Four steps to maintain ‘control’ of a Facebook page

First I have to admit “Four Steps to maintain ‘control’ of a Facebook page” is a bit of an oxymoron.

Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis

Most brands – be the commerical or not for profit – know (in theory at least) that when they start engaging through social media that they will lose some control over their brand and message. Pushing content or messages about a brand, values, product or services is not what people want when they engage with a brand on social media. They want some form of dialogue and as anyone knows in a conversation you cannot always have things or the conversation go your way. As such it is here that things can become unstuck for many brands when using social media.

But it does not have to be like that. For example on Facebook paying attention to just four simple steps may stop your brand losing total control of the conversation and even getting pushed out of the conversation – on your page.

1. Have a clear agreed content strategy. What are you going to talk about on the page? What are you going to post to get people commenting on your page and sharing it with their friends? What is the tone you are going to use?  What’s your breakdown of posts going to look like?  For example photos and videos engage people but so too do polls / questions as well as updates with links to interesting content.  How many times a day are you going to update the page? Updating the page too much (for example more than once a day) will clog up peoples newsfeeds and may cause your page to be unliked or hidden. Likewise commenting too little means you risk not engaging at all with your followers. Then you need to look at what is the best times to update the page for your target market? For example if you are dealing with a youth audience you might want to focus on Fridays through to the weekend when this audience is more likely to be socialising and arranging catch ups with their mates. But if your focussing on a business audience you might find that certain parts of the day during the business week rank higher. Careful exploration of your Insights report should give you a feel for what works for the majority of your target market.

2. Clear house rules – all Facebook pages should have clear house rules. Think of these as a bit like ‘Terms and Conditions’ on a website. They really will be just pointers and clear rules for what your page will regard as acceptable and not acceptable on the page. Plus if you do end up having to tell someone to tow the line the house rules serve as a nice reminder.

3. Active moderating - when comments or threads start appearing that may be counter to your brand don’t just  ignore or worse still delete. Yes, there are times it maybe appropriate to delete a comment by someone (vulgar language and rude personal attacks on people etc) but generally the rule should be to remain helpful, appropriate tone for the content and audience, back up any comments or questions with relevant facts (where relevant) and if the person is persistent with their message then try and get the conversation ‘off the wall” and deal with that persons concerns or complaints outside of Facebook. You never know you may surprise the person so much that they may even become your greatest advocate.

4. Don’t walk away just because you don’t like the tone of the conversation – If you set up a Facebook page targeting a group (Group A for example) and instead find that your page is being liked by Group B (tendency to be skeptical or critical of your brand or message)  then don’t just throw your hands up in the air and walk away from the page saying it was all a waste of time. Remember you created the page and you are responsible for setting the tone and feel of the page. If you are losing total control of the page then go back to your content strategy. Where has the content strategy lost direction? What can you do to get it back on track? What can you do to improve your engagement with the target market your page has directed?  Revise ,develop a plan of action and then implement.

What’s your thoughts on Facebook pages and maintaing some control over the message and tone?