Hello everyone, I have been experiementing with small Facebook ads for the last couple weeks and have had success, so today I decided to make a ridiculously targeted Ad and put the spend at $50/day, just to see what would happen.
Sure enough, the Likes came pouring in, but then I ran into an issue I haven’t had to deal with yet, and that is a hater post. A guy jumped on our wall and said, “Get off of my site!!” I thought about it for a while and then decided to delete his comment and reply privately. Here is what I said:

Hi Ron, my name is James. I’m the Social Media Manager at Drillinginfo. Did I post something on your wall? If so, I apologize. I try to be respectful and only have conversations with people who welcome our interaction. But, if I have in any way crossed any lines, again, I apologize.

Have a great evening!

James

Then I thought to run a Google search and saw nothing but, “Never delete negative comments” advice. So, now I’m all flipped out thinking I did the wrong thing and it’s going to haunt me the rest of my professional life. Can anyone in the group offer some insight on how to handle situations like these? I understand advice to not delete negative comments from *customers* and instead publicly solve their issue and look like a hero. But, this guy just dropped in to yell at us, so I don’t know if the same rules apply.

Any insights y’all can offer are greatly appreciated!

James

Here’s my thoughts on deleting negative comments -

Is the comment rude or insulting? If so, delete it.Does it violate your brand’s comment policy? If so, delete it.Is it not negative but merely a disagreement? If so, don’t delete it.

There’s always room for respectful disagreement in a conversation but when the comments turn abusive, insulting or you’re dealing with someone who just comes back to stir up trouble, you don’t need that kind of drama.

I have been running more ads lately @jameshahnii and I’ve been running into this issue more and more.  Facebook ads are being pushed into people’s News Feeds in a much bigger way and many people are confused about how the News Feed works – they think it ‘s their “wall”.  

Here’s a message I got just yesterday:  ”quit posting SPAM/ junk on my FB page … it’s really annoying and bad business practice!”

This came in through a Message on my Facebook page so I could message them back and explain more about how a Page can’t post on someone’s personal page.  She then sent me a message that ads were taking over her site and she couldn’t even see her page anymore.  So then I thought it might be Facebook malware causing the problem.  

So I messaged her back with this note:  What I think it sounds like may have happened is that you have some malware on your Facebook profile. If you all of a sudden have ads all over your page, that can be the issue. 
This is a common problem from Facebook malware that comes from 3rd party apps. You can see how to get rid of it here:https://www.facebook.com/help/adware Also, don’t worry that other people see this, it is only on your account. The other thing to check is go into your Account Settings, click on Apps on the left hand side and remove any apps that you don’t recognize or don’t use. Page Rage is also a bad app that frequently causes Ads to show. Hope that helps! Let me know if that takes care of the problem!

But I didn’t hear from her again.  But I do think that it is a problem that more ads are getting into the News Feed itself where people are annoyed that they are seeing ads from pages and companies that they have no connection with.  I think it’s going to deter me (and probably other advertisers) from spending money on ads (because I’m  getting more messages like this) which I’m sure isn’t good for Facebook.  But it’s not good for the user either!

cc:
@sheridanmills @deborahng @annfurnivall

@annfurnivall @deborahng @andrea-vahl

Thanks for the feedback guys! Ultimately, I went with my gut and you’ve convinced me I wasn’t necessarily wrong for doing that. A big relief!

Have a great weekend!!

Definitely not the way to deal with feedback @hytare – even if it’s not positive, I’m sure you were being respectful in the way you said it.  Even so, not good to just outright ban people.

Yes, @annfurnivall I think the ads directly in the news feed are confusing.  Because that space used to be just for your direct connections and now you wonder why something is there.  But the paid ads that show up there are either because they are targeting your interests or the fact that you are friends with one of the page’s Fans.  

Let’s put it in perspective $50/day spend your reach is in 6 figures and you get one hater – that’s like spilling your beer in the ocean Like http://www.emersonspartz.com/ says make them happy or piss them off – just don’t make them sad. People who whine about an ad on a website where a 1/4 billion people are chatting at any given time are the same people who while driving can honk or press the brake – same caloric output – you got a honker.

And the flip side is hate can help virility. We just had a post removed by Facebook – it was a fashion model on a runway wearing a brass bird cage with taxidermied parakeets – stupid but cool. Apparently I didn’t think the tiniest portion of the models nipple would be a problem (about a big as a period on this page) – Unfortunately we were pushing over 250 COMMENTS on the thread – 1/2 were “you’re a moron for promoting cruelty”. People were appalled at the (stuffed) parakeets thinking they were real – It was GREAT. Another time we posted images of university of Tennessee ornithologist’s capturing birds for banding and id purposes. A graduate student shot a photo of the bird as it got ensnared in something called a mist net designed to capture small birds in flight without injury. From the time the bird hit the net – it was removed measured, weighed, recorded and released all in 7 – 10 minutes, by a scientist –  in an effort to better understand these birds in nature. Few people read the text – I even added a video of the process – you’d have thought i was assisting in the genocide of the entire bird population of Tennessee. If I recall there we’re 300 or 400 comments about 50/50 in opinions but it shot that post into a boatload of news feeds – without spending a nickle:-0