As a business owner in the non-profit sector, there never seems to be enough time in the day. The question I usually have to ask myself is how I can be impactful when the pressure of work, fundraising, and volunteers go full tilt. The last thing one wants to think about is how to manage social media, posting, emails, passwords, and other stuff like calendars, which seem trivial at the moment.
The extreme disadvantage that business owners can create with this thinking is it leaves them highly vulnerable in ways that no one wants to think about. Business owners must own their passwords and social media! Creating social media sites, google passwords, or even more critical set-up tasks such as CRM (register system) account is necessary for today's business climate. But what owners don't often think about is; if you hand this enormous responsibility of an employee, what happens when that person catches Covid, gets into an automobile accident, or just calls in and plain quits or gets fired? You and your business are at their mercy.
Now, no one wants to think about the possibility that they could lose one of their most important employees or partners. However, divorce is absolute; instead, it's in a business relationship or a real-life scenario when two partners split. Remembering to ask for passwords is not at the top of anyone's lists-o’-things to do. Monday will have a whole new meaning when you can no longer log in to your CRM registers account, your website is down, or when you find that your calendar has had some significant edits due to overreaction to a minor disagreement.
Social media doesn't have a face, and it only has your company's reputation on display. Real live stories have shown that sometimes a business will have angry ex-employees post inappropriate pictures or posts, private banking information, and can even go as far as to say things to other current employees who look like they are being harassed on your behalf.
As an agency, this gives us a chance to help others who walk into these sorts of scenarios after hiring a cousin, friend, or just an unproven weekend marketer who has disappeared after you have paid them their fee. Having a lock on your intellectual property is particularly important to keeping and gaining your customer's trust. When you're dealing with clients and their personal information, admitting someone hacking into your calendar will raise a red flag and trigger a fear that will escalate to thoughts of your business losing or selling their social security #'s or personal info about them and their loved ones. Knowing that you must be as transparent as possible with your clients, having someone who can walk you through communicating this to your delicate ones is a must.
As your company grows, you will need to find systems and processes that will help you streamline your company and set up standard operating procedures (SOP's). You must have a strategy for changing and saving passwords as a regular part of your business. Working with some of my clients is a joy when we have the opportunity to protect them from these sorts of issues by making sure they own all of the social media we create, and they have all ownership and passwords to all that we do.
Getting called in crisis mode because a client is trying to find out how to bring back their lost appointment book they just discovered has been deleted because "Jane Do" erased them last night after being fired is no fun task. So, have someone in your corner that is not only going to work for you but work with you on your business so we can help you learn from our years of experience being an agency and what you can expect if you are not protected.