Paid Ad Comment Moderation Best Practices 

Comment moderation is a simple way to keep brands’ paid ad comment sections safe, free of trolls and spammers, and clear of offensive and slanderous comments. With effective community management, comment moderation can further build, attract, and nurture a robust online customer base to make each paid advertising campaign worth the time and effort.

Importance of Comment Moderation in Social Media Advertising 

If you have a paid campaign, then you need comment moderation. This is important in keeping your platform safe and welcoming for all users. Imagine a first-time visitor being greeted with spammy or abusive language. Ad comment moderation also increases brand awareness and customer loyalty, as well as helps grow an online community. 

Additionally, comment moderation can help your brand:

• Make sure that users can express their opinions and feedback without fear of being attacked or ridiculed with respectful and on-topic comments and responses.
• Eliminate spam, abusive language, and irrelevant comments that could negatively impact brand reputation.
• Create a positive impression of the brand by addressing customer queries and concerns.
• Identify customer issues that need to be resolved or could be improved.
• Encourage community engagement by acknowledging and valuing user feedback and opinions.

Manual vs. Automated Comment Moderation

There are two types of comment moderation brands can use to review comments posted across social platforms: manual or automated. Manual moderation involves a human moderator who reviews each comment and decides whether it meets the platform’s community guidelines, while automated moderation uses algorithms that are designed to detect and remove comments that violate the platform’s rules. 

Manual moderation offers a more nuanced approach and allows for a better understanding of the context around a comment. Moderators can then make better-informed decisions and choose if a comment should be removed, as well as manage online communities organically. 

Automated moderation is faster and more efficient, as the algorithm can analyze a large volume of comments in a short time, and remove any violating ones without being influenced by personal bias or emotion. Automated moderation is not a perfect tool, however, since the algorithm cannot necessarily understand context, and can potentially lead to comments being removed when they shouldn’t be. 

Creating an Effective Paid Ad Comment Moderation Plan

A paid ad comment moderation plan is essential for businesses to maintain a positive reputation and engage with their community. When tailoring the moderation plan to different social media platforms, brands should consider that each platform has its unique audience and culture. It is important to understand the platform’s guidelines and adjust the moderation plan accordingly, as some platforms are more flexible in terms of content moderation, while others have strict policies. Read on for the key steps to creating your comment moderation plan.

Use a Social Media Moderation Service 

Social media moderation is the larger strategy involved in keeping a brand’s social media platforms safe and healthy – while paid ad comment moderation is specific to paid ads. A social media moderation service protects brands’ reputations, maintains a safe and welcoming environment for users, and can also help identify potential issues before they escalate, allowing brands to respond quickly and effectively. Outsourcing moderation can free up time and resources, allowing brands to focus on other important aspects of the business.

Creating and enforcing comment moderation policies

Brands should take the time to create clear and concise comment moderation policies that align with their mission and values. The policies should be communicated to their audience through a link or webpage, with examples of what is vs. what is not allowed. These policies help brand moderation teams enforce the right policies consistently and fairly when needed. Tools like automated moderation or platform flagging systems can help identify and remove inappropriate comments quickly and painlessly. 

Encouraging positive and constructive discussions

Effective strategies to foster positive and constructive discussions include creating a safe and respectful space where all participants feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas. Brands can encourage users to ask questions and seek clarification when needed, as well as remind users that there are humans behind the screen.

Handling trolls and toxic users

Trolls and toxic users can be challenging to deal with, but it’s important to remain calm, professional, and focused on maintaining a positive and respectful environment. Some of the best strategies to deal with such individuals include avoiding and ignoring them to discourage the behavior. Keep an eye out for patterns of individuals consistently engaging in a negative or disruptive way. If needed, these individuals can be muted, blocked, and even flagged, depending on the platform.

Dealing with legal and ethical issues

Brands must ensure that all comments below their paid ads comply with advertising laws and regulations. This includes making sure that all claims made in the ad and comments are truthful and not misleading. Comments must not discriminate against any protected groups or contain offensive language. User privacy should also be considered. Comments that reveal personal information that could be used to identify the user, such as their name, address, or contact details should be removed.

Dealing with spam

Spammers can quickly flood and tarnish paid ad comment sections if there is improper or insufficient comment moderation. The comment spam should be remedied quickly by removing them manually and utilizing platform spam filters so those types of comments are automatically hidden.

Best Practices for Comment Moderation on Facebook Ads

Comment moderation on Facebook ads allows brands to manage the comment section on their ad and moderate exchanges between users to ensure a safe and healthy online space for all. Read ahead for best practices.

Enable the strong profanity filter on Facebook

This feature will help filter out any strong language or profanity in posts, comments, and messages, as well as hide them automatically. To enable the filter, brands should follow the 4 steps below:

1. Click Settings at the top of the brand Page
2. Click Profanity Filter
3. Select Strong
4. Click Save Changes

Use the page comment moderation tool 

This tool allows brands to manage moderation settings and control what users can post on their page. To use the page comment moderation tool:

1. Click Settings at the top of the brand page
2. Click Privacy
3. Click Public posts
4. To enable comment ranking: 
   1. Select Show most relevant comments first to prioritize comments from people to hear from first
   2. Click Save
5. To set country and age restrictions:
   1. Go to Restrictions
   2. Select Edit to make changes to either Country restrictions or Age restrictions
   3. Click Save
6. To hide comments containing certain words:
   1. Go to the Page Moderation section
   2. Click on Hide comments containing certain words from your page
   3. Enter keywords or phrases to block in the Moderation Blocklist field
   4. Click Save

Report comments or people

Brands should report comments that could violate Facebook community guidelines, which include violent and criminal behaviors, safety issues, integrity and authenticity, intellectual property, and objectionable content. 

