Social Media Roundup

5 Tips for better social media community management

Social Media Roundup

Agenda
This weeks Social Media Roundup offers 5 tips that will help you review user comments more effectively and enhance the quality of your social media engagement. Introduction #1 Establish policy #2 Establish expectations #3 Change settings and use free tools #4 Draft common responses #5 Stay calm

Social Media Roundup

Introduction
Online community management consists of engaging with your online audience and reviewing users posts and comments. Social media use never stops. With users all around the world, social media runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. For social media managers, this can be an intimidating fact. Across the Army, managers of Twitter accounts and Facebook Pages are constantly concerned about what is happening on their social media platforms when theyre not looking. How is it possible to watch Facebook 24 hours a day? How can you make sure nobody is posting something negative to your organizations Facebook wall? You cant be on social media 24 hours a day, and you cant prevent negative posts, Tweets and comments, but you can make life easier on yourself with these 5 tips.

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#1 Establish policy
Before reviewing user comments and posts, its important to have a specific terms of use/commenting policy in place. This terms of use statement should outline the guidelines for user posts and comments. It should be easily accessible for all of those who visit the Page. For starters, this policy should prohibit spam, obscenities, personal attacks and hate speech. Visit this link to view the Armys terms of use statement: http://tinyurl.com/6sw2lgf. Its also recommended that your organization include a link to the DoD Social Media user agreement: http://tinyurl.com/6szqwax.

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#2 Establish expectations
Its natural to want to have eyes on your organizations social media platforms every hour of every day, and your leadership will likely expect that level of coverage, but thats just not practical. Take a look at your manpower and determine what is a reasonable amount of time to spend reviewing user comments and posts. Dont use a lack of personnel as an excuse to avoid managing your organizations social media community, but dont go overboard either and refuse to sleep at night in order to watch your social media platforms. Set hours. Learn your community and their posting habits. Determine how much time you have to review comments and posts and then execute. Sometimes it may make sense to limit comments to YouTube videos or restrict user Facebook comments on the weekend.

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#3 Change settings and use free tools

Much of your time managing a social media community will be spent on Facebook. Facebook has over 800 million active users, so naturally it has become one of the more popular social media platforms in the Army. Social media is about engagement and starting the conversation, so empowering your community to comment and interact with your content is important. But reviewing user posts can become overwhelming as your online community grows. Facebook has built-in settings that can help you manage user comments on your Page.

Social Media Roundup

#3 Change settings and use free tools

As an administrator, you determine what your Facebook community can post to your Page. The size of your social media team and the time you have to review your organizations Facebook Page may alter what you allow your Facebook audience to post. If you click on the edit page tab in the upper right portion of your organizations Facebook page you can change your settings to meet the needs of your organization. The manage permissions tab determines if your Page has a wall, what users can post on that wall and determine what users see when they visit your Page.
In the manage permissions tab of your settings you can determine if users can post to your wall post links, photos or videos. If you know your organization does not have time to review all the comments, you can uncheck the box allowing posts to your wall and you will only have to review comments that appear in response to your organizations Facebook posts.

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#3 Change settings and use free tools

Another major concern of Facebook and social media administrators are negative or obscene posts. While you should never delete comments or posts that dont agree with your organizations mission, you are authorized to delete posts that violate your terms of use statement. Reviewing thousands of user posts and comments can take a lot of time, so its encouraged to take advantage of Facebooks moderation feature. Facebook wont catch all the words you want to keep off your page, so you can also add words to your moderation blocklist. Adding specific words during times can also help protect your Page against organized spam attacks to your Page.

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#3 Use free tools and change settings

Products like Hootsuite (pictured below) and TweetDeck allow you to track your organization's Twitter feed, mentions, replies and multiple hashtags at the same time. If you have limited personnel and limited time, these social dashboards can help maximize your time, and enhance your Twitter community management.

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#4 Draft common responses

Reviewing comments and deleting posts and comments that violate your terms of use statement is only half the battle. Its important to interact with your community as well. Occasionally users in your audience may ask your organization questions. While you dont want your comments to sound automated, its helpful to draft certain responses and have them on hand when your interacting with your community. It also might help to build a FAQ tab for your Page. You can learn more about creating your own tabs by checking out this link: http://tinyurl.com/6xobmeq

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#5 Stay calm
Bottom line, when managing your online community, try to stay calm and always maintain your professionalism. At times, interacting with your online community can feel like youre drinking water from a fire hose, but if you stick by your organizations terms of use statement, set expectations, adjust your social media platforms settings and draft responses to commonly asked questions, it will be easier to maintain the workload associated with managing a dynamic online community.

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Contact information
Have questions? Please feel free to reach out to us at the Online and Social Media Division
Email: Ocpa.osmd@us.army.mil To review and download past editions of the Social Media Roundup, visit our Slideshare site at: http://www.slideshare.net/usarmysocialmedia. If you do not have access to Slideshare, they can also be found on AKO at: https://www.us.army.mil/suite/page/505262. All Social Media Roundups are authorized to be distributed to a broader audience.

1/11/2012 OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS PENTAGON