Social Media: Who Has the Password?

01.20.10

Danielle Leitch, EVP Client Strategy

It’s only when you really need them that passwords and user names become important! This was especially true for me recently when I could not locate the information for some of our Social Media tools and third party applications. Not only did it make for a good newsletter article, but it also opened up the issue of how important it is to update your third party applications with new Social Media account information, if changes are made.

We recently changed our @MoreVisibility Twitter password and I was experiencing trouble logging in, even though I was using the new log-in credentials. Eventually, after brainstorming with several people, I realized that Twitter was locking us out of the account for a 60 minute window due to invalid log-in attempts. The interesting part is, this kept happening as there were several third party apps (TweetDeck, TweetFeed, etc.) set-up with our "old" Twitter log-in credentials. Thus those systems were attempting to synch with Twitter through an API, but they were using incorrect data to do so. Nobody had updated these other applications with our new account credentials! Only when we updated the account information within all of the applications that we use, were we finally able to get back into twitter. It was a valuable lesson and one I thought I would share, as it is easy to overlook all of the various programs that you have synched to one another.

On a related note, we have experienced companies who were unable to access their Facebook page or YouTube channel because the employee who set it up is no longer with the company. It is really a good idea to implement a business practice of keeping all of these account profiles and associated log-in credentials, along with third party applications and tools, in one secure location. This way, select individuals can access the information and eliminate some additional work that would be required to request information or pursue taking back your company’s accounts or profiles. Consolidating user name and passwords, as well as programs intertwined with one another, will not only save time and headaches after a change is made; it will also facilitate coordinating any third party applications that are impacted by the change.

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