Content can be robot – or automatically – generated in large volumes and it can be posted any time 24/7, often impacting Facebook pages outside of a normal working day. The liking of content by users can directly link this material to a brand’s Facebook page. Whilst not endorsed by the brand, its appearance can have a very negative impact on their online community.

Too often, lawyers within major brands advise that proactive moderation leads to an unacceptable exposure to UGC legal responsibility.  The result is that brand-damaging content sits on their brand pages driving significantly higher damage than that resulting from the moderation risk.  This is equivalent to sponsoring an event that allows pornographers to display explicit images alongside your prized brand collateral. Furthermore, your lawyers are advising you that having the pornographers removed is an unacceptable legal risk even though that makes no sense.

Our own Crisp research indicates that the non-removal and viewing of such material can reduce brand purchasing by up to 39%.

So how can a brand mitigate its risk?

1. Introduce a User Generated Content (UGC) strategy which manages brand related content on Facebook and on other susceptible social media channels.  Many brands spend considerable resource developing a consistent messaging only for this to be damaged by inappropriate content.
2. Implement a 24/7 moderation system to remove inappropriate material when it appears on your social media pages.  This should be accurate, flexible and, ideally, have an escalation process to highlight an issue to your brand teams.

A strong moderation strategy is now essential for effective brand management and a proactive approach is the only answer for those who both value their social channels and take a common sense approach to the potential risks.

It’s hard to envisage that either of these brands made it easy for the Twitter accounts to be hacked, however it should serve as a warning to other major brands that all of the time and investment put into a social media strategy can be at risk. Being hacked is one of many risks that can have a negative impact on a brands Social Media strategy, albeit a very serious risk and luckily as in these cases, one that was rectified relatively quickly.

You need to be able to identify and react to any social media content or sentiment that can result in a social media crisis immediately, before it escalates out of control and causes serious damage to your brand’s reputation.

There are a variety of threats that you need to be aware of and these can include;

• Third parties taking ownership / hacking your account.
• Trending Comments, Posts and Tweets regarding a company or product issue.
• High profile celebrities or social media influencers complaining about your brand.
• Threatening behavior towards your business, property or staff.
• Threats of self-harm or suicide.

In all of these examples it is important that they are identified as quickly as possible and the correct teams within the business are alerted in real-time so the correct course of action can be taken.

Crisp Social Media Moderation can help businesses pro-actively manage any social media threat or crisis as soon as they start to happen and not several hours later when the damage has been done. Our 24/7 moderation solution;

• Analyses and categorizes all content added to your social media channels in real-time.
• Identifies any content that can damage your brands reputation or result in Social Media PR Crisis.
• Alerts you of the issues straight away via our content workflows.
• Instantly alerting your teams that are tasked with resolving specific issues, providing them with the all of the information about the threat, enabling them to respond in a timely manner.
• Our content workflows allow information to be passed to your team via email alerts or we can integrate with your existing business systems used to respond to social media threats

For more information about Crisp Social Media Moderation visit our designated web-page here…

Your thoughts and comments are welcome.

You can read the full article here

If you would like to know more about Crisp Player Watch you can contact us on +44 (0) 113 242 1165

As the comments are now sorted by popularity, it means there is no structure to scrolling through the prior comments. To ensure moderators see everything, it means they would have to review ALL the comments ALL the time on Every Post; it really is looking for the needle in the haystack.

This change makes some sense for user experience, but it kills moderation on the page.  The resources needed to accurately moderate go up, and the risk to a brand also increases.

Facebook do have an activity log that seems to have been intended to give a simple chronological list of all activity.  However, our experience is that in many cases it provides a broken or severely restricted view of activity,  often ONLY showing comments or posts from the page and so practically useless for moderation purposes.

 Using the right moderation solution

The right solution is to use a moderation service that uses a technology that was specifically developed for moderation and improves both the efficiency and accuracy of manual moderation when it is required.  The technology should ensure work is allocated between team members without the need for manual co-ordination as well as making it easy to add resource during busy periods. A system that is fast and fluid, and reduces the friction involved in the whole moderation process.

Crucially you need to use a solution that protects your Facebook page against all malicious content. One which will prioritize issues based on RISK not popularity and automatically removes the bulk of offensive content and spam without the need for any intervention and as soon as the content is posted in order to limit the damage it could cause to your brands reputation and social media efforts.

Comments welcome…

As a marketer this made me think;

Facebook Moderation should be seen as a good practice to protect your brand and not a burden resulting from legislation.

We spend a lot of time and resources making sure our communications are perfect, say exactly what we want them to say, provide a positive impact on our audiences and just as importantly, make sure they offend nobody. So why should a Facebook page be any different?

Facebook pages allow you to broadcast your messages to an engaged audience. However, this audience is a community and can choose to engage with you & others who have also chosen to Like your page. Regularly you’ll get to know what they think about your product, your company and their experiences.

Unfortunately (for some brands) there is a negative side to this; the door is open for abuse as; abusive, profane and racist comments to be posted on your page, as well as spam and inappropriate images or videos. This exposes your community to unwanted User Generated Content and is damaging to your brands reputation and your Social Media strategy.

You wouldn’t allow profanities, sexual or inappropriate content, and racism or hate speech to be included in any other form of marketing communication, so why would you through Facebook, whether it is your message or not?

Not effectively moderating your Facebook pages will inevitably have a negative impact on your brand. You can’t expect your customers and prospects to continue engaging with you and openly receive your messages while you allow those messages to be polluted with offensive content posted by others.

But how does removing content affect the community?

