How to Effectively Moderate Social Media

As the web world hurtles toward an intensely social environment, your CMS needs to get social, too. There are plenty of CMSs touting built-in social capabilities or plugins that can help you to “go social.” Yet for all the frenzy over “social,” it’s easy to overlook one important issue. Who’s managing all that social? More to the point, how does a company protect its brand integrity amidst the incredible amount of external social input? Is moderation possible? Today, companies need social media moderation to help them navigate the social flood.

Defining Social. Defending Social.

“Social” takes several forms. In its internal form, it refers to the social tools that allow employees to better interact. Massive enterprise products such as SharePoint and others like Alfresco, Jive, and Cartella provide excellent collaboration solutions. The other form of social is the external one — the world as it connects with your business and its products via social networks. Tools must be in place to fully manage both of these social environments.

It is the external form of social that can quickly become unwieldy. The tools designed to manage external social interaction are fewer in number than the tools designed to streamline internal social collaboration. Nonetheless, it is absolutely important for any company, whether brick-and-mortar or online, to be present and active on the social networks. Relevance demands it. More importantly, brand integrity requires it. Social media moderation is pretty much the most important way to defend your brand.

The Importance of Social Media Moderation

Notwithstanding the limited number of social media moderation tools, social management is just as important as facilitating internal social collaboration. Today, a company’s social media buzz is their brand. No longer can a company simply declare what they are, and expect the masses to blindly accept it. Now, anyone regardless of their reputation, product insight, or business acumen can make whatever statements they want to make regarding a company. With lighting-fast speed and potentially destructive consequences, a single individual can make an impact on a company of any size.

The only way that a company can protect its validity and trust in the social community is to vigilantly manage and moderate its social media. But that’s easier said than done. A truly successful marketing approach involves constant social media interaction. The larger the company is, and the bigger splash that company makes, the greater the need for managing the torrent of social likes, comments, statements, claims, counter-claims, input, tweets, and overall social buzz.

Managing Social

Social doesn’t just take care of itself, nor can you risk the unfettered reign of social in forming (or deforming) your brand. In order to adequately protect your online reputation, you must constantly monitor the social buzz surrounding your company.

Few CMSs have the ability to streamline social content management to the extent that is necessary, especially as the company grows. So what does a company do?

Social Media Management and Moderation Tools

There are some companies that have stepped into ever-widening gap of social content moderation. Here are a few of the notable ones:

• ICUC – This multinational and multilingual company provides online content and community management services. Their products cover social listening, community management, social content services, and social ROI services.
• eModeration – eModeration covers all social networks, news, media, advertising, and forums. In addition to complete social monitoring, they also provide specialist Facebook services, social media crisis management, and social consultancy.
• PowerReviews – As part of their larger social package, PowerReviews offers content moderation services. Although backed by a live team of human moderators, PowerReviews provides users with the ability to set filters and maintain ultimate control over the moderation process.
• Crisp – Social media moderation from Crisp provides human filtering for a variety of social platforms, including specific services targeted for gaming/MMOs and online communities for kids and teens.
• LiveWorld – LiveWorld provides social community moderation, social analytics, and customer engagement. LiveWorld also relies on human moderators, and provides services in 70 languages.
• Mollom – The Mollom service, developed by the brains behind Drupal, provides a hands-on approach to content moderation through their newly updated content moderation platform. The difference provided by Mollom is that it gives users total control over the moderation process using intuitive filters that provide a 99.98% accuracy. Although mostly a spam filtering and content classification tool, it is possible for an IT manager to set up the service, appoint several moderators, and let the system virtually run itself with periodic monitoring.

Content moderation is crucial for companies, especially as they experience growth and louder social buzz. Although no content management service or software is free, it is often worth the investment. A single tweet can create a ripple that expands into big waves, whether harmful or helpful. A small voice can have a big echo in the world of social. Part of your business responsibility is social integrity. Social media moderation is an integral component for any business in the online social world.