Who Owns That Social Media Account?

I raised a lot of eyebrows this summer at a national conference when I told the audience that our organization requires all managers of social media accounts that are branded with us to file their logins and passwords with our social media manager. I knew what they were thinking--shades of McCarthyism.

But the truth is, we believe that any account that purports to represent the organization is ultimately the organization's property. What does that mean exactly? Who owns that social media account anyway?

Last spring I was charged with writing the organization's social media policy. So, I hit the internet for research. There were several well-written policies, and I documented those in an earlier blog post. I honed these from several sites I looked at online that were similar to this one. There is a template site out there too, but we wanted a policy that fit our organization's culture, so we went the long route. The template site is a good start, but not a good end unless you don't intend to use the policy and just need one for reference.

After much ado about something, we finally got our policy approved, and it includes the following:

A.Institutional Ownership

Any social/new media account considered a public account (see I-B) representing the interests of Bobcat Athletics is the property of Montana State Athletics. Such sites must be registered with the department's social media manager. Permission to start a public account must be obtained from the department's social media manager.
 

This actually sounds more stiff than the real intent, but our lawyer didn't want us to put in print that we were going to request logins and passwords. The registration process includes the listing of logins and passwords. There was a two-fold purpose in our intent:

1. To remind everyone that when they post anything online, it ultimately reflects on the whole organization. There is accountability, but we never intend to control what they post. (read our whole policy on link above)
2. To be able to access any social media account in case of any emergency.

What's your view on ownership of social media accounts?