Do NOT Do This!!!!!
/When Gray took over Raycom, the company wanted talent to give their social media passwords to management and make the managers “Administrators” on their social media accounts.
Sources at WOIO in Cleveland tell FTVLive that talent is being told to establish WOIO manager Amanda Harnocz as an “administrator” of their Facebook accounts.
This is the internal email sent out to employees at WOIO and obtained by FTVLive:
Word is that talent at the station is pushing back against the policy and they should.
Gray is not the only company to do this, but it still does not make it right.
But why does station management need access to your social media?
Basically, if you leave the station or are fired, the station as an administrator can go in and delete your account. You may have spent years building up a following and you can lose it all with the click of a mouse.
Your social media is YOUR social media.
If the station requires you to give them your password, you need to do this.
Start another social media page for your work page. In other words, if you’re @JaneSmith on Twitter, make another account called @JaneSmithWOIO and give that password to management.
Just post strictly work stuff to that page and don’t really worry about how many followers you have, or what type of engagement you are getting. Because the second you leave the station, management is going to delete that account and the work you put into it.
Work on growing your OWN social media account, the page YOU control and the page that could be a big part of your future, whether you stay in TV news or not.
FTVLive has not put my emphasis on our social media and has never really tried to grow our Twitter followers or Facebook likes. For us it is all about FTVLive.com and that is where we put our efforts and time.
But, we get thousands of tips on our Twitter DM and that in itself is invaluable. I would not want management able to read my personal DM’s and neither should you.
Do NOT let management have access to your social media!
If they demand it, make a second account and give them access to that.
