Recently Facebook have launched a new feature that allows page admins to respond to public comments with direct messages. Now, that might not sound like a big deal, but in fact it’s incredibly useful when managing a business page to have the capacity to take some conversations out of the public domain.
Solving customers’ requests more privately and efficiently can often be vital. Up until this point, you could only respond to Facebook users in the same way they had contacted you. For example, if a customer were to make a complaint on a wall post/status update, you could only communicate with them by replying to their comment on that post, with it being extremely public.
Page admins are now able to select the “Message” option, which takes them to private message thread. When responding to the message privately, the page admin and the user will be able to see a link to the customer’s original response. As well as this, when a comment has been addressed privately Facebook users will be able to see this, and therefore know the company have handled the situation.
Messaging and reaching businesses via social media is now a preferred method of communication for many, with businesses on Facebook being able to start real-time conversations with their customers, building loyalty.
As you can see above, you are unable to respond to a message that is older than 6 months. Social media is very fast paced, and replying to something more than 6 months old isn’t beneficial as the original post may not be relevant any more. Community management needs to be timely as well as personal and engaging:
However, in the image above there is the option to reply to Kate (on her post) and the option to message her. Messaging would take this conversation into a private window, something that allows the business to deal with the issue away from the social media page:
There is no doubt that this new feature will help brands interact and respond to their customer needs more efficiently. Let us know how you get on with it!
By Rebecca Guest. Rebecca is Shake Social’s intern.
Kate Tyler is the founder of Shake Social and our long time social media expert. A regular speaker at events, Kate offers consultancy and training on a range of digital marketing topics, in particular safeguarding and using social media in an educational setting.