Facebook Comments Again

I was excited that John Hayden shared our YMCA's comment escalation flow chart on his blog! It seems that many people can identify with it.

Here is John's post:

http://www.johnhaydon.com/2010/08/org-facebook-page-decision-flowchart/

Here is a quote that I liked the most from his post:

Five reasons why a decision flow-chart makes sense

1. Scalability – Staff can be brought into the social media workflow quicker with simple directions.

2. Consistency - A simple response policy means that you’ll more likely respond as one voice, instead of many disjointed voices.

3. Alignment - You can ensure that tactical responses on social media aligns with your over-arching business goals.

4. Speed - The quicker foot-soldiers understand protocol, the quicker comments get responded to.

5. Smarts - Granting the ability for staff to make decision on how to respond means that legal council can spend time on genuine legal issues.

I will be running a training this week for about 45 Facebook authors for the 20 or so pages that we will be launching on Aug 23. John Haydon's points really made me think through how I was going to convey the importance of replying to comments to our authors. I need to be more deliberate about explaining that there is no silver bullet to replying, but you need to have a plan. You cant just wing it, especially when there are multiple authors and you are replying on behalf of the organization.

"We already know what some of the comments are going to be from some of our members. We already see them in comment cards, email, phone calls, conversations, etc. So how can we be ready to reply to those?" That remark came up during a recent planning meeting. And it is true, we will get some of the same comments. My thought is, you would respond in the same way as when you received the comments in the other means, except maybe look for some brevity and give a way to follow up.

One of the biggest push backs we get from our staff is that they are already so busy that how are they going to fit in yet another task to reply to comments.  That is why we really need this structure to help them respond quickly, professionally and confidently.

Thanks for the mention John and for the extra inspiration to keep thinking this through.

Social Media Comments Gone Wild! What to do?

What if someone says something bad about us on social media? We cant do that!

Isnt that one of the bigger hesitations of orgs using social media? It is easy to think through what to do if the comments are just wrong, but what if the comments are bad but correct, just plain mean or pose a real risk?

I am a huge fan of the Air Force Blog Assessment chart! This is what we used to guide the discussion around how and when we should reply to comments on our social media sites.  This visual worked great to allow non-tech staff to think through and understand all of the options.  It also helped leadership to feel more comfortable with our ability to reply.

But what do you do when the same comments start to cross boundaries and exposure your participants, your members or your organization to real risk?

So in addition to the Air Force Blog Assessment we decided to create a comment escalation flow chart.  This is intended to help our social media authors decide what action to take in addition to the reply.  We wanted to have a documented process for our employees to use and to find a way to keep our Communications & Risk Management departments in the loop.  So here is what we came up with.  We are also working on documenting the actual steps they take but wanted a visual to make it understandable and simple.

What are your thoughts on this?  Do you have similar things in place?

Here is why I decided to share this.  Moderating comments may seem like just another task that has to be done by our authors.  But in this particular pilot launch the authors are working with Teens.  So when they take action on an inappropriate comment, they are actually working toward the goals of their program. By having a conversation with a program participant about responsible behavior online, they are reinforcing the program goal of strengthening self image and how you present yourself.