About a year ago Butler University in Indiana had a social media superstar working in marketing and admissions. This individual really put Butler on the map and in front of the curve. The problem is that when this individual left Butler to start his own social media consulting firm, all that Social Media Equity walked right out the door. He had inadvertently built his own brand on Butler’s dime. There was a transition attempt, but in reality, Butler really fell off the Social Media map.
What went wrong?
How can you avoid this same mistake?
The great thing about Social Media is that it’s personal. The HARD thing about Social Media is that it’s personal! People don’t want to tweet with a brand. That is like going into a store and having a conversation with the Mannequin about how nicely she is dressed. However, if you ignore the brand completely and put all the equity into the Person, then - just like Butler - they can walk out the door.
There is no silver bullet here as each company is different. However, here are some ideas you can implement which will at least help you straddle this difficult problem.
If you have a Social Media guru in house, you could have them combine their twitter with your brand. A great example of this is Ryan Squire. When Ryan used to tweet for NBC, his twitter handle was @NBCSquire. He built up a large following under this name but when he left NBC for OSU Medical Center, the twitter account did not go with him. He now tweets under OSUSquire, thus co-branding with Ohio State. The upside of this method is (personal + brand) which ensures the brand can’t walk out the door. The down side is the twitter accounts, although they don’t go with Ryan, are virtually worthless without him.
Another twitter example I have seen is at Bresnan Communications. Bresnan’s customer service recently launched a twitter account called @JenatBresnan. This account uses a characterture avatar. What I really like about this is you still have a picture of a person, not a logo, so people are more likely to talk to this person. However, it really is portable. If Jen ever leaves Bresnan and Tracy takes over, she can still tweet under JenatBresnan, which would be much harder if the avatar was an actual photo of Jen.
Lastly - blogging. Many times with Corporate blogs, the entire thing hinges on one person - the Rock Star. If the Rock Star leaves, the blog is basically dead. You may be able to transition the corporate blog to another writer, but the audience has developed a personal relationship with the Rock Star who just left so this transition will be rocky at best.
A good alternative to this is to have a multi-person blog where you have several writers. In this situation people tend to follow the the “company” more than any individual blogger since each post could be from someone different. 
If you lose one of your bloggers, this is hardly noticeable at the corporate blog level and you can easily bring one or two new bloggers on board without disruption.
Again - there is no one-size-fits-all solution here. My challenge to you is that when you go into a social media strategy that you do so with your head on straight - thinking through how you are going to balance “Personal” with “Brand”. Don’t let your Social Media Brand walk out the door.
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