• To report a comment: Click the … next to the comment, and click Report comment
• To report a profile: Go to the user profile by clicking on its name in the brand paid ad section, then click the … on the right on the profile and select Find support or report

Hide spam or irrelevant comments  

Spam and irrelevant comments don’t have any connections to the paid ad subject at hand and therefore should be removed. To hide a comment:

1. Click the … next to the comment
2. Select Hide comment
3. This will hide the comment from the page but the commenter will still be able to see it.

Respond promptly and professionally

Interacting and engaging with users on Facebook should be professional, courteous, and helpful. To do so, brands can respond promptly to user queries to show excellent customer service. Even if users are upset or frustrated, brands should take the time to respond positively and constructively. This shows that the brand is committed to finding a solution and is willing to work with them to resolve any issues.

Best Practices for Comment Moderation on Instagram Ads 

Comment moderation on Instagram ads is a great way to manage paid ad comment sections and also keep up with what are users saying about the brand. Instagram ad’s best practices include hiding offensive comments, blocking specific keywords, turning off comments, and responding to users promptly.

Keep the hide offensive comments filter on

This feature automatically hides offensive comments on Instagram. To access and activate this feature:

1. Click Settings
2. Click Privacy
3. Select Hidden Words
4. Under Offensive Words and Phrases, turn on the Hide Comments and the Advanced Comment filtering features.

Use a manual filter to block specific keywords

Brands can automatically block comments that contain specific keywords, emojis, and phrases, according to the current online conversation around their brand ads. To enable this feature:

1. Click Settings
2. Click Privacy
3. Select Hidden Words
4. From there, add words or phrases that will automatically be hidden.

Turn off comments when needed

Brands can turn off comments for a specific post before or after it’s posted. This feature can help prevent getting a lot of unwanted comments or prevent getting flooded even more. To disable comments, and hide original comments, for specific posts:

1. Click the … in the top right corner of the post
2. Select Turn off commenting

Respond promptly and authentically

As with any interaction on social media, brands should address comments directly, whether they are positive or negative. Genuine interaction will show that the brand cares about its customers and is willing to take the time to answer and resolve any issues its customers may encounter.

Best Practices for Comment Moderation on X (formerly Twitter) Ads

Best practices for comment moderation on X ads include monitoring comments in real-time, utilizing moderation filters, using X moderation tools, and hiding or deleting offensive or inappropriate comments.

Monitor comments in real-time 

To effectively monitor comments in real-time on X, it’s important to take a proactive and hands-on approach. Social media monitoring tools can help brands keep track of all the mentions and conversations on X, which can be hard to do otherwise. To stay vigilant and maintain a positive online environment, brands should establish and actively enforce clear community guidelines and policies for their audience.

Utilize moderation filters

Moderation filters on X can automatically hide or filter out posts containing specific keywords or phrases. To enable this feature:

1. Click Settings and Privacy
2. Select the Privacy and Safety tab
3. Click Edit next to Muted Words
4. Enter the keywords of phrases to be filtered out, as well as the duration of the filter.
5. Click on Add

Use X (formerly Twitter) moderation tools 

When it comes to moderating X accounts, businesses have several tools at their disposal, including muting, blocking, and keyword filtering.

• Muting allows one to hide posts from specific users without unfollowing them. This can be useful if brands want to avoid seeing posts from certain users, but don’t want to completely cut them off. 
• Blocking is a more drastic measure that prevents a user from interacting with an account. This can be useful for brands dealing with a particularly disruptive, spamming, or abusive user. 
• Keyword filtering allows brands to create a list of keywords that brands want to filter out of their notifications, mentions, and direct messages. This can help avoid seeing unwanted content and reduce the amount of noise in notifications. 

Hide or delete offensive or inappropriate comments

When brands come across offensive or inappropriate comments, they have the option to hide or delete them. 

X allows brands to hide individual comments on their posts, and remove them from the brand view and the view of others who are not following the commenter. Hidden comments are not removed completely, meaning that if other users wish to see the hidden replies, they can click it to view them. To hide a comment:

1. Click on the ‘…’ located in the top-right corner of the post or comment
2. Select Hide reply 

If a comment is particularly offensive or violates X’s guidelines, brands can report it to X for review and take appropriate action if necessary. To do this: 

1. Click on the … located in the top-right corner of the post or comment
2. Select Report post/comment

Learn More About Social Media Moderation Services

Ad Moderation is essential to social media advertising, as it nurtures a safe and healthy online space for users and customers to engage in. Social media moderation allows brands to increase their brand awareness, build customer loyalty, and grow their online presence.

Schedule a call with us to learn about ICUC’s 24/7 moderation service and ways we can offer your business high-quality advertising support for your next paid ad campaign.