Crap! Did you just notice that you don't have access to your company's social media accounts? A familiar situation that many entrepreneurs ask a digital marketing expert about. Some have been in care, and then that someone changed jobs. So the company's social accounts have gone quiet. You might want to do social media as well. The situation can also be embarrassing if the company's social account management credentials are held by a former employee. Or maybe no one just remembers how to log in to some accounts and with what credentials - but it seems that the company now has a profile on many channels.
First, try to contact the former employee and ask him to hand over the account credentials. It is likely that you will get the rights of your social accounts in order the fastest and easiest way through this, which is why this step is first on the list, although sometimes it can feel difficult to connect with the person who has left the company.
Review all possible agreements related to the management of social accounts. If you find documentation that specifies responsibility for IDs, you can use it as a basis for your request.
If a former employee does not respond or refuses to provide credentials, please contact customer support on that social media platform. Explain the situation and ask them for instructions on how you can determine who manages the accounts and how to transfer ownership of the accounts back to you. Be prepared for the fact that you may need, for example, to prove your identity or provide an extract from the trade register in English.
If you get your credentials back, change your passwords immediately. Also update all security measures, such as two-step authentication, to ensure account security. Never set up company social accounts with personal email, but always use company email accounts and corporate accounts and profiles. It is good to make sure that in Meta Business Manager, for example, there are always two main users so that everything is not behind one person.
Develop a plan or guideline to ensure that similar situations do not happen again. Save information about social IDs, for example, in a password manager such as LastPass or Dashlane. When an employee leaves, social security credentials are checked and handed over in the same way as office keys or company tools. For example, you can record in an employment contract that, at the end of the employment relationship, the management rights of personal accounts are transferred collaboratively to another employee or supervisor.
If the account uses your company logo, you have the opportunity to make notice of trademark infringement. So you turn in your own company account as if it were a fake account. This usually requires the company logo and name to be part of protected trademark. Once you have official proof that you are the legal owner of the trademark, Facebook needs to respond to your whistleblowing and then you have a good chance of having your business account removed from the platform entirely. After that, you will create a new account. Collecting followers starts from the beginning, but now you have your social media account, and you can do social marketing, for example.
We do not recommend creating new accounts without deleting old ones - this will only be confusing for your followers and dead business accounts will signal a dead company.
From a short hymn to the beautiful: no. Fake giants like Meta put strict policies in place to ensure account ownership. Unfortunately, an outsider cannot directly intervene in the situation, since the platform's customer service usually helps in such a matter only the original owner or administrator of the account, to whose e-mail the confirmation messages of the company page or the advertising account of the company go. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that the person who created the company accounts or the current administrator (which may be a former employee) takes the matter forward with the support of the platform and complies with the requirements of the platforms.
Sure, we offer support as far as we can, but in the end we're not hackers. At worst, you may end up spending a frustrating amount of time figuring this out. However, losing control of some accounts or being locked out of their own accounts is so common that there are own services such as It's hacked.com.
This was the last straw now? Contact usSo we can take care of the social in the future. You always have ownership of your accounts and we make sure you get control rights and data with you even if you change offices.
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