Social media is one of the greatest inventions of the 21st century - not only for private people, but also for public figures, activists and businesses. Reaching and connecting with like-minded people around the world becomes a matter of minutes and can easily be achieved with some knowledge and a few clicks. Your products, your message, your cause - it all can be shared with humanity without you ever leaving your desk.
But there is another side to the social media coin: it is so much easier for people to be negative, to drag someone else down or even verbally attack them. It is easier to be rude under a post than to someone’s face. For many, this aspect of social media outweighs its advantages, and causes them to not use social media’s full potential. Are you one of those people? Are you worried about how to deal with people online? Or do you simply need some tips for the day to day interactions with your community? Well, either way: we got you! We have put together a Social Media Guide for you, on how to do community management the right way and how to deal with negative comments.
Choose your tone of voice
Let’s start with something you either are already aware of or you have never considered until right this moment: your social media presence needs a tone of voice. And it is just as important as your corporate identity - as a matter of fact it actually can be considered part of your CI!
When setting up profiles for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Co. you have to decide on a tone of voice for your brand. This determines the way you design visuals, write your post copies and of course how you reply to your followers’ comments. A more formal tone of voice, which is suitable for political parties and candidates or governmental organizations, underlines the account’s professionalism and helps establish it as a reliable source. Thus it does not allow too much creative freedom when replying to messages.
A casual tone of voice, which is suitable for activists or young businesses, allows for a more light-hearted communication with followers. A little witt added to a reply almost assures a follow-up from the other person - a great way to boost interaction organically on posts. Accounts that manage to draw people in with their community management, are accounts that people follow out of emotion.
As mentioned above, the tone of voice is not only relevant when interacting with your community under your posts - it starts with the post itself! It determines how visuals and copies are being created. CamBuildr’s content creation feature enables you to build templates, which include your CI and tone of voice. This ensures visual and tonal harmony across all social media posts - especially when your accounts have multiple admins who publish posts on your channels.
Interact as a person, not an account
This tip is community management 101: when replying to your followers’ comments and messages, reply as a person, rather than the account’s name. Sign your messages with your name, for example ‘Lisa from CamBuildr’, so people know and feel like they are talking to an actual person, instead of with ‘your Cambuildr Team’.
This means that when multiple people manage your account, all of them should actually sign as themselves and not pretend to be one person. This also allows the natural variations in communications, as well as relationships developing between account managers and the community.
Make community management part of your daily routine
Since social media is a big part of most people’s everyday life, it is of utmost importance to do community management on a daily - sometimes even hourly - basis. Followers use social media to get information and share them with others. When they have questions regarding anything related to you, they do not hesitate to comment or send a quick direct message - emphasis on quick. If they wanted to wait hours or days for a reply, they would have sent you a letter by mail. Social media is fast and easy. Fast and easy information - that also sets the expectation for accounts’ community management efforts.
Furthermore it signals closeness and interest in your followers, when you take the time to interact with them online. An important factor, when it comes to turning a bunch of followers into an actual community!
Don’t reply to every comment
Please do not feel overwhelmed or pressured after reading the prior point: we certainly don’t mean for you to spend all day everyday interacting with every single comment you receive under a post. Sometimes people will tag each other and start conversations under your post. In such cases, you need to evaluate if it would be a contribution for you to interact with them or if it may feel like an invasion of privacy to them.
Also, especially when paying to promote content, you’ll get many seemingly random comments. Using the detailed targeting options on Facebook allows you to be more specific which user groups your content should be delivered to. Next to being the most efficient way to spend your boosting budget on social media, it also bears the great advantage to minimize said random comments, since the audience should already have an interest related to your topic.
Using the Facebook Ad Manager and its 12.998.400.838 fields can be overwhelming, which is one of the reasons why CamBuildr integrated the Ad Manager and simplified it by breaking it down to the most important fields - so even a first-timer can successfully set up an ad campaign within minutes.
But even after specifying your audience, you will come across odd or aimless comments. You can just ignore them, as long as they are harmless and don’t directly demand a reply. If the latter is not the case, tag along: the next tip is what you need here.
Handling negative comments and messages
In our digital age it is no wonder that smaller businesses, activists, and politicians are worried about presenting their products, their message, their point of view on social media. They are worried about negative feedback or - worst case - a shitstorm. But worry no more! We’re happy to provide some information to help you handle the situation in the best possible way.
Before we dive in, it is crucial to understand that not every critical or negative comment equals a shitstorm. We have put together some tips on ‘How to post your opinion online, without triggering a shitstorm’. One of the most important tips also applies to our current topic: research! By efficiently looking into a matter and gathering information about it, before posting about it, is the best way to avoid negative comments that can actually harm your movement. Thus this is the number one rule to follow, before it even comes to community management. When you have fulfilled this requirement, critique is nothing to be afraid of!
The belief that all interaction has to be positive, is one of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to social media. Actually, critique and disagreements can have a very positive impact on your online presence. Sounds illogical? Let us elaborate: allowing people to share their opinion on your matter is a sign of authenticity, because it is normal that others have different points of view. A profile with loads of interactions and not a single opposing question or comment appears unrealistic - as if the account managers delete and silence the voices they don’t agree with.
Additionally, it can help you strengthen your position as an expert in your field, by constituting opportunities for you to further provide information and arguments for your matter. The first rule is to always stay polite and professional when responding to such comments.
Furthermore, ‘negative’ comments can boost engagement on your post organically.The more people comment and discuss under a post, the more relevant it appears to social media algorithms and therefore will be shown to more users. Having a community that supports you by replying to others under your posts, is a big flex. This means you’ve done everything right and people identify with your page and fully have your back.
Unfortunately, not all negative comments can be handled as described above - and that is the case, when the comment is offensive, profane or harmful in any way. Facebook has a blacklist function, which allows you to block certain words. This results in comments automatically being hidden, when any of the listed words are being used. Any comment that wasn’t filtered out automatically, but shouldn’t be visible to everyone, can and should be hidden by you manually at any given moment.
There you have it: community management is nothing to be scared of. By following this guide you will be able to successfully build an online community on social media, that helps you spread your message! Are you ready?
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