Blaise Grimes-Viort

Hi Blaise

Thanks for the post - all yr points agreed!

Firstly, a quick response to Patrick - no, you can't premoderate Facebook. Brands who moderate their walls (and thankfully, many do) have to post moderate either through Facebook's own tools (and spend a lot of time serching for the new content) or pay for one of the few good third party moderation tools, who pull Facebook API in. As only postmoderation is possible, brands must give serious thought to the amount of resource they can dedicate to this - how long can they tolerate illegal or innappropriate content remaining on their wall? The filter and auto-delete function of good FB moderation tools such as Conversocial http://www.emoderation.com/about/partnerships can of course assist with this.

And to Katherine - it seems that Facebook now allow any admin to appoint another 'Liker' as admin to the page - and be deleted from admin themselves. SO, the good practice is now - don't put all your eggs in one basket, and make sure that regardless of employee or agency changes, there will always be at least one admin access to the page. That MAY mean creating a Facebook profile just for that purpose, with a corporation alias email.

Sorry to self-promote, but hopefully eModeration's white paper on Moderation in Social Networks may be useful? Free download from http://www.emoderation.com/about/publications. We try to keep up with major FB moderation changes on our blog too - it's on Blaise's blogroll :-)

From what I've read of Facebook pages, they might no longer *have* access to moderate it. Don't pages need to be owned by an individual with a Facebook ID? If the person who set upthe page has left the company/was a contractor, they may not be approachable. It's not like monitoring a regular web page with a feedback section.

For the same reasons, the company might not be able to get the page taken down outright.

It's a typical result of establishing a presence without keeping in mind that platforms like Facebook and Twitter work in both ways and need to be monitored.
Unfortunately it is quite difficult to prevent such spam in the first place but it needs to be taken into consideration.

Id the budget isn't there it does not need to be a Social Media Manager but at least someone should be responsible for keeping sites clean. And it needs to be clear who that is because otherwise people just wait for someone else to do it.

Hey Blaise,

I definitely agree with your main points here: moderation isn't a bad thing, it's a great thing and it depends on your circumstance. I agree that Facebook's tools are not great and that you should not create a page (and open it up for user posting) without monitoring it, generally speaking. I agree that having this type of spam on your page does do some damage to your brand, in some cases. All good points!

I wanted to say that I felt that the screen shot you chose didn't do justice to the rest of your article! The reason I say this is because the comments in your screen shot were posted minutes ago, i.e. within one hour.

The real spam that tells the story is the stuff that has been there for days or longer. For most organizations, it's probably not a terribly good use of resources to have someone on your Facebook page once every 20 minutes for 24 hours a day. That would effectively be the only way to cut down spam as quickly as what is shown in your screen shot. For most, it would be appropriate for someone to check the page a few times a day.

Also, it's important to adjust for organization size, as well. For many smaller organizations or businesses (not including Ferrero), it makes little sense to hire a social media or community manager. The money isn't there and it's not budget justifiable. They can ably manage it themselves. But, to do it, they don't need to be on their page at every moment of every day. Checking it once or twice a day, or maybe even every day or two depending on activity, is plenty appropriate.

If people believe that they can't learn how to manage a Facebook page and they need to hire a new full time person dedicated to just social media, they may be just as likely not to enter the space at all, and that would be unfortunate. You don't have to be tethered to your computer in order to do this well. :)

As an aside, is there some way to pre-moderate a Facebook wall? I don't see it in the settings. Maybe an app? Are there any good apps that step up the moderation tools available?

Thanks,

Patrick