Why is it so important to handle these tasks especially carefully?

First, Facebook is not just a channel of our content distribution, it’s a unique channel of communication with our target audience.

Second, you have a mission to establish meaningful relationships with our loyal readers:

• you can help them with their inquiries, help find the article or answer a simple question;

• you can gather information about their content preferences and alert the editorial team;

• you can make someone’s day by sending a nice and supportive comment to a lonely person;

• you can help them feel a little bit special by just replying to their comment or reacting with emojis.

And guess what?

Readers will remember your kind deeds and come up with more things to say and will increase our reach and page views this way. So, please let’s follow these recommendations carefully to stand out from the competition:

Comments section

1.1. How to easily keep the track of comments flow below our posts

Go to Inbox section, the button is at the top of the page

Open

After that click Facebook on the left bar (btw, you can also manage Instagram comments from Facebook):

Open

After that, you will see this on the screen:

Here on the left side, you will see a list of posts that are published on the wall of the Page. The comments with bold font are new ones.

On the right side, you can open each post to process the comments.

1.2. How to define articles and comments that we must pay attention to in the first turn

1. Go to CrowdTangle and choose the list with your pages only

Choose overperforming, all posts (pictures and articles in the first place, filters can be adjusted) 24, 12, 6, 4, 2, 60 minutes hours time range (depending on how much time has passed since you last checked the list)

1.3. What should your comments be like? 

Examples of questions:

1. What do you think about…?

2. Do you agree with…? 

3. Why do you think…?

Examples of comments we should not leave as our first ones:

1. Wow!

2. This is amazing

3. This woman should be proud of herself

Once the discussion has started, you have to support it and reply to meaningful comments. If the comment is not informative enough, you can react with emoji and still make the person feel special.

How can you support the ongoing discussion? Well, a lot of it depends on the situation. You cannot share your personal opinion and have to communicate in a friendly and human manner.

1. Ask for clarification (What do you mean by...?)

2. Why so? Do you think…

3. Wow, thank you for sharing.

4. This is really inspiring and we would like to hear more!

5. We are so proud of you! Let us know more!

6. What a great achievement, we are sure your family is very proud of you!

7. This is sad indeed but …

8. That is a good statement/point, thank you for sharing.

9. We cannot agree more

10. Thank you for your opinion, definitely worth reading.

1.4. Use comments to gather information for further UGC articles: 

Facebook has quite a strict policy concerning comment baiting. So we can’t ask people directly in the post, but we can engage them to share their opinion or send photos in the comments.

1.6. Delete spam messages and ban spammers 

1.6.1. How to ban spammers 

You can do it by taping three points near the comment.

You should click on “...” and choose “hide comment”, then you see this - and choose “Ban ...” 

1.6.2. Deleting spam comments on Instagram

On Instagram, there are also a lot of spammers. We should delete such comments. To do this, swipe the comment left. Then you will see the menu. Just press the red button with a rubbish bin icon and the comment will be removed.

2. Inbox

We should check inbox regularly in order to:

1. Communicate with the audience

2. Get human-interest stories 

3. Do not miss advertising and partnership propositions

2.1. Response rate

We should answer the messages as fast as we can to maintain a high response rate. The average time of our responses is shown on our page, so the shorter it is - the better for our reputation.  

To check the current response rate of the page go to insights:

Choose messages for more detailed analytics

The interface of the messages section

2.2. How to reply to messages

The replies should be personal for every user who messages us. Of course, you can have some templates, but they should be adjusted for each case individually.

Do not:

1. Send the same reply to every message:

2. Put too many spaces, ignore punctuation:

Do:

1. Process each message with no exceptions.

2. Answer politely, make them feel welcomed.

3. Thank the user for getting in touch and then handle the inquiry professionally.

4. If the user wants to pitch the story, do not hesitate to ask for details, photos; ensure the credibility of the story

5. If a person is asking about a particular event, send them a link to our story.

2.3. How to use saved replies:

You can use templated responses to speed up the process when:

1. People request marketing team contacts.

2. People ask for money / another irrelevant request (when it doesn’t deal with a story for editorial team)

3. People ask for personal information of editors/story heroes.

4. Inviting people to join Patreon/group/Telegram/etc.

To use saved replies, tap on the message icon and choose the most related option. You can add new options or edit existing ones. Don’t forget to inform your manager about such changes.