Free options for delegating social media account access?

July 1, 2015 5:46 AM

I have hired someone to work on social media campaigns for my business. How can I delegate access to our social accounts to the employee without giving the worker our master passwords and without using a paid service like HootSuite Pro?

It seems access can be delegated internally with Facebook and via TweetDeck for Twitter, but what about other networks such as Instragram and Tumblr? Is there a free all-in-one solution that would help here?

posted by iamisaid to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

You can also add someone to tumblr ( https://www.tumblr.com/blog/YOURTUMBLRNAMEHERE/members ).
posted by lmfsilva at 7:36 AM on July 1, 2015

I have done social media marketing for a living, and as far as I know, there just isn't a way around this with certain services, unless you use a paid service. You either pay or hand over the master password. Social networking is still generally considered to be a thing for individuals, so they haven't bothered to work this out for corporate users.
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 8:51 AM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

One thing I've done in the past is share passwords with lastpass. Lastpass lets you "hide" the password from the person you share it with, but you have to accept that this is really only obscurity -- it's not that hard for them to get the password if they want to. And also they have the option of just changing the password on the accounts and not telling you what it is if you want to. So it's really minimal security beyond just giving them the password.

Sprout Social handles Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn, which for most uses will cover the important cases, and it's a nice way to manage stuff. It's not free, but it's affordable, and honestly if you're running a business, this has a lot of value. You don't give people your valuable products/services for free, so it seems reasonable to pay others in turn...
posted by primethyme at 1:16 PM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Instagram is really, really difficult to share securely. Could you look at having them submit via Latergram? You'd still have to approve each send from the primary device, but they wouldn't have access to the entire account (except when initially authorising Latergram, which you could do for them).

I can't wait for Instagram to get their act together for company accounts.

We use Buffer for everything else, and it works brilliantly for distribution, not so much for replies. That works for our purposes, where we like to have a bit more control over how our accounts communicate directly with community members.
posted by third word on a random page at 3:58 AM on July 2, 2015