A Comprehensive (Beginners) Guide to SEO
Our 8 part guide on all aspects of SEO, from how search engines work to the effects of UI and UX.
Marketing on Facebook is a fantastic way to reach out to potential new customers, and you can quickly reap the rewards from a successful marketing campaign. If you have launched a successful campaign yourself, you will have seen the massive increase in comments. While on the one hand, this is great and what you want, on the other you may receive also receive some negativity and “trolling”.
So, what can you do keep out the unwanted comments but still get the interactions that will help your brand become better known? Here is our quick guide.
What comments shouldn’t you block?
Blocking all negative comments and constructive criticism of your products or service is, in effect, censorship. You want to avoid this, especially if others can see what you are doing it as it will only reflect badly on your brand image and reputation. It is impossible not to receive any negative feedback, and your customers know this. It is a good idea to leave the following comments visible:
- Comments which express a personal opinion
- Any constructive criticism should be welcomed
- Any negative reviews of your brand – a reasonable person would expect this
- Any emotional reactions
In most of the cases above, it is a good idea to respond to the feedback. Perhaps you could ask further questions and engage in dialogue. It will show your customers that you appreciate the feedback and you are acting upon it.
What should you hide?
Any unreasonable comments that could cause your brand harm should be removed, and this move should be seen as moderating. It can stop comments from getting personal and detracting away from your product, something that is benefitting no one apart from the trolls. Indeed, not removing these comments will reflect poorly on your business. Specific things that you should remove are:
- Any misinformation and blatant lies
- Profanity – think of other users
- Anything that discriminates against a particular group of could incite hatred
- Adverts and spam from others
- Blatant trolling
- Any personal attacks – this could potentially become litigious
Moderating is essential
We have all heard the terms “troll” and “keyboard warrior”, well these are often the people who choose to comment not just on Facebook but on other forums. They relish the opportunity to spread negativity, often because they are faceless and hide behind a username. Often the trolls don’t even believe what they write themselves and are merely seeking attention! Their comments often spoil the experience for genuine browsers meaning that they have a detrimental effect on your campaign. Moderation helps to improve the overall experience for everyone, and most people are in favour of it.
How to moderate the trolls, spam and haters
Facebook are industry leaders when it comes to placing ads on their platform, so you certainly don’t need to add any third-party plugins. Facebook is fully aware that spammers and trolls are out there, and they do all they can to help you moderate comments and offer two methods of doing this.
1. Moderate comments manually
In your ads manager, go to the “Ads” tab to see the current active Ads in your campaign. From here choose to show the Engagement Columns to see which Ads have comments posted.
Select the Ads you wish to change and you should see a ‘Preview’ button next to the Edit and More options.
If you click on this, you will be taken to the “Ad Preview” window, click on the icon with the box and arrow icon.
This will open a drop-down menu where you should click on the “Facebook post with comments”
If this option isn’t available choose “Facebook desktop News Feed” option, and this will open up your ad where you will be able to see all the comments that have been posted.
*You can currently only see the comments when viewing from Desktop, not from Mobile.
Expand the comments section to Show All. If you wish to moderate a comment, click on the three dots on the right-hand side and select “Hide Comment” or “Delete Comment”.
The post is not deleted, and the poster along with their friends will be able to see what they have written, but it will not be available for viewing by the general public. The benefit of this is that the poster doesn’t feel offended if their post was genuine, even if it was a little over the top and secondly, it reduces the chances of the post falling into chaos.
2. Auto-hide comments
Moderating ads manually is excellent if you are only receiving a limited number of comments, or you only have a single ad running. It helps you to know what your customers and potential customers are thinking as well as giving you an indication of how successful your ad has been. However, if you are looking to step things up a little or you a receiving a lot of feedback, you will probably want to automate things.
By using the auto-hide option, you can get Facebook to hide individual comments that contain specific words, and it is known as the profanity filter.
To turn the filter on, go to the Facebook page and click on “Settings” which is again in the top right-hand corner.
In the top tab ‘General’ find the “Page Moderation” option. Here you will be able to hide certain words.
Separate each word with a comma, for example, “hate, rubbish, tacky, scam”. Any comment containing any of these words will be hidden automatically.
Each ad will need to be linked to a specific page, typically your business or product page. Assuming that you only have one page, you will only need to set this up once and not for each post. However, if you have several pages, you will need to do it for each one. This helps to protect your brand’s integrity, and by suitably moderating your page, you can ensure that your comments give a balanced view to your customers.
Contact Us
At Phoenix Media, we specialise in helping our clients with their social media campaigns. If you would like more information about either starting a campaign or managing your existing campaigns, please contact us on 02 038 5400 to speak to a specialist.
