Often, organizations need to realize the risks of not having a data retention policy while working with the team and contractors. Recently, the Tiktor team, an online media about culture and domestic tourism, lost access to the website and social networks due to disagreements with their ex-colleagues.
Situations like that are not limited to Ukraine. The former National Basketball Association (NBA) SMM specialist wrote a post on his behalf on a corporate page with 40 million subscribers after quitting. He criticized the corporate culture and working conditions in the company. It didn’t affect the NBA’s image in the best way.
To avoid such a fate, I have prepared a checklist to help you build the right relationship with the communicator while cooperating and not worrying about access to your platforms.

Create a separate email for the communicator or contractor who works with you, preferably on your work domain. This way, after finishing the cooperation, you can just reset the password to this email, and all correspondence and documents will remain in your access.

Google Drive, OneDrive, Confluence, Dropbox — the communicator should work exclusively in your space. Do not allow excuses like «I will transfer it from my drive later». All documents, concepts, presentations and designs created during the cooperation belong to the client. Write it as a separate clause in the contract as well.

Password storage and generation services are helpful while working with communicators and among the team. The larger the team, the more different platforms it uses. Usually, all accesses are consolidated into one table on a shared drive. Should you accidentally give a link not to a separate document but to a folder, and a completely different person has access to your passwords.
Password manager is a browser extension that automatically fills in the access you need on sites. For new resources, it offers to generate a strong password. In a corporate account, you can create separate folders with access for certain teams depending on their work area. In addition to providing safety, it also saves a lot of time.

On the topic of access, remember to change your passwords regularly. Significantly, if the team structure changes and someone quits. Using a password manager it is an easy task. It will automatically generate a new password and save it for you.

On Facebook and LinkedIn, you can grant both full access to the page and access to individual functions. Don't leave full access to one person. Be sure to diversify the tasks and the people performing them. If your Instagram account is linked to a business manager on Facebook, you can reset your password in two clicks. Unfortunately, on X (formerly Twitter), you can grant only full access.
Another area for improvement is access to the advertising account. If the targetologist accessed the account with them after they had quit, you would not be able to create a new one. Therefore, always leave access to the business manager to more than one person. It is better to have a separate working page for managing public pages.

If you need to forward access or sensitive information to a third party, use Signal. However, this does not guarantee that the other side will keep the forwarded password in a safe place.

The most banal and most often ignored point. Don't be afraid to sign contracts with all team members and contractors. You can sign it both with an entrepreneur and with an individual. Describe in detail who owns the rights to the produced materials, where they should be stored and in what terms they will be transferred to the customer, that is, to you.

Veronika Kobzysta, head of the Communication Agency for Social Change "9.Department" for “Detector Media”