The outcry over the ASB and ACCC statements on Facebook comments is a little hard to understand, Griffin argues. After all, shouldn’t these companies have been monitoring their Facebook comments anyway?
Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Many businesses – even some of the largest companies in the country – set up Facebook pages and just wait for all the “likes” to pop up.
Online social media consultancy Online Circle shows in its monthly reports that activity and engagement are two very different things. You may have a lot of activity on your page, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re an active participant.
“Many of these comments might be for no particular use, but it doesn’t really matter,” he says.
“I think organisations have said they’ve been willing to engage on Facebook, but now that’s been shown to be a bit of a ruse. They’re using it as an advertising medium.”
This means what many business owners may be fretting – you need to read the posts on your page every single day.
What you’ll be looking for may change from day to day. If you’ve set up rules, look for any posts that may break them. But also be on the lookout for any posts which make misleading or deceptive statements about your brand – even if they’re approving.
“You need to go in every day,” says Pollard. “Even if that means you’re a really small company, a sole operator, and you think you just don’t have the time to do it.”
“It means finding downtime to read messages when you’re on the way to work, or whatever.”
This also means you need to reply to misleading comments and clear up any misconceptions, even if they don’t deserve outright deletion.
For larger businesses, this may mean hiring sometime to look at your overall social media strategy. In the United States, the role of “community manager” has become popular among SMEs. Griffin suggests that may occur here also.
“All of this means you’re just going to have to spend some time curating and managing your community.”
That means, yes, you’re occasionally going to have to delete comments that you deem inappropriate. But if you’re monitoring them every day, it won’t be a problem.
These experts also say you should keep in mind you aren’t deleting controversial comments. You’re getting rid of comments that could potentially mislead or deceive with regard to your brand. It’ll be clear what those are – they’ll usually be outrageous with little basis in reality.
If instead you’re deleting comments that you simply don’t like, then you’ll start leaving a sour taste among your customers and they will react.
Don’t make a big deal out of it, these experts say. Don’t bring attention to the fact you’ve deleted a comment. Just get rid of it as quickly as possible and move on.
But there’s a second element to moderation in that you also need to be careful about what you post.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
