Background: One Facebook page I manage belong to a tabloid. This is a particular case where managing your image seemes tricky to me. This tabloid wants to position itself as the “cleanest” one. It has a lot of quality, usefull articles. But it is a tabloid, so it does also have nudity and so on.

Now, the problem: there is some negative feedback on articles containing nudity and the sorts. What to do with them? You can not delete them (if they don’t cantain bad language – and even if you delete them you still have to respond). What can you respond when the poin the user makes is right (yes, there’s nudity, yes is cheap). You can not argue with the reader and so on.

Some success: The “happy” cases are when someone gives negative input and argues, with examples, that quality content could have been provided. Then I can show them we also have good content, maybe even better then in the example they gave. The discussion is shifted from the bad content to the quality articles and I even end up with good input from the readers.Some other good cases are when other readers respond that they like the “gossip part of the tablod” and they make my case for me.

The question: How do I deal when I am confrunted with a case that doen’t fall in one of the two previous examples? It doesn’t seem right to answer that some people like that content and, if he or she doesn’t, it’s not my problem. I can not tell the reader that we are a tabloid, that what we publish and, again, if he doen’t like it he shoul just move along. Nor can I ignore the negative input. How would you deal with this problem? Any ideeas?

Thanks

@alexandrabriggs I love you! No, I really do! ) Thank for the link. When I was it I thought OK, another article, a good one perhaps, but it will not really help me. It wasn’t the case. A great read, it was very helpfull, thank you!

@Andrea-vahl Great article

@fredericgonzalo The reason for it’s presence on Facebook is not just because it’s cool. But if that sound right, wait for the rest of the story )

I am not sure why they first started using social media. But, lately, they started realising it can be a powerfull engine for traffic. It is one of the top referers (3rd-5h) – for newspaers, from what I know, Facebook can be one of the top 3 referers. They are begining to understand it can also be used to promoted the printed newspaper, create buzz for their articles, increase the reader base and so on.
Unfortunately they still haven’t gotten around to building a social media strategy and they are slow to invest in it.
I’d say it is not a case where social media is used just because it is cool, but they are still a long way from using it properly.

@fredericgonzalo Thank you very much for your input. I find it helpful and encouraging.
Unfortunately, the only metric they take in consideration is traffic. My efforts are now put into convincing them it is more to it then that and they should put more effort in it.
We run some contest, part of them linking the website and the page. None linking the printed version with the page, though. Hopefully in the future.
I think the results (in engagement) were preaty good. Until before Christmas they had 20k fans and about 4.5 k “talking about this”. Now they reached 30+k fans.
Again, I really apreciate all the input you are giving me

@alexandrabriggs Great link! Thanks a lot for that!

@andrea-vahl Thank you for sharing yet another helpful article you have written!