Negative Comment Moderation

A dilemma often faced by brands is how to undertake negative comment moderation. If a customer or visitor leaves a negative comment on your blog, Facebook page, or other social media site, should you simple ignore and delete it, or reply to it?

Comment moderation

The action you need to take depends on the content of the comment. Troll or spam comments can be removed with little or no objection from other visitors, but a constructive criticism should be addressed rather than ignored.

You’re being presented with an opportunity to address the issues of a customer directly, which could potentially create goodwill towards your brand for being open and transparent.

By responding to comments posted, you’re proving that you’re listening to your visitors and customers. Your role moderating comments is to respond quickly and in the appropriate manner, so you can turn that negative comment into a positive situation for both parties.

Dealing with negative comments

What’s important is that you set the tone and standards for what is, and isn’t, appropriate content before you start moderating comments (see our latest post on Keeping your cool).

Considering what is a negative comment is often subjective, which is why you should have clear terms of use and  even a style guide outlining specifically what tone of comments is acceptable. Sometimes it may be a case of editing, rather than deleting – for example when the comment is fine but it uses slang, swearwords, or potentially libellous information, but is relevant to the conversation overall.

The law and comment moderation

The EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive 2005 outlines the use of ‘sharp practices’ which includes misleading consumers. If you choose to remove all negative comments and only allow positive ones to remain then this would need to communicated very clearly on the site otherwise these positive comments might not offer a true representation of comments received to the site.

For more information on laws relating to User-Generated Content Tempero has created a free guide “UGC and the Law” which is available to download (no sign-up needed).