8 Tactics For Handling Facebook Haters

Social media can be a battlefield for your company’s reputation. Here are some tricks when it comes to handling Facebook haters. 

Social Media Negativity Is Everywhere

While most businesses don’t have the misfortune of going through major online reputation crises, almost every person or business on social media has faced some kind of negativity at some point. 

A new person joins social media every 15 seconds and 4.2 billion of the world’s 7.6 billion people are on the internet. It’s no wonder that things can get heated from time to time. 

However, when this negativity appears on Facebook, it can feel even more intense. This is because it pops up right up next to your branded content and presence. 

Here are some tips to help you when it comes to handling Facebook haters. 

1. The Light Touch

There are many philosophies when it comes to handling social media negativity, and not all are applicable to every situation. However, it is often best to take a more measured approach. Social media is a public forum. It should be treated as such. 

You do not want your business to appear to be rude, angry, unable to take criticism, mean, or unprofessional based on your posts. Your audience will likely not respond well to you being aggressive toward Facebook haters. 

If people are upset with you for some reason, it may be best to allow them to vent those frustrations on your social media page. After all, you control this platform.

If you don’t give them a place for it, they may leave poor reviews on external websites or accounts that will affect how your brand appears in search engines and can follow you for a long time. 

SEE ALSO: How to Handle Negative Yelp Reviews

2. Hide The Bad Comments 

 Hiding comments is a tool specific to business, organization, and brand pages on Facebook. When you mouse over an offending comment and click on the “X” that appears, you will see the option to “Hide” it. 

When you choose this feature, the comment will still appear to the user and their Facebook friends, but no one else will be able to see it. 

Often, people post incredibly cruel or rude comments to get attention. This makes it hard for the poster to get any attention, without outright deleting it. They will think everyone ignored them. This might make them lose interest and forget about the whole thing. 

3. Deleting Comments 

social media

You can choose to hide comments or delete them entirely. However, deleting comments may anger people more in some situations. This is why the “hide” option is so handy. 

4. Banning Facebook Haters

While this should not be your go-to tactic, occasionally it is necessary. If a persistent troll has been posting inflammatory things on your Facebook page for their own entertainment, you may need to ban them. 

The option to ban people appears once you hide or delete their comments and also can be found under your page settings. 

5. Ban Keywords In Visitor Comments 

This feature can be incredibly useful. Did you know that Facebook actually allows you to add keywords that will be banned on your pages?  

Once you do this, any posts or comments containing those keywords will be automatically hidden on your page. This means that no one except the person using this keyword and their friends will be aware that it was posted at all. 

Banned keywords include profanities by default, but you can add any other ones that are relevant to your business or stopping trolls. 

Keep in mind that someone may alter their spellings of words to cheat the system if they are truly obsessed with beating up on you. So, include alternative spellings of banned words for extra security.

SEE ALSO: Digital Brand Damage Control: How to Fix Negative Content

6. Moderate/Suspend Visitor Posts 

If you have a big ongoing issue with frequent and intense negative visitor posts, you may want to take this action. It means that all posts will need to be approved and reviewed before they can show up. This ensures that only positive posts from visitors are visible. 

While some companies have banned visitor posts entirely, this is not recommended. You will lose the bad posts from Facebook haters, but also good posts. 

While this can solve some of your problems, it does not solve the problem of negativity in the comments. 

7. Moderate/Review All Comments Yourself 

While many businesses need the ability to easily moderate the comments on their pages, Facebook does not provide a tool for this to its 60 million active business pages. You would need to look at all comments posted and review them in a timely manner. 

For small or newer businesses, this is easier. However, for larger businesses or ones in the middle of a storm of negative comments, it can be almost impossible to moderate effectively. While you can use a list of common keywords to hack the system by banning all comments, this is not recommended. 

When people notice their comments are not being shown, it can lead to backlash and create an even bigger issue. If people take their negative opinions to other platforms it will be out of your hands. 

8. Report Facebook Haters 

facebook haters

In the majority of cases, this will not be warranted or necessary.  Usually, hiding or deleting comments or banning the user from your page will take care of it. 

However, if someone goes too far, such as sending you hateful or threatening messages personally, you may be able to get Facebook to take action against them. If Facebook determines that what they are doing has crossed the line, they may suspend or delete their account. 

Take a look at Facebook’s Safety Tools & Resources page for more information. 

How To Handle Haters The Right Way

There is no one size fits all or universal situation when it comes to handling social media negativity. Remember that negative reviews are a part of the social media game, and there is a big difference between an unsatisfied customer leaving negative feedback and rude Facebook Haters.  

SEE ALSO: 5 Online Review Myths You Should Know

When considering which road to take in response to Facebook haters, take these things into account: 

  • How many haters are there?
  • What are they actually saying?
  • Are they just annoying, or are they making you and other followers feel unsafe? 
  • How persistent are they? 
  • What lines have they crossed? 

Ultimately, while Facebook does provide some handy tools to help you get on top of social media hate, there are some gaps in what they offer. Regardless of what you choose to sure, be sure to keep things professional and keep the big picture in mind. 

How do you think businesses should handle Facebook haters? Comment below…

Written by
Juntae DeLane

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