Insights / Pureplay
Social Media Moderation – Dos and Don’ts
- 21st July
- Jake Allan 3
As social media plays a larger role in connecting with your customer base, it is critical to have an effective moderation strategy in place, writes Jake Allan.
No doubt there has been a great movement towards social media as a part of new-age business methodology, and the retail industry is no exception. Although businesses are integrating the social web, not many of them have a strategy in place for growth. Even more concerning is that the majority of these businesses do not have moderation strategies established to deal with potentially negative feedback.Moderation is the first plan that you need to develop because once you are on social media; you are immediately on public display and need to act accordingly.
Depending on your community base, a few misguided actions could have quite a negative effect for your business. Not only can all the conversations be viewed by the people who are following you, but all of their friends see your updates as well. This is best demonstrated on Facebook, where each person has an average of 130 friends, and 50% of these people are active users and login everyday. Furthermore, everything that you publish on social media is ‘indexed’, meaning that it can be immediately found in search engines. Although this can create great exposure for a company, it is also one of the reasons why businesses need to have a moderation strategy.
You do not need to have the perfect plan and strategy developed before engaging on social media, however you can be proactive in your approach to protect and ameliorate your current position.
Case In Point: Nestle
Nestle is a perfect example of a company that did not have a clear understanding of their customers or the social environment and quite obviously did not know how to respond to negative feedback. Unfortunately Nestle was trying to control the interaction on their Facebook page, after receiving bad press about the use of palm oil in its products. From this we can learn that the person that was managing their Facebook page did not understand the environment, nor did they understand how to react in such a situation. Choosing someone you can trust to manage your social customer experience is essential.
How Should You Act?
You firstly need to recognise that when you enter the social web as a business, you are also entering a very intimate place for customers and your moderation strategy needs to reflect this. As a company, you have the responsibility to demonstrate that you are able to heal and solve problems. As a result of demonstrating these qualities, you can start to build a sense of trust and community, which can be an asset and influence the positive reception towards your company. Having this open relationship with your fan base can help you to understand your market at a much deeper level, and gain insights that you would not have had otherwise. Not only will this allow you to be the fly on the wall, but it will also create an asset and a point of competitive advantage that is difficult to match as market dynamics change.
If you are to grow and connect with your customer base, you must ‘put yourself in their shoes’ and truly understand how they will react to everything that you do and say. Additionally, you must also consider what message you are sending customers through your actions. For example, if you delete a post, you may be sending off signals that you are not listening to your customers and as a consequence you are ignoring core problems in your business. In reality, your customers are helping you by identifying potential problems in your business, therefore you should react in a friendly manner, acknowledge and try to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Creating guidelines that promote an accountable and responsible approach is truly something that you should aim to develop.
Reacting to a Negative Comment
If you get a negative comment, it is a good idea to find out about the person so you can determine how you should respond. You never know, it may be your competition or someone who fell through the cracks of your customer support system. Additionally, depending on the type of complaint, different levels of management might need to get involved to deal with it accordingly. This is to ensure customers feel as though they are being cared for. To reinforce this, it is also good practice to add a sign-off signature so people know who they are talking to. Furthermore, the person who manages your social media must be someone you trust and understands the business. This person must know how to act and respond to a variety of situations.
However, in some cases it may be better to follow-up on a complaint via email if you want to keep a conversation more private. Even though you are dealing with the issue off social media, if you let people know that the complaint 
or problem is being dealt with, then this can have a good effect on customer confidence levels.
On the other hand, if you decide to delete a comment because it is obscene or is defamatory towards other community members, you should have a set of guidelines to which you can direct people. Introducing a ‘House Rules’ custom tab on Facebook is a great example. This should be a short and clear document outlining what you will not tolerate, including threats against other members, or swearing. Then, if you receive a complaint, you can direct them to the guidelines. Keep in mind that these guidelines should not be too harsh, otherwise you will get negative reactions such as, ‘we can do whatever we want…this is our space’.
