Online communities are a great way to connect with like-minded people and share ideas. In businesses, building a community helps you engage your customers better, giving your service a more personalized touch for them.
However, ensuring that these communities remain harmonious and respectful is important. The last thing you would want is for your customers to leave due to a toxic environment you have nurtured in your group.
Community moderation is crucial for every online forum or group created to maintain harmony between your followers.
What is community moderation?
Community moderation is the practice of moderating comments, forums, and user-generated content to maintain a safe and secure environment for everyone in an online community.
In community moderation, companies set proper guidelines for everyone interacting with a shared online space. This usually includes what topics can and cannot be discussed, what words or gestures are prohibited, and the sanctions violators will face.
Despite all these requirements, community moderation is not just about policing bad behavior. It also aims to foster good behavior within the community, helping to build good relationships with users.
Why is community moderation essential for your company?
Online communities are slowly becoming staples for businesses to hear their audience out and extend support. With this, the need for community moderation increases as a way to get things as organized and safe as possible.
Aside from this, community moderation is essential for the following reasons.
- Immediate support. Forums and communities are some of the easiest ways people can get answers to their pressing questions. Community moderation helps them filter and quickly find everything they need straight from moderators or other users.
- Encourage healthy interactions. Through community moderation, you can encourage healthy interactions within your audience – from creating their own rituals to facilitating discussions.
- Shape overall user experience. Content moderation generally shapes your users’ overall experience within your platform. Their experience further increases the chances of staying loyal to your services when done right.
What does a community moderator do?
Community moderators are tasked to maintain organization by monitoring discussions, comments, and debates. Basically, they represent the brand and enforce its values and standards in the community.
Community moderators keep tabs on the trends that users talk about. They ensure that every interaction is within the community standards and be the first line of defense in case something happens.
Challenges you might face in community moderation
Unlike what most people perceive, community moderation can be one of the most challenging parts of building an online community. This is since you, and your moderators have to deal with the physical and emotional hurdles that come along.
Some challenges you might face in moderating your community include the following.
Psychological stress
Human moderators are vulnerable to psychological stresses and trauma that they could encounter. Most moderators have to deal with obscene comments, lewd imagery, and other violent content that should be filtered out of their moderated forums.
Real-time and urgent action
You cannot afford to delay moderation even for just a second. You have to act immediately and keep an eye out for possible violations that would arise.
Double-meaning content
Some posts can unknowingly elude community guidelines through double meanings. Users could pull up signs or wording that could confuse moderators to the extent or might seem “harmless” to their eyes.
Crossing the line
Time will also come when you must draw the line in community moderation. Your audience might accuse you of too much control or gatekeeping, especially when it comes to setting who is allowed to access your group.
Tips for effective community moderation
Community moderation does not have to tarnish your brand reputation. Rather, it should work for your company to make your customer experience better.
Here are the best practices for proper community moderation.
Set clear guidelines
Your community guidelines are the foundation for a safe and secure interaction with your audience. At the same time, it should reflect your community’s purpose and mission.
Form a set of guidelines your community should follow. Aside from the basic etiquette in interacting online, it should also include the topics and discussions allowed within the forum.
Form a moderation team
Your moderation team will be responsible for qualifying users, moderating discussions, and filtering inappropriate content in the community. With this, ensure that your team should be neutral and unbiased so they can properly handle your forums.
Lead by example
Your leadership style affects your community’s behavior. Getting too rigid in moderating could make your users leave the platform, while getting too lax makes them vulnerable to hostile actions from others.
To prevent this, learn to lead by example in your community. Find the middle spot in maintaining proper behavior and interacting with your audience lightly.
Utilize user-generated content
The 90-9-1 rule usually applies in every online community, where only 9% will participate in discussions, and only 1% are active participants.
It is believed that 99% of your audience stays due to the active 1%. This is why it’s best to utilize user-generated content from the active ones to maintain – and encourage – the majority to stay and participate in your group.
Be armed against trolls and spammers
Like in any community, you are vulnerable to spam messages and troll attacks on your posts or comments. The only way to fight back is to arm your moderators with proper guidelines and behavior on handling trolls and spammers in your group.
Dealing with trolls and spam can be done in different ways. For instance, some groups impose zero-tolerance policies on users that attack others and insert lewd comments on every post.
The best way to do community moderation
While it’s good to manage moderation in-house for small groups, it won’t be as effective once you welcome more users in your community. Moderating can be challenging for your teams since they will deal with thousands of posts.
Outsourcing community moderation is the best way to handle large communities. Aside from filtering content, you can delegate more duties, such as guideline reminders, event organizing, and survey creation, to improve your community.
