Sponsored Social Media Posts: How To Handle The Backlash

As a social media manager, it’s likely that you or someone else on your marketing team is using promoted social content in addition to the organic posts that are the bread and butter of each network. It’s even more likely these days, given the recent drop in reach many brands have seen due to changes to Facebook’s News Feed algorithms. The options for these sponsored updates and promoted posts have increased exponentially in recent months, with LinkedIn adding Sponsored Updates in July 2013 and Instagram towards the end of the year.

Here at uberVU, we wouldn’t be able to call ourselves social media experts without participating in the sponsored social media side of things in addition to our organic content. We’ve played with Facebook sidebar ads, sponsored stories (which will be eliminated soon), and promoted posts; Promoted Tweets in timelines and search results; LinkedIn’s new Sponsored Updates–and more. As any good digital marketer would, we’re always re-evaluating the targeting of this sponsored content to ensure we’re reaching the most relevant people at a cost that’s reasonable for our business. We change things up, try new techniques, and experiment with new features when they’re released.

Like many of you, we occasionally run into some negative feedback on our promoted posts from people who don’t appreciate the sponsored content we’re sharing: the culprit is typically someone who falls outside our target market, someone who isn’t interested in anything but friends and family in their social networking life, or a spammer who snuck into the mix somehow. Have you seen posts or comments like these in your notifications before (names blurred out to protect the spammers–guilty, and extremely offensive)?

While prevention (specific targeting, choosing quality over quantity for who sees your messages) is the first step to beating social backlash, you won’t be able to avoid negative comments entirely. So, what’s a social media manager to do?

1. Consider if your post might actually be offensive to anyone, and if it is, apologize, remove and/or edit, and reply to concerns.

If you were unaware of a crisis associated with a word or phrase in your promoted content, you made a joke that could be construed as racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive, or you newsjacked when you shouldn’t have, you’ll need to take action–as soon as possible. Stop promotion of the tweet or post, delete the update, and post an apology as quickly as you can. If you need approval, loop in your manager and/or legal department early to get buy-in BEFORE posting what comes next.

2. Investigate

If the post wasn’t offensive or in poor taste, then take a few minutes to research the person who posted something rude in response. Are they influential in your industry or across social media? Proceed with caution–it may be worth your time to cautiously start a dialogue with them and ask their opinion. Are they an employee of your competitor? If so, it’s usually safe to ignore the comment publicly (unless it gets picked up by others), but you may want to give a heads-up to the person at your company who’s interested in competitive intelligence. Alternatively, it can serve as an example to share internally of what NOT to do on social. Is the person posting responding to other brands in a similar fashion? They’re probably out to get a laugh. Depending on their tone, you can make a joke right back in response (be careful with this one!) or just ignore the comment.

3. Document it

If the post is threatening or violates the platform’s Terms of Service, you may want to grab a screenshot of the original post (and any responses you make) for preservation. If someone has concerns later on about how you handled responding, or not responding, you’ll have evidence to back up your explanation.

4. Warn, report, or ban, if necessary

Like the previous item, if the rude response does violate a platform’s Terms of Service, then by all means–report it! The documentation you made could come in handy here. Even if it’s not a violation of the platform’s TOS, consider whether it violates the moderation standards you’ve created for your community (especially important for Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+–you can’t do much about defining rules for your own community on Twitter). If you’ve got community guidelines posted and they’ve been violated, then warn the user, delete the comment, or ban them permanently as necessary, depending on the severity of the offense. If the person has been a valued contributor in the past, you might want to consider a warning first, but if they haven’t contributed previously and you think they’re unlikely to add value to the conversation in the future, it’s ok to be a bit more harsh. Save yourself from future headaches!

5. Ignore or respond

Depending on the other factors we’ve listed here, you can choose to ignore the comment entirely (we think you’ll end up doing this often), or responding in the tone of your brand voice. Accept valid criticisms gracefully and you could win over a new fan, make the right joke and you could turn a troll into an influencer for your brand. Either way, try not to stress about it too much–if you’re following brand guidelines and using good judgment, let the negative comments dissipate over time.

BONUS TIP:

Use GIFs to cope–we know you’ve got a sense of humor! Remember that you’re creating a lot of brand awareness and, in all likelihood, many more positive engagements than negative ones, with each high-quality promoted post. The haters? They’re just jerks.

(image via WSWCSM)

via Business 2 Community http://ift.tt/1e1si0h