Recently, we had a very serious complaint on our fan page where a fan @ tagged us in a post along with their blog post instead of writing directly on our wall. So what happened was that we couldn’t respond to the post, as it was still a private post on that person’s timeline, but because of the tag, the post could be seen on our timeline. So, the person’s friends (quite a few) went around talking about us and we couldn’t even write back, until, the person private messaged us and we were able to have a conversation with him. We could mark the post as spam, but doing so would look like we were trying to hide something, without being able to respond, so we were kind of caught up. 

It is a very scary notion that the tagged posts can contain sometimes, very damaging information and we don’t have the ability to control the conversation, even within our own space. Anyone have any idea about this or have you faced this before and what steps have you taken?

Unfortunately, I can’t divulge the fan page details here as it’s a client. if you have any ideas about this sort of situation, please do help. I have been looking for information through Facebook about this and couldn’t find anything. 

Regards, 

Thank You Alexandra. Concern is, if Facebook makes this a regular thing, other brands will face a similar issue and sometimes words on social media can spread and can be very damaging for a brands reputation. The person attempted to clarify things on his blog, but hasn’t done so on facebook, so don’t know how to approach it!! 

That is a rough one, @bibechana because you can’t respond to it.  Was it a public post or a private one?  The only other solution if it was a public post would be to subscribe to their personal profile as a personal profile (preferably an official representative’s personal profile of the company)  and then post something there.  But that gets a bit weird too because then people have access to the personal profile of the representative. 

I think the way you handled it was good.  The good thing about those @tags is that with other posts, they are buried quickly in that Posts by Others area.   I think the other solution is to put a post up on your Timeline saying that you welcome feedback so that you can address it.  That way it’s a post that has more visibility. 

Sorry about the delay in getting back to you – it’s been a crazy week!  Hope that helps some.  Anyone else have any ideas – would you hide this type of post?