Why Community moderation is like a pot plant

Today I was presenting some thoughts to a client about the development of their digital strategy. Along the way we also discussed some digital marketing and content optimisation recommendations, including an approach to community management and moderation.

In a rush to explain myself (I was getting a little carried away I guess) I explained that managing a community online was like a household pot plant.

How? Well, like any living organism, a community needs care to keep it alive. Only the way you care for a community is by moderating (pruning) it carefully and providing the necessary feed (updates or topics for discussion). You can also afford not to go to this effort every single day (meaning you can afford to occasionally take a holiday) and rely on the inputs and outputs you've provided to sustain your entity.

Risky Business

The more people interact on the Internet, the more risk they are subjecting themselves to. For example: we're told that the more information you post up about youself on social networking sites, the more likely you are to be the subject of a phishing/social engineering/etc. attack

But what about when you're a company employee, and you decide to interact on behalf of your company? How does the company minimise the risks of saying something incorrect in a situation where you are trying to encourage human interaction and generate a real community?

My recommendation is to make sure that you have a clear set of social media moderation guidelines. If staff don't know the rules, how can they follow them?

However, what if your employee is trying to cultivate their own personal brand? What if they are trying to own the conversation? (Well Jeremiah has a very similar blog post today, with some suggestions on how companies may try to manage this issue.)

One thing is for sure, personal brands are here to stay and some companies actively encourage the employment of them. Rather like an actor for a film, they are hiring an individual to play the lead role. But well known actors expect to make their own changes to the script and of course they have their nuances and traits that make them popular and therefore social. This is very different to giving an unknown some specific lines to say verbatim and its something that film studios have lived with for years...

I'm just not sure that the digital communication space is any different.

User Generated Content must stay that way

If the recent reports are true that http://www.yelp.com/ (the Web2.0 online city guide that allows user to review particular businesses), is offering to tamper with negative comments to sell adverts to advertisers.... then it casts a significant shadow over their authenticity and credibility.

It beggars belief if the claims of several business in the San Francisco area are true [more detail found here] . Mary Seaton, owner of the Soft Outlet in San Mateo, claims:

"I didn't receive a phone call from Yelp until I received a negative review," Seaton said. "A week after I received a negative review, a sales person contacted me and she said...'We noticed that you have some very positive reviews. We can push your negative reviews to the bottom, so that your positive reviews will come to the top.'"

This activity is clearly different from moderating your comments or any form of user prioritisation (e.g. my favourites, "was this useful?", etc.) and clearly runs against the whole idea of transparency and openness, key qualities for any company relying on user generated content for its business model.

You hope this is just the action of a single disillusioned employee....... and in no way linked to the allegations that Yelp have previously paid people to provide reviews.

Social Media Moderation Guidelines

I was speaking with the Head of Marketing of a large retailer the other day and she asked me if their were any guidelines for moderating participation in social media. To define this further, she wanted to know what moderators could & couldn't do or say on their updated User Generated Content site.

My first thought was to say "don't moderate, allow the crowd to do this for you"... but I didn't for two main reasons:

1. This is a site dedicated to a specific company's product(s) and not a general free-for-all chat area. Off-post topics are quite clearly breaches of the site's usage policy and really have no place there.

2. Its not the place where it will have immediate community membership/evangelism, therefore the self-cleansing aspect is not a likely following the initial launch.

But it did get me thinking about what you should and shouldn't moderate. This situation has been clouded further by the recent decision in the High Court that "Internet Bulleting Boards are more likely slander than libel" and a certain amount of give-and-take should be considered, however this is not a license to defame online, since the Judge in this case stated:

"I would not suggest for a moment that blogging cannot ever form the basis of a legitimate libel claim," he said. "I am focusing only on these particular circumstances."

There are however some usful point to consider before you head into this difficult situation:

• Know your target audience
  Would they consider moderation as censorship? Are they likely to self-moderate?


• Understand the impact of moderating
  Identify if this will cause an unneccesary delay in postings and the time/effort/cost


• Make sure your site usage policy is clear and available

The best starting advice I give these days (as I am definately not a legal person) is this social media legal checklist reference from Richard Best (note: He is in New Zealand, you should therefore consult with you in-house legal team first to check they are happy)


I guess all things in life should be done in moderation.... including moderation!