One of the first questions I ask clients when I meet them is “Who will be responsible for managing your social media accounts?”

If you (the business owner) decide to put social media in the hands of someone else you have to think long and hard about who this person is going to be.

On a regular basis I hear business owners assume that young people are the obvious choice to run Facebook and/or Twitter accounts because they are ‘on there all the time’ and therefore know how to use it.  Knowing how to press the buttons on social media is very important but only one of the many skills required. Personal accounts and business accounts are completely different in the way they are approached.

There is another reason why you have to think this through carefully. I will illustrate it with  this example:

You are a large well established company that have spent years building up your your business and reputation. Your senior managers underestimate social media and hand it over to an employee who you think understands it better than you. Say for example that employee is having a bad day and becomes disillusioned with your company, they decide to tweet/post their own thoughts about your company to 70,000 people and ruin your credability overnight in a very public environment.

That happened less than a month ago to HMV. Fortunately the employee responsible for the negative comments handed over the password and accounts to the Marketing Manager after she tweeted a dig at her own social-media-challenged boss: “Just overheard our Marketing Director (he’s staying, folks) ask ‘How do I shut down Twitter?’.

What lessons can you learn from this?:

• As an owner of a company make sure you have an understanding of social media. You have a note of the passwords, know how to access them and change if needs be.
• If you hand it over to someone else ensure that their activity is monitored.
• Have a ‘Code of Conduct’ written down for social media activity.
• Ensure you have a contingency plan if the person responsible leaves the company.
• Think long and hard about who you are going to hand over your reputation to.

What do you think? Have you encountered any of these issues?

Juliet D'Costa runs a consultancy Social Pickle based in Surrey which helps businesses set up and effectively market themselves on Facebook and Twitter.