My first and primary conclusion to this is that it protects the community AND YOUR BRAND. People haven’t subscribed to your brand to be bombarded with inappropriate content not relating to your company, products or services in any shape or form. It’s your company that has gone to the considerable efforts of creating valuable content the community will be interested in. They have engaged with you and other like-minded people and not to those who want to use the size of your community to be a joker or to broadcast their own unwanted opinions, beliefs, images or videos.

What if the content was innocently put there without any malice?

It’s simple – you must still moderate your content around the clock and remove anything that is offensive or against any other advertising legislation. In the case of Smirnoff Australia, where there were images posted of people who appeared to be drinking alcohol under the age of 25 and there is legislation prohibiting advertisers using such images in their marketing (and in Australia, this now applies to Facebook pages). So I would remove the content and post a quick message to thank them for the content and engaging in your social community, but you had to remove the content as it was against guidelines and to protect the longevity of the community. After all you’re building a community and all communities have rules!

Chris Bell
Head of Marketing
Crisp Thinking

Your comments are welcome below…

Crisp’s technology identifies & profiles all types of online behavior, so community owners can protect their users against all types of harmful behavior.

You can access the full article here…

Read the full BBC Technology article here.

LONDON, 2 May 2012 – Predator detection software saved the police hundreds of man hours by sifting through a dangerous paedophile’s 5,000 web chats and identifying his vulnerable young targets.

Web safety experts Crisp used its Kids & Teens program, which usually monitors live web chats, to quickly process six years’ worth of online grooming history police found on a 46-year-old sex offender’s computer and flag up the girls he had targeted.

Most of supermarket worker Andrew Allen’s chat logs appeared to be with vulnerable young girls – some as young as 10-years-old – and many individual chats went on for pages.

In a groundbreaking partnership between law enforcers and web safety specialists, Crisp used its Kids & Teens technology in a pilot project with the Metropolitan police to highlight Allen’s potential young victims and girls he communicated with who may still be vulnerable targets for other online predators.

The Kids & Teens program saved hundreds of man-hours that it would have taken the Metropolitan police to manually examine more than 5,000 chat logs.

Acting Detective Chief Inspector Noel McHugh, from the Met’s Paedophile Unit, said on Tuesday: “The message is clear, we will use all lawful methods to capture paedophiles, and we are constantly looking for technological solutions to apprehend the most dangerous offenders and to safeguard the most vulnerable.

“We faced a mammoth task in reading through over 5,000 logs, some running to pages. For an officer to manually read every page would have taken a considerable amount of time.”

Already safeguarding young web users for companies such as Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and Ubisoft, Crisp’s Kids & Teens program works by using constantly updated data from real incidences of web grooming to catch out potential online abusers.

Adam Hildreth, founder of Leeds-based Crisp, said: “We’re delighted Kids & Teens was able to help the Met get through such a large amount of important data in the most efficient and timely way possible.”

The 27-year-old entrepreneur invented Crisp’s behaviour analysis technology in 2005 as an antidote to simple keyword filtering, which frequently blocks innocent online interactions and consequently drives young users to less restrictive websites that potentially put them in danger.

“Crisp’s aim is to protect young people online without restricting their enjoyment,” Hildreth added. “In the future we hope predators like Allen won’t be able to use the web to groom children, but we’re happy that we were able to help highlight his potential victims so quickly.”

Allen, of Wigston, Leicestershire, is currently serving a four-year, eight-month jail sentence for a range of child sex offences after being caught in a sting operation by the Met in December last year.

The data Crisp processed from Allen’s computer is still being used in an on-going investigation by the Met.

DCI McHugh added, “I believe that Allen has committed further crimes and I would therefore urge anyone who believes they may have been a victim to have the confidence to report the incident to police. We are here to support and protect you.

“I would urge young people to exercise caution and be confident that they know who they are communicating with online. Be especially careful when giving out your personal details or when agreeing to meet someone – talk it through with your parent, guardian or a trusted adult. Paedophiles like Allen are exploiting the anonymity of the internet.”

• Visit the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre website via related links.
•  The MPS investigation team can be contacted via related contacts

Alternatively contact Crimestoppers or Childline via related contacts or report the matter to your local police station, or inform a teacher or trusted individual.”

-ends-

Notes to Editor:

- Independent tests by Cambridge University found Crisp technology to be 98.4% accurate in identifying online predators looking for victims, as well as harassment and spamming.

-  Image of Andrew Allen and details of arrest and charges available at: http://content.met.police.uk/News/Paedophile-jailed-for-online-grooming/1400008079797/1257246741786

About Crisp

• Crisp Thinking is a UK based privately held company, established in 2005
• Crisp technology is 98.4% accurate in identifying online predators looking for victims, harassment and spamming, according to independent tests by Cambridge University
• Crisp currently analyses over 600 million pieces of data for clients each month
• Crisp operates in multiple languages

For all media enquiries please contact:  Gemma Massey (e) gemma@entrepr.co.uk (m) 07738 105087

That’s why we think that one of the greatest resources a Community Manager can have is access to a community of their own peers to share knowledge with, seek advice from and bounce ideas off.

We’re therefore proud to be involved in the Virtual Community Summit taking place on February 9^th in London. It’s an event created by, and aimed at, people who manage online communities. We’ll be there sharing our perspective, along with a whole host of online community professionals who’ll be speaking on a wide range of subjects and taking part in lively panel discussions.

If you’d like to share other Community Managers’ experiences and also learn what Crisp can do for you, we hope to see you at Vircomm.  You can grab a £30 discount on the ticket price by booking through here.