Just like using different keys to open different doors in your house, you can assign different user roles to control the risks of people using social media in your organisation. This way, no single entity can get access to everything, and put your brand at risk when they make a mistake or engage in a malicious act.
For some social media networks, this is built-in and easy to set up (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn). For others that only have a single admin account that manages everything, you will need to use a SAAS platform like Hootsuite or Sprinklr to manage user roles and grant them to the right people.
If you aren’t already allocating user roles, here are the basic ones that you already should have in-place and being granted to your agencies, vendors or colleagues.
Analyst
We’ll start from the least risky role – the analyst. This is a user role that just allows the user to view page insights or post performance data, without making changes to the social media account or posting any content.
On Facebook:
On LinkedIn:
Advertiser
The advertiser role allows users to boost wall posts or create dark ads, essentially advertisement posts that are not ‘posted’ on the brand’s social media account.
Through this role, the user can also set targeting parameters, create custom audiences, and draft dark posts – which still provides some control in mitigating the risk of a content accidentally going out.
On Facebook:
On LinkedIn:
Community Manager
The Community Manager role allows users to reply to comments, private messages, visitor posts and mentions. Usually, this is a key role in customer support and driving brand conversations, so it deserves a specific set of permissions separate from publishing rights (see below).
On Facebook:
On LinkedIn:
Editor (or Publisher)
The editor role is a critical one that should not be taken lightly. With the permissions granted by this role, users can directly publish content on the social media account, and they may do so directly using their smartphone app as well.
What this means is that mistakes may occur if an editor is not careful about managing his user account – so proper training and a thorough understanding of the risks that come with this role should be made clear.
On Facebook:
On LinkedIn:
Administrator
The most critical role of any social media account is the admin. With this role, users can add new users, make key changes to the social media account settings, and do anything else that an Analyst, an Advertiser, a Community Manager and an Editor can.
The responsibilities of this weighs heavy, and should only be granted to a select few personnel of an organisation. If you are still giving your agencies access as admin to manage everything on your behalf, removing them should be your topmost priority.
On Facebook:
On LinkedIn:
Next steps
If you haven’t set up user roles, you should get started right away.
But if you’re using a social media account like Instagram or Twitter, then you’re out of luck. Consider investing in a SAAS platform like Hootsuite or Sprinklr, and set your roles up there. This will differ from platform to platform, so reach out to your sales representative for support on the technical bits.
English