Sadly, even the most useful tool can quickly become a destructive weapon when it is placed in the wrong hands.
This fact of life permeates every industry, every family, every community. Something designed to valuable and beneficial can be used to cause harm when in the wrong hands and moved by the wrong motives. An example of such a tool is that of social media.
On the one hand, social media is a blessing. It connects people over great distances, it opens the doors to communication for people of all backgrounds, and it provides a platform for education and the sharing of knowledge and experience. Social media is a great tool for businesses and marketers, allowing companies to increase their visibility, promote their content and products, and manage their reputation. 72 per cent of adults use at least one social network, over 10 million advertised on Facebook, and in 2020, the ad spend on social media in the United States was a staggering 40.3 billion dollars. Evidently, social media can be an invaluable innovation.
However, there is a dark side to social media that is becoming more and more apparent in recent times. It has been reported that social media increases people’s stress, affects user’s mood and encourages a feeling of anxiety and depression through the comparison it generates between people. It can be a dangerous method of spreading misinformation that has devastating consequences, and it can also be a platform for cyberbullying, offensive content, privacy invasions and even identify theft. Evidently, caution is needed when it comes to the use of social media.
As a business, there is a special effort needed to make sure that this tool is used in the best way for the benefit of your customers and your organisation. It can be such a minefield that it feels difficult to navigate. It can be so daunting, that businesses become reluctant to use it at all and give up on it completely. However, being limited by this fear of the unknown will mean missing out on a world of opportunity. Clearly, moderation is needed. Therefore social media moderation is quite a hot topic at the moment and there are more and more organisations offering this as a useful service for other businesses. We will now go on to learn more about what social media moderation involves and why it is so important especially in this day in age.
What is Social Media Moderation?
As the saying goes, “everything in moderation”. This phrase portrays the simplicity of the term in general – that even good things need to be controlled. Moderation is the process of controlling the content that is posted by a business on social media. If offensive or inappropriate content is posted, a team of content moderators work tirelessly to monitor the content and remove it before it becomes viral and accessible to the wrong audience. The activities of users on social media platforms are managed and regulated by social media moderation teams to make sure that the content is in line with the platforms rules and in keeping with a brands aesthetics. While you can control the content you put out, you can’t control the user generated content that others on social media may put out there. This is where social media moderation comes into play, managing the quality of the content while working to maintain your brands reputation.
Reasons Why You Need to Moderate Your Social Media
Evidently, moderation is a basic necessity of responsible social media use. We will outline a few specific reasons why social media moderation is so important for businesses to encourage you to put the right policies and procedures in place to protect your organisation in this regard.
Effective social media moderation will…
…Improve your businesses online presence. Social media platforms are a great place to gather new customers and keep an eye on the competition. While social media promotion gives customers an opportunity to communicate, the views they share are not always positive and may not meet the guidelines of the community. In this situation, social media moderation will reduce the amount of profane or offensive comments. This makes the platform safer for everyone and improves the online presence of your brand.
…Restrict the amount of spam content. There is a lot of valid, useful information on social media, but there is also a lot of spam. In an attempt to boost their profile, some users will pot fake news or commercial spam to the pages of popular brands to get attention. Social media moderation will remove these comments, reducing spam, improving the safety for other users, and helping visitors to a page to find genuine comments and reviews.
…Protect the image of your brand. Any campaign on social media has the goal of encouraging customer engagement, boosting website traffic, and increasing profit as a result. Unfortunately, the content generated by other users can start messy conversations and deviate from the purpose of the campaign. Social media moderation will again come into play, removing unwanted content to improve your company aesthetic, and maintain the image of your brand.
…Increase traffic on your website. A negative buzz around something you post on social media will likely detract people from your website, making them less likely to check out your page and investigate what you offer. Moderating such comments will help to induce a toxic-free environment and encouraging users to look at your website and thus improve your reputation and drive sales.
…Drive sales. On the topic of sales, genuine user generated content can be a great way of driving them as people are more likely to respond to objective third party reviews than self-promotion. Social media moderation will ensure that people see these recommendations and allow you to provide personalised offers and services to your audience.
