Social advertising costs are increasing due to increased competition and social advertising isn’t as effective as it used to be due to the privacy changes that rolled out last year on iOS. These social trends are driving e-commerce marketers and leaders to look for more effective ways to drive conversions - and they don't need to look further than their social comments.

Why should you start moderating your social comments? 

Traditionally, marketers don't think of social content moderation as a sales-driving asset, but a vehicle for community engagement and bad press management. But at Chatdesk, we’ve found more than 50% of these comments are ripe for sales conversions. For example, people may be asking product related questions like “Do you have the product in a certain color or size?”. If you respond to them, around 10% of them will end up making a purchase. This is a simple, but big untapped opportunity for most brands. 

• Tip: To see how many pre-sales comments you’re getting, you can quickly get insights with Chatdesk. Just sign up for a 2-week free trial, integrate your social channels in a few clicks, and then go to your dashboard to see the breakdown of pre-sales vs post-sales comments. 

Besides conversion, moderating social comments also helps maintain the brand reputation you’ve worked hard to build. When you launch social ads, customers tend to scroll through the comments underneath each ad.

If they see you responding to positive feedback and the negative comments, that helps them to build trust in your brand. For example, if a customer sees your ad and then leaves a comment, “I can get this cheaper at this other company,” you want to either hide that comment or address it otherwise other customers will see it too.”

When should you start moderating your social comments? 

The best time to start moderating your social comments and DM’s is once you start running ads on social media. The reason for this is that it’s a simple way to drive up conversion rates on your social campaigns. When customers see your ad, many will comment or DM on your post. 

What do you need to get started?

Process, tools and team. 

• For process, you want to put together some sample scripts based on your brand voice and guidelines. To get you started, you can download 24 Templates for free from our website.

• For tools, you need a social moderation tool. You can use Intercom for responding to Social DMs. 

• For team, you need to select some members of your team who are going to respond to messages on your social channels. 

Who on your team should be moderating your social comments? 

It depends on how many social comments you’re getting - and when you sign up for a 2-week free trial, you will be able to find out quickly. 

As a start, it’s good for smaller brands to have their founders/co-founders manage social moderation because this gives them an opportunity to hear from customers first-hand. It also helps establish what the brand voice should be on social.

As the company scales, you’ll be tempted to bring on a temporary hire - like an intern - to manage the responses. But the reality is that as your brand grows, one person can’t cover all the channels 24/7. You also may not be able to justify bringing in a full-time hire. 

That’s when a lot of brands turn to a customer support outsourcer like Chatdesk. With Chatdesk, you pay per ticket instead of by the hour or a full-time salary. Our solution also allows you to scale up or down month-to-month. Best of all, we recruit, hire, and manage Brand Experts to be your customer support agents. For example, if your brand is in beauty or fashion, we’ll recruit someone who has shown great interest in this space.