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May 11, 2020 Content Chat Recap: When You Have To Read The Comments: Empathetically Managing Customer Feedback

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Marketers try to have faith that their audience will behave properly online, but the hard truth is that not everyone knows how to be a respectful e-community member. Instead of comment sections solely filled with insightful thoughts and genuine collaboration, we often see trolls, blatant self-promotion, unnecessarily heated and inappropriate disagreement, and a lot of spam. So how can marketers and online community managers best handle inappropriate posts from customers and audience members online?

For this #ContentChat we trade tips on how to effectively manage comments from your online community. Read below for the full recap, where we weigh the pros and cons of enabling or disabling comments, discuss whether online community comment guidelines are necessary, and explain how to be respectful when deleting comments on your channels.

Q1: Love them or hate them, everyone has an opinion about enabling comments on their blog or website. Do you allow visitors to leave comments on your blog or website? If so, how do you feel about them? And if not, what was your reason not to enable them?

Our community has taken all three approaches to comments on blogs or websites. One group prefers to keep comments open, noting that this offers a chance for readers to further engage with the content by asking questions or making observations (which can then be used to fuel future content). This approach is also seen as safe to many because their blog audience is not highly active with commenting.

The opposite approach⁠—completely disabling comments⁠—is taken by others who feel their comment sections have been spammed by bots or self-promotional marketers. Some company leadership may also prefer comments to be disabled out of fear of negative posts, but these clients may just need to be educated on best practices in handling negative posts (versus completely cutting off all commenting functions).

In general, our recommended approach is to enable comments but require them to be approved by a moderator before publishing. This blends considerations from both of the above approaches, allowing users to further engage with your content and providing an area for discussion, but adding a safety net against bots, trolls, or spammers.

Keep in mind that comments may not make sense for all audiences or company types.

And some marketers prefer to drive their audience to social media to collaborate.

Q2: For those of you who allow comments on your blog or website, do you have a public/published comment policy? If so, we’d love to see them [link it up!] If not, how do you ensure that your community is aware of what comments are and are not allowed?

Whether you publish a comment policy will depend on how engaged your audience is on any given channel. For many of our community members, their websites do not get a volume of comments that merits the need for a published policy.

However, if your audience is actively commenting on your site you will want a policy. And, in general, policies are better to not need and have than to need and not have (especially if you find yourself needing to delete audience comments, which we discuss best practices for later on). Check out the sample policies below for inspiration on what you can create for your blog or site.

Q3: For social media platforms that allow you to have some control/moderation (like FB pages) do you have a formal comments policy? Is it published or just for internal use to guide admin actions?

As mentioned above, social media channels are more popular for engagement than comment sections on sites and blogs. Given that fact, we recommend having a published social media or community comment policy for your audience to follow.

Even if your company does not have guidelines for your external audience, you should have guidelines for internal team members that are managing your community.

For highly regulated industries, both of these guideline types are essential.

At a minimum, your team should determine what terms or phrases are considered inappropriate.

Q4: What are some of the things you most typically include in your comment policy? What kinds of comments do you typically delete?

In addition to explaining the purpose of your community and how members should interact, your policy should discuss what behavior is not allowed and how these posts will be handled. Use examples of both positive and negative types of activity so your audience is clear on how they can effectively engage with the community.

Comments that violate your community’s policy can be deleted, especially if those comments have inappropriate language, attack other users, are blatantly self-promotional, spread misinformation, or break any laws.

In some cases, it is appropriate to first reach out to a community member in a private channel to discuss their inappropriate post. This is a chance to explain why the post violated the channel’s policy, address any misconceptions or misunderstandings, and try to maintain the relationship with that audience member.

Depending on the channel, you can also consider hiding posts instead of deleting them if relevant.

Q5: Uh-oh. You’ve deleted a comment that went against your guidelines. And now, the poster of that comment is stirring up a ton of drama on social about it. How do you respond? And how is it different if it’s a long-standing community member versus someone new?

Revisit your community guidelines to ensure that it accurately represents the type of comment you deleted and discusses the course of action for posts of that nature.

If the poster has started to stir up drama on the channel, reply to them once publicly to reaffirm the rules and then disengage from any follow up.

Often, you can avoid any public backlash if you proactively reach out to the poster in a private channel to let them know you deleted their post and explain why.

In some cases, the poster may be willing to edit their post so that it no longer violates the community guidelines and does not need to be deleted.

About Alek Irvin

Alek Irvin is a content marketing professional with a rich history in social media management, executive thought leadership development, and media relations. As a consultant at Erika Heald Marketing Consulting, he creates human-focused content and thought leadership platforms that help brand leaders connect and engage with their communities. Alek has worked with a range of startups and Fortune 500 companies across the B2B technology and consumer spaces, including IBM, Dell Technologies, Hitch Works, Emtrain, Integrate, and Frameable. Connect with him on Twitter @AlekIrvin.

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