Photo Credit: Olivia Blinn/IRC
As social media best practice we should respond to all comments within two hours of them being posted (ideally quicker), and all private messages within 24 hours. However your ability to do this depends on the staffing and capacity of your Signpost program. The important thing throughout is to make sure that the commitments Facebook measures our response rate to messages and displays it publicly, so we should respond to every message and always have the last response in the conversation.
Practical Tips for Responding to Comments
These tips can be used for various platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, but some might be platform specific.
- Answer comments before messages as a general rule (expect in cases of imminent risk of harm)
- Not all comments need a written response. Sometimes ‘liking’ a comment or posting an emoji will do.
- Check every hour during your shift to see if our Facebook posts have attracted any new comments.
- Find a new way to say the same thing when answering comments on the same post (even if the questions and answers are the same!)
- When someone posts a comment or sends a message we should always have the last response in the conversation. So if someone sends us a thumbs up to end a conversation, send them a thumbs up back!
Practical Tips for Answering Messages
These tips can be used for various messaging platforms such as Facebook and Whatsapp, but some might be platform specific.
- Facebook has a Saved Replies feature that allows us to save detailed responses to commonly asked subjects. You can adapt a Saved Reply to make it more personal or relevant to an individual. This helps save a lot of time! Speak to your manager about how your team is utilizing Saved Replies.
- Facebook measures our response rate to messages and displays it publically. We should respond to every message and always have the last response in the conversation.