Meta Advertising Comments Policy
Comments on ads should be addressed by the program partner, as they are in the best position to respond appropriately and offer additional information/content.
It is incumbent on partners to monitor and respond to comments in a timely manner to ensure we are being responsive to questions/comments and furthering the relationship with prospects. Comments should be monitored and responses made within the same day the comment occurs.
Some general guidelines are as follows:
- Comments should be deleted if they contain vulgar language, including hate speech or personal attacks.
- Address comments directly, both positive and negative, to show USF is listening. If necessary, consider blocking accounts that are consistently negative and/or are bots.
- Not all comments need a response. If a user is trolling or there is nothing productive that will come from a conversation, it’s best not to engage.
Categories of comments that should be monitored and addressed:
These are questions/comments posted by legitimate prospects interested in our programs.
- Respond to questions that are asked
- “Do I need a bachelor’s degree for this course?”
- “How does this differ from the MPA?”
- “Is it online or on campus?”
- Provide additional information as needed from comments to further the conversation about the program.
- “I am interested in this program”
Misinformation that needs to be corrected about USF, a program, faculty/staff, etc. - respond to negative comments/misinformation and offer a solution or an explanation to help resolve the issue.
- “Dropped out of this program due to teachers lacking any training. Awful to pay so much and feel like you aren’t learning anything. Let’s see if this honest post gets deleted. Stay away from this school!”
- “As a USAF Veteran. Please know the difference in holidays. For Memorial Day weekend.”– Response made by SOM: “Thanks for your comment. This was originally posted in April. It is not related to Memorial Day”
These comments are increasing in number and should be hidden. If you notice these are coming from the same user, consider blocking the account.
- “Broken minds cannot heal broken minds. Anything with San Francisco is a farce”
- “Come join us to be good commies”
Hide any comments that are blatantly spam/bots, are offensive or inappropriate, come from “trolls” or users determined to drag our name through the mud. Consider blocking the account.
- “Looks like your school is worthless”
Obviously there are some situations where points can conflict with each other ... such as when you don't want to draw attention to a comment, but also feel the need to send a signal to your audience that something in that comment isn't okay. At what point is that determination made? Please feel free to reach out to OMC’s social media manager, Jonathan Allen, at jallen10@usfca.edu when such situations arise and he can help you work through a solution.
One final thing that probably goes without saying is that comments are really, really important. They're important in a community-building, conversation-having sense, and also important in an engagement-having, algorithm-friendly sense. Providing a place for authentic, productive conversation is what will do the most to build your following and have the algorithms send your content to a larger and larger audience.
Instructions on How to View Comments
Partners can view comments from their page by accessing the Meta Business Suite.
- Go to School or Program Page on Facebook. On the left side under “Manage Page”, select “Meta Business Suite”
- On the left side, click on "All Tools"
- In the middle of the screen under "Engage Audience," select "Inbox"
- At the top of the page, select "Facebook Comments" or "Instagram Comments"
- On the left-hand side these is a list of messages in chronological order and anything with a USF logo button will be comments made on an ad or event post. When you click on that message, in the center of the screen you will see the ad as well as the comments. On the ad, at the bottom right side is a drop-down menu that allows you to view comments by Newest, Hidden by this Page, Most relevant, All comments.