Starting Over with Your Brand

Basically, since the day social media arrived on the scene, FTVLive has been preaching that you need to make sure that you own your space on social media, not the station.

Andrea Michaels left her Chief Met job at Tegna’s WPMT in Harrisburg. Her Facebook page “Andrea Michaels Fox 43” has over 53K followers.

Now, she has started a page, not tied to the station “Andrea Michaels Weather” and it has about 3,500 followers.

Fortunately, Michaels has not been shut off from her station’s page and is able to still post on that page, driving some traffic over to her new page.

But, she is still 50,000 followers short from where she was. That is a lot of hard work to basically see go up in smoke.

When you join a TV station, you should always fight in your contract to make sure you keep ownership of your social media. That way, when you leave, you take your followers with you.

If your boss demands that you have a station page, in which they also have access, this is what you do.

You set up a new page, you post the bare minimum to that page, still keeping your main focus on the page you control. The stations can demand that you have a company page, but they can’t stop you from working and focusing on your personal page.

That way, when you leave the station, you take all those followers you worked hard to get with you.

But, the best advice is to try to keep full ownership of your social media when you join the station. If your boss and the station have an issue with that, maybe that’s not the station to work for.

It’s your brand, own it!