A few days ago, I decided to inquire about how I could have a trade business in the Sharjah emirate. I had already gone through stress in the hand of an agent I met online when I processed for a professional license. So this time, I told myself I would only transact with government agencies on license-related issues. 

To proceed with my quest, I started my research by visiting the Sharjah-related official website, reading through the process, and contacting the recommended agency mentioned. I also requested a callback, even twice. While waiting for this callback, I received a WhatsApp message from an unknown person, introducing himself as an agency on the subject matter and claiming that he was chatting in response to my request. Unfortunately, I didn’t remember visiting such a site. I had only contacted one recommended agency, so how did this company get to intrude into my private line? The intruded message got me thinking and led to why I decided to share this awareness related to social media management with business owners.

AS A MANAGER, ASK YOURSELF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS;

Who created the company’s online account?

How was it created?

Was a generated official email used during creation, or was it created with an individual account?

Who are the administrators?

How trustworthy is the current social manager?

Remember, aside from how you have decided to grant access to staff on your company website, every social media platform operates differently. For example, Facebook/meta comes with assets like; a business account that can link with owners’ pages, Instagram, ad-account, and groups. Find out if your social asset on this platform is controlled by an individual or an officially created profile opened with the company’s email.

Do the same check for other social accounts. The primary focus is ensuring all the company’s social accounts are created with an official direct email. This aspect can be manipulative, and you might need to consult a professional if you feel you are a novice in social media management.

If your discovery is out of the focus, ensure to contact the initial creator, update the primary emails, and finetune other adjustments. For your youtube channel, Twitter, or Linkedin, you can always initiate the merge and delete from your account settings once the creator has granted the password to the conflicting account. The mentioned process is vital to owners who have opened multiple accounts using the same business slug/brands name due to not having access to the previously opened/hacked account. 

Another vital check should be in your official email cPanel. Ensure that all the email forwards are safely routed to known personnels. If you are using a regular email like your-company@gmail.com, do the same check on mail forwards from the email settings. However, since hacked emails are difficult to retrieve/recover, it is much safer to use generated official emails for official social account opening. An intruder or disparate staff will require full access to your cPanel before they can hack into your official emails. Keep them away from your cPanel only generate for them what they need and terminate or reset once their contract is over. 

Generating administrative rights is very important. Avoid granting full access to your media-related affairs. If you want a traceable timestamp or monitor, who posted or responded to incoming inquiries, ensure a company’s official email is used to create all your social platforms. You should also consider using this precaution for incoming calls. Stop allowing staff to use their mobile numbers to secure deals with clients, get an official generic line and use ERP/CRM to monitor all calls, including WhatsApp chat. WhatsApp can now be linked with ERPs, and managers can monitor conversations from anywhere.

Allocating administrative right to staff rather than granting full access ease a lot of stress in the handing-over process.

After getting your social presence aright, ensure to follow all due processes to acquire your account to be verified. I want to appeal to all social media platform developers to look into other accessible ways to make the verification process easy for verified upcoming business owners. 

Feel free to consult privately on the best way to grant online account access for each social account and how to set up/maintain secure continuous management/monitoring.