The fear of having your social media accounts hacked is enough to keep marketing teams awake at night. It’s horrible to think that the efforts of years spent building a brand and a customer base can be washed away in an instant by a disgruntled employee or nefarious stranger accessing the company Instagram or Facebook account. Unfortunately, there’s no foolproof way to protect your accounts 100%, but there are several things you can do to make them as bulletproof as possible. Here are five tips!

1. How to Keep Your Social Media Accounts from
Getting Hacked
Main image via Shutterstock

2. The fear of having your social media accounts hacked is enough to keep marketing teams awake
at night. It’s horrible to think that the efforts of years spent building a brand and a customer base
can be washed away in an instant by a disgruntled employee or nefarious stranger accessing the
company Instagram or Facebook account.
Unfortunately, there’s no foolproof way to protect your accounts 100%, but
there are several things you can do to make them as bulletproof as possible.
Here are five tips

3. 1. Ditch the 'easy, peasy' passwords
A recent survey by SplashData revealed the most common passwords of 2015 were "123456,"
"password," and "12345678.” Using easy password combinations on social accounts (or anywhere,
actually) is like leaving your front door unlocked every day. Thieves may overlook your house for a
while but one day you’ll come home to find all your silverware gone.
And don’t think you can cut corners by using something like “123456ABC.” As SplashData CEO
Morgan Slain points out. “We 've seen many people attempt to be more secure by adding characters to
passwords, but if these longer passwords are based on simple patterns, they'll put you at just as much
risk of having your identity stolen by hackers.”
The reason people use easy passwords is because they’re effortless to remember, and that’s precisely
what hackers count on. To alleviate this, use a password vault that’s designed to thwart criminals while
still remaining simple to use. Options like LastPass and 1Password generate strong passwords and
store them safely until you need them.

4. 2. Change it up
Be sure to change the passwords on all your social accounts regularly. There are several password
managers on the market that make quick work of this arduous task - some even remind you to update
passwords on a schedule of your choosing.
Refreshing your passwords on a regular basis accomplishes two things:
First, it adds an extra layer of protection in the event of a data breach with your password protection
or social media service. If hackers end up with a month-old list of member login information, you’ll be a
step ahead of them if you routinely change your password.
Second, refreshing your passwords keeps former employees from accessing your accounts with old
information.

5. 3. Share with care
If you have more than one employee managing your social accounts, you’ll want to find a way to
share passwords without tacking them to the team corkboard. This is another way password
managers really shine - many include a tool for sharing account login information in a way that
obfuscates the actual details while allowing the employee to sign into account in a couple of clicks.
Onboard as many team members as you like, no one but the administrators see the passwords.

6. 4. Don’t get click happy
Many social media account hacks occur through phishing attempts and malicious links so be careful
what you click. Your best defense is to use a third-party platform to manage all your social accounts in
one place. Services like Hootsuite are designed to spot malicious links and alert you to a potential
account hijacking attempt before it’s too late.

7. 5. Ask for help
At the end of the day, marketing teams want to do what they love best: dream up new ways to engage
customers and build the brand. Managing the details of a batch of social media accounts and keeping
them safe is time-consuming and sometimes frustrating. Don’t be afraid to call in an extra set of hands.
Contract with a social media professional who’s skilled in making sure your accounts are safe and
secure so you can get back to creating great content that drives customers.