creating sensible and effective processes – Here’s where the organizations above really dropped the ball. IT departments know how to set up new network and email accounts when an employee is hired, and they know what to do when someone leaves. They also know how to manage network access, and how to recover and/or reset passwords as warranted. You should have similar procedures in place for all social sites.
Don’t Forget Consultants and Agencies
Everyone on your team and in your project sphere should walk the social media walk. So if you work with consulting firms, agencies, and others on your social media programs, you’ll want to be confident that they’re not going to walk out the door with any passwords, either. Make sure they bring and display a high degree of social media maturity, too.
Do you know who’s got your organization’s Twitter password?
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This entry was posted on Monday, March 1st, 2010 at 8:33 pm and is filed under Best Practices, Social Media Industry. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
6 Responses to “Walking out the Door with the Twitter Password: A Few Words on Social Media Maturity”
MatthewLees says: Thanks, Paul. On one hand it is shocking. On the other hand, those of us deeply involved in social media tend think some things are obvious [me included, at times] when, to those not as committed or experienced, they’re not. In one way, our job is to have patience as we help raise the social media maturity level within our organizations…while maintaining a good customer experience, strong brand equity, and so on. Not an easy task.
Best of luck in your new gig!
Every company needs someone in its business units to think about the “What if?” scenarios and what affect they would have on the organization if they came about, and social media is not excluded from that process. What if the person who handles our social media accounts were to leave? What if we’d want to create and promote a company Facebook page only to find out we already have one that is full of stale content that has already soured our followers and drove them away?
I’ve run into situations where social media accounts have been virtually (no pun intended) abandoned because the well-intentioned, authorized person who started it “left the company X months ago…” It can be a frustrating and time consuming process to straighten out.
crystal haidl says: So, how does a company resolve the problem? Does Twitter have a policy on how a company or organization can either repossess or delete a profile? It doesn’t appear that Twitter addresses this question.
Crystal – You’re right that Twitter isn’t very sophisticated about account ownership. It comes down to access to the email address under which the account was created. If it’s a business/corporate account, the company can send a password reminder to that email address, access that message, reset the password, and, thereby, “reclaim” the account (ideally changing the account’s email address to a non-personal email alias; this offers a lot more flexibility).
But if the employee signed up for the Twitter account using a personal email address, that’s a trickier situation. From Twitter’s perspective, it’s that employee’s account, not the company’s. In this case, it comes down to contacting the person in question (who hopefully left the organization on good terms) to get their help. This underscores the importance of setting things up properly in the first place.
[...] we wrote in an earlier blog post, Walking Out the Door with the Twitter Password, organizations must have a plan for social media and turnover of employees. But we didn’t go [...]
I love this post! I’m a Digital Media Director who’s leaving a PR agency in a couple of weeks, and it was me that suggested that someone else really ought to know how to use Blogger so that the company blog could still be operated once I’m gone! Shocking, really…