When you have a Facebook page in place you know that there will be traffic and that traffic will leave comments. Some will be positive commenting and some may be negative. Part of your page’s traffic might be communication among your ‘friends’ and not directly with you. You must monitor and control all of it so your responses are timely and appropriate. Even negative comments can be turned around if handled correctly.
Give Your Facebook Fans a Chance to Comment
Giving your potential customers the chance to comment live on your page can be a very good way to get them talking among themselves. If you look up homeowner’s do it yourself pages, for example, you’ll see that people who are interested in this subject will respond to each other. There is a blog post or article, or perhaps an instructional video posted by the company. The users who log in can then ask questions, make comments or suggestions, or even respond to answer others who have asked for help. It is a true community.
If the community on your Facebook page represents your company, you will need to closely monitor what is being said. As you know, many users tend to use comment threads to promote their own agendas, no matter how irrelevant to the content of the other posts. This is one very good reason to monitor the traffic on your page. You’ll want to keep it relevant and mostly positive.
Respond to the Negatives Positively
An occasional negative is, of course, natural and realistic. Negatives can be responded to quickly and appropriately, offering some kind of help or solution to the problem or complaint. This can easily turn the negative to a positive when other users see how you respond. It should be professional and sympathetic to the complaint. Whatever you do, don’t ever ignore negative commentary. One negative can undo hundreds of positives if not handled well. Watch the traffic occurring among the viewers of your page as well to be sure that they are all playing nicely.
Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan
A simple formula for managing your page is to spend lots of time working on attracting viewers, while spending a little time each day responding to and monitoring the comments of your current ‘friends.’ Spending 10 0r 15 minutes monitoring and retaining your current viewers for every hour you spend strategizing new viewer attraction techniques should work well. Adjust the time frame to fit your needs. Remember that attracting attention is half the battle. Once you have them on your page, you’ll need to take care of them so they don’t drop off.
