A Scary Social Media Story

The Sprocket Report

In honor of the season, we’d like to share a couple of social media horror stories. What scares folks most about tales of terror is imagining that it could happen to YOU! Which it could. So read on to discover frights that you should try to avoid. 

Getting Locked Out of Your Account
Since business and not-for-profit managers should spend their time managing their businesses and not-for-profits, social media tasks are often delegated to someone else. Which is fine until that someone moves on or gets angry and you lose access to your own social media account. Trying to regain control is difficult to impossible, so you should take special care before something happens – even if you are positive today that everyone is trustworthy.

Each social media platform has different methods, but they all are concerned with providing the tools for you to manage your account properly. They don’t want to get in the middle of deciding who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy. 

For instance, in Facebook there are levels of Page Roles. As the owner of the page, you should always be the Admin and assign everyone else a different role. An Editor can do everything needed to post on the page and engage with followers on your behalf, but they can’t assign roles. That means they can never delete you from your own account. But a second Admin can. So be very careful with whom you share the Admin role. 

For Twitter, go to tweetdeck.twitter.com and log in to your Twitter business page. In the first column under Accounts is a button that says “Manage team.” Click that to add team members who can share and use the account without direct login access. 

Fighting Attacks by Online Trolls 
People say things online they would never say to your face and some folks get over-the-top vitriolic which can hurt your business as well as your feelings. The first line of defense is always offering to make things right and then asking to take the discussion off-line. But some folks don’t want amends, they want confrontation. 

If necessary, you can block people on both Twitter and Facebook. They won’t get a notification of the block, but they can figure it out if they poke around a little and of course they can still talk about you on their own accounts. If you choose to block someone from your Facebook feed, their comments are no longer visible to everyone, but you can’t remove those Angry Face reactions. 

Blocking should really be a last resort because those Angry Faces and obviously missing comments make people wonder what it is that you’re hiding. It’s usually better to let folks see the troll’s tantrum and how you took the high road.  

Being Buried by Bogus Reviews
Another tactic of trolls is to leave bad reviews about you on every platform. They can also organize their fellow trolls to post fake reviews or ratings. Getting folks to post good, honest reviews takes time and effort which can be undone in just a couple of hours by trolls. Removing fake reviews is nearly impossible as you’ll see if you read complaints about Yelp and Facebook. 

So what can you do? As mentioned before, publicly offer to make amends and take it off-line. On Facebook, you can shut off reviews for a while until the trolls lose interest. Then dilute the poison with good reviews and ratings. Remind your clients how important their reviews are and tell them your troll story. Give prospective customers a little credit for recognizing angry fake reviews. People are much more likely to be suspicious of only really good reviews!

When it comes to social media, the boogey man is real but instead of being scared, be prepared. If you’d like to discuss your particular boogey, just give us call. We’d be happy to help you face your fears!

Kate GingoldKate Gingold

I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.

Other posts by Kate Gingold

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Full biography

I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.